Term 2 Week 9 Tuesday 11th June

Acknowledgement of Country

From the Principal

Important Dates:

Term 2 2024

Tuesday 11th-Friday 14th June- Parent Support Group (PSG) Meetings

Friday 14th June- Lion King performance @ Mortlake College

Monday 17th- Friday 28th June- Rosie on Long Service Leave (Mick McKenzie to replace her)

Tuesday 18th June- Kinder visit to our school.

Monday 24th- Friday 28th June- Janet on leave

Monday 24th- Friday 28th June- NAIDOC Week

Monday 24^th June – MRC Taster Day (Year 6 students to attend)

Friday 28th June- Final day of Term 2 (early finish @ 2:15)

Term 3

Monday 15^th July- Pupil Free Day- Religious Education; staff professional learning day.

Tuesday 16^th July- Pupil Free Day- Structured Literacy; staff professional learning day.

Wednesday 17^th July- Students first day back at school for Term 3

                                           - Jenny Stapleton Long Service Leave (4 weeks)

2024 School Camps (with St Thomas’ Terang)

Sept 2^nd-3^rd: Year 3/4 Warra Gnan Coastal Camp, Warrnambool

Nov 13^th-15^th: Year 5/6 Dunkeld Adventure Camp

School Closure Days for 2024

Term 3: Monday 15^th July- Religious Education; Re-contextualising the Scriptures.

                Tuesday 16^th July- Structured Literacy

Last Friday, June 7th, the Catholic Church celebrated the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

St. John Paul II, a great devotee of the Sacred Heart, said, “This feast reminds us of the mystery of the love of God for the people of all times.”

Our Lady of Mercy Parish News

We welcome Fr Jim as our Parish Priest - as of 1st July until the end of the year. Bishop Paul will make a long term appointment for Fr. Gary's replacement later in the year. 

WEEKEND MASS TIMES
ST THOMAS’ TERANG
Saturday 6.00 pm
Sunday 10.30 am
ST COLMAN’S MORTLAKE
Sunday 9.00 am

Staffing News

We welcome Brooke Collins to St Colman’s this week as she commences her role as our trainee Learning Support Officer until the end of the year. Brooke completed two weeks work experience earlier this term and her passion for continuing to work in the area of supporting and developing our students potential was evident.

In other staffing news, Rosie O’Connor is taking long Service Leave for the last two weeks of this term. She will be replaced in the classroom by Michael McKenzie, whilst Shandell Moloney will assume Rosie’s Assistant Principal duties.

I am also taking some Study Leave and will be away for the last week of term as I commence a 3-week Study Tour on the DOBCEL Ireland Spiritual Heritage Pilgrimage celebrating 150 Years of the Diocese of Ballarat. As both Rosie and I will be away for the last week of term, Shandell Moloney will be your go to person if you have any queries or concerns.

Juniors visit to Mortlake Library

Celebrating Student Achievements

We congratulate our Year 4 student Rosie, and her mum Georgie, on their wonderful achievement at the Casterton Kelpie Muster on the weekend. Rosie’s dog Winx won the 50m Kelpie Dash in a very impressive time of 4.95 seconds. Winx, like her namesake, left the field of 125 competitors in her wake! Well done Rosie and Winx!

We love being able to share in our students’ achievements outside of school, so please let us know if your child, or someone you know, has done something to celebrate!!

Weekly Award Winners

Congratulations to our Weekly Award winners who were recognised for their amazing work during last Friday's assembly.

Guided Learning Walks

Last week, Tony Dalton and I conducted a Guided Learning Walk with one of our parents, Danielle. Danielle had the opportunity to walk through our classrooms and to see learning in action and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. You can see for yourselves her response to going on a Guided Walk in a video shared on our Facebook page.

We do these learning walks to connect with our families. We open our classrooms so parents and guardians can see how we teach and what we're aiming for. Research has shown that Guided Learning Walks are incredibly valuable; they help families feel comfortable and makes the link between school and home stronger.

We hope to hold more of these walks in the future, with our first walk being held in early Term 3 and the focus will be seeing Structured Literacy in practice at St Colman's. 

Guided Learning Walk

Student Representative Council News

After the huge success of the recent Pizza Lunch organised and provided by the junior SRC, they have decided to do regular special 'hot lunches' for our students to enjoy. However, we will be charging for the lunches to help support the SRCs fundraising ventures.

We will be making and selling pizzas NEXT Friday June 21st. Pizzas will be $3 each.

School Advisory Council (SAC)

The SAC met on Wednesday night. One of the major agenda items was the 2024 Raffle. It was decided that we would run this again in a similar format to the previous three years. The second prize will once again be a $1,000 Neighborhood Benefit Card from Acciona and the third prize will again be a $500 voucher from Bates IGA. The first prize in previous years was a $3,000 voucher from Scott's Betta Home Living but this year we have decided to approach all Mortlake businesses to donate a voucher to bundle up into a basket of vouchers with a total value of $3,000.

The raffle will be launched in the first week of Term three and will be drawn on Friday 30th August. There will be a roster drawn up for parents to sell raffle tickets at various locations. We are still deciding whether to go ahead with the Trivia Night and a decision will be reached before the end of this term.

Playgroup at St Colman's

We look forward to welcoming back our local pre-schoolers every second Friday, with our next session being held this week, Friday June 14th.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD WITH YOUR FRIENDS WHO HAVE PRE SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN. EVERYONE IS WELCOME!!!

The ongoing commitment to this project will require support from other members of the school community. If you are willing to help out by going on a roster to help organise Little Colman’s, please contact either the school or Lily. 

WE WILL NEED TO PURCHASE SOME GAMES AND EQUIPMENT FOR OUR PLAYGROUP. HOWEVER, WE WONDERED IF YOU HAD ANY OLD TOYS AND GAMES THAT YOUR CHILDREN HAVE GROWN OUT OF AND THAT YOU NO LONGER NEED. IF SO, WE WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE THE DONATION OF ANY PRE-SCHOOL TOYS AND GAMES, INDOOR OR OUTDOOR, THAT ARE IN EXCELLENT USED CONDITION.

School Counselling at St Colman's

We welcomed Rachael Main into our school community as our Pastoral Care Chaplain a few weeks ago. Rachael has slotted into her role with ease and is already building connections with our students and working with them to build their social and emotional intelligence.
In addition to these one-on-one sessions, Rachael is also going to be conducting whole class and small group sessions that will help to develop various social skills, team building, resilience and problem-solving skills in our students.
If your child was previously accessing the services of our school counsellor, Grace, they will continue with Rachael. If you think your child would benefit from this service, please speak to your child's teacher or Janet.

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support is: A multi-tiered framework for establishing the social culture and behavioural supports needed for a school to achieve behavioural and academic outcomes for all students. For the next two weeks at St Colman’s we are working with our students on developing effective learning habits that will set them up for success throughout the year ahead. During that time, all staff will be reinforcing the behaviour expectations as set out in our Behavior Matrix (below).

SchoolTV Wellbeing Platform

Positive Parenting Series

The National Academy of Sciences defines four major responsibilities necessary for good parenting. These include: maintaining a child's health and safety; promoting a child’s emotional wellbeing; instilling a child’s social skills; and preparing a child intellectually.

There is no such thing as a perfect parent, but arming yourself with the right information is a good start!

This week's focus article is on Respectful Realtionships.

Respectful relationships promotes respect and gender equality and helps students learn how to build healthy relationships. It prepares students to face challenges by developing problem-solving skills and building resilience and confidence." Dr Michael Carr-Gregg

Birthday Wishes

We wish our Year 6 student Ivy a very Happy 12th Birthday for this Wednesday. We hope she has a wonderful day and the year ahead is full of fun and happy surprises!!

St. Colman's School is a Child Safe Community

Child Safety Officers

Janet Cain and Rosie O'Connor are our Child Safety Officers.

Contact them on:

Phone: 55992285 or 0490539167

Email: jcain@scmortlake.catholic.edu.au or roconnor@scmortlake.catholic.edu.au

The Child Safe Standards

The Child Safe Standards (the Standards) are compulsory minimum standards for all Victorian schools to ensure they are well prepared to keep children and young people safe and protect them from abuse.  provides the framework for child safety in schools.

Child Safe Standard 10: Implementation of the Child Safe Standards is regularly reviewed and improved.

In complying with Child Safe Standard 10 St Colman's must, at a minimum, ensure:

10.1  The organisation regularly reviews, evaluates and improves child safe practices.

10.2  Complaints, concerns and safety incidents are analysed to identify causes and systemic failures to inform continuous improvement.

10.3  The organisation reports on the findings of relevant reviews to staff and volunteers, community and families, and children and young people.

How are we implementing this at St Colman's (SCM)?

• Child Safety Policies are reviewed and updated as directed by the Governing Authority (DOBCEL)
• Child Safety is a standard agenda item for School Leadership & SAC meetings 
• The Child Safety Officer is a member of the Diocesan Schools Child Safety Network to keep abreast of any changes to policies and or procedures. 
• The School has a Complaints Handling Policy which has been communicated to the whole of the School community and is available on the school website. 
• School review outcomes are communicated through the school newsletter and are included in the Annual Report to the School Community. 

Our Student Representative Council will be co ordinating our partnership with Cooinda Terang to become a collection point for Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme (CDS Vic).

We will be collecting all eligible empty drink containers and then returning them to the CDS collection point at Cooinda. The 10c raised from each return will go back to the SRC. They will nominate various charities to support as well as using 50% of the funds to upgrade school resources.

So please start collecting and sending in your empties. 

Most aluminium, glass, plastic and liquid paperboard (carton) drink containers between 150mL and 3 litres are eligible. You can keep the lids on, we recycle them too. The easiest way to know if your drink container can be returned is to look for the 10c mark on the label, often located near the barcode.

You can help in two ways:

1. The first is by far the simplest. Just return your empty eligible containers to the tubs in the corridors at school.
2. If you have a large amount of containers to deposit, you may wish to take them to a Container Deposit Depot and return them yourself. Please download the CDS Vic West App (instructions below). When you return your containers, nominate St Colman's School Mortlake as the charity you want to donate the money to.

Please note, that as we are in partnership with Cooinda Terang, our preferred deposit depot is their Reverse Vending Machine located at 49 Dow St Terang.

Toastie Tuesday

Lunch Orders

LUNCH ORDERS are only available twice a week on Monday and Friday.

Menu and price list below

Out of School Care

A reminder that we continue to have access to Out of School Care in 2024, supplied by TheirCare, at Mortlake College. Registration is made via the TheirCare website. https://theircare.com.au/

Search for Mortlake College P-12

AngliCare Energy Assistance

As part of Anglicare Victoria’s FREE Energy Assistance Program, they provide assistance with energy bills to support Victorians to:

• Talk to their energy retailer and get help with debt
• Access extra financial support
• Check they are receiving eligible concessions on their bill
• Find and move to an affordable energy plan
• Understand bills and fix any possible errors
• Support your child's education with free internet at home

They can provide immediate assistance for clients who are struggling to pay for their gas or electricity bills to prevent disconnection to their property!

The follower two flyers provide further details.

NCCD

Please read the attached information sheet for parents regarding NCCD.