Macquarie Memo Issue 22 2023

News from the Principal

Our students' continued commitment to our school PBL values of being safe, respectful, leaners is evident in the large number of bronze awards they have been receiving. Our next presentation of bronze awards will be on next Friday 18 morning at 9am, on the Namadgi Black Top. If your child is receiving a certificate you will get an email in advance.

Next Wednesday at 2:10pm 1/2 will be hosting our Arts Assembly. Our Year 6 band will also be performing, all families are welcome to attend.

Coffee and Coding will be happening on Thursday mornings at 8:30 am in the Café, from Week 5, Thursday 17 August. Parents are invited to bring your children and little ones to the Café on a Thursday morning to have a coffee and play with our robots (do some coding); no experience necessary, just come along and have some fun.

Thank you to all families for encouraging students to wear sunsmart hats. Students are now required to be wearing a hat in the playground. Our uniform shop is open Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays if you need a new hat.

Tomorrow we are participating in Winter Walk to School Day. If your child would like to join us, there will be staff at Cook shops at 8:20am to start walking to school at 8:30am, and also staff at Macquarie shops at 8:35 to start walking at 8:45am. Please do not send your child along with any wheels (bike, scooter etc). There will be a small breakfast available to parents in the café afterwards if you walk with your child.

Please make sure Thursday 7 September is in your calendar as Learning Journey day. This was previously advertised as Monday 11 September, however it is definitely on the Thursday. Start of week preschool Learning Journey will be Tuesday 5 September.

As we plan for 2024, if your child is not returning to MPS and we are not aware of that yet, could you please let the front office know asap. This helps for us to ensure we have enough teachers for our student population.

NAPLAN

NAPLAN results have been sent home to parents. It is important to note that there have been changes this year to how NAPLAN  results are reported.

Students’ results will show how they performed in each of the NAPLAN assessment areas against four new proficiency levels:

• Exceeding: The student’s result exceeds expectations at the time of testing.
• Strong: The student’s result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.
• Developing: The student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing.
• Needs additional support: The student’s result indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing. They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.

The proficiency standards are reported on a new NAPLAN measurement scale that makes better use of the online adaptive tests. This will be used in national reporting, as well as on the individual student reports received by parents and carers.

This means that results from 2023 on cannot be compared to results from 2008 to 2022.

2023 School Satisfaction & Climate Survey

Each year, the Directorate surveys all parents and carers, school staff and students in Years 4 to 12 about their experience of public education. The 2023 School Satisfaction & Climate Survey will be available online from 18 August to 8 September. The survey results will help us to continue to make quality informed decisions about how to improve our school. No personal identifying information will be provided to any school or college. For each child in their family who attends an ACT public school, parents and carers will receive:

1. A letter about the student survey outlining the reasons for collection and privacy provision for the data; and
2. An email about the parent survey, including a unique link to access the survey. Genuine survey invitation emails will have the title "The 2023 School Satisfaction & Climate Survey is now open!" and will be sent from EDU Surveys & Evaluation with 'from' address EDU@qualtrics-survey.com.

If you do not receive the survey invitation, please check your Junk email folder; if it is not there, please contact us. If you do not have an email listed with the school, please contact the front office and we can arrange for you to be given a hard copy of the survey.

The Parents and Carers Survey will be available online in other languages: Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Urdu, Vietnamese, Punjabi, Bengali, Spanish, Telugu, French and Italian. Respondents can select their preferred language when they start the survey. A shortened paper-version of the Parents and Carers Survey is also available in the following 5 languages: Dari, Dinka, Farsi, Karen and Mon. These surveys are available at the Front Office.

For the results to reflect the opinions of our whole school community, we need as many parents and carers, staff and students as possible to complete the survey. Your feedback is important, and we hope you will take part. For more information, visit: https://www.education.act.gov.au/public-school-life/school-satisfaction-and-climate-survey

School Planning

As you know, over the next three fortnights we are sharing the commendations, affirmations, and recommendations from our School Review Report. Below is a copy of our affirmations. Remember the report can be found in the School Board tab of ‘Our School’.

Macquarie Primary School was affirmed for:

• The optimism and trust in the leadership team expressed by staff, students and parents.
• The high levels of mutual staff support and morale.
• Welcoming families at the school, treating them with respect and inviting them to engage in a range of activities as partners in learning.
• Its relationships and partnerships with a range of groups and organisations in its local community and in the wider Canberra context in support of learning and student and staff wellbeing.
• The tenacity and support of a parent who is prolific and highly successful in applying for and obtaining grants from a wide range of sources, often resulting in the establishment of enduring partnerships.
• School leaders and teachers demonstrating a strong appetite for using data and developing stronger skills in data literacy.
• The commitment of staff to the innovative and meaningful integration of ICT across various areas of learning.
• All students having learning goals that are displayed in classrooms and accessible to them.
• The effective use of flexible student groupings to target learning needs, providing additional support and some extension for those who are higher-potential learners.
• The range of methods for reporting students’ learning to parents and carers. Parents and carers report their satisfaction with the information they receive from teachers regarding student learning. 
• Allocating collaborative time to maximise teachers’ strengths in support of planning.
• A whole-school approach to unpacking the characteristics of high-impact learning strategies, resulting in consistent practices in most classrooms.
• Development of the professional learning and curriculum plans providing the foundation for future work in building a strong and empowered learning community with consistent practices.

New Curriculum Update

As mentioned in our previous newsletter we are in the process of becoming familiar with Australian Curriculum V9.0. We have noticed that V9 is a more stripped-back and teachable curriculum that identifies essential content for our learners. There is far better alignment between learning areas and the general capabilities. These revisions will further enhance our ability to provide a concept-driven inquiry pedagogy that is transdisciplinary.  We will continue to share with you our noticing's and the implications for our curriculum delivery here at Macquarie as the Semester progresses.

As you can see the new curriculum gives us a chance to reflect and review current practices, to best suit the needs of our learners we have decided to implement a single stream K,1,2 model for our classroom structure starting in 2024. This will enable us to embed foundation skills with greater rigour in our junior primary years.

Managing Staff Absences

As the colder weather sets in, we expect to see a higher number of staff away at times due to seasonal illness and COVID-19.

To ensure that we continue to provide all students with quality learning with minimal disruption, we may be implementing temporary changes to our learning programs. 

The school may also take the opportunity to temporarily modify timetables or work with external providers to deliver some programs. There may also be a need to postpone excursions and other extra-curricular activities until there is enough staff to support them.  
Every school will implement these measures differently and has the flexibility to make choices that best meet the needs of their school community. 

If changes are required at our school at any time, we will write to you to let you know. We will also ensure we keep you up to date on how long we expect any changes to be in place.

As always, we remain committed to providing our students with high quality learning experiences in a safe and welcoming school environment.

Thank you for your understanding.

Staying COVID Smart in 2023

As you may be aware, there has been an increase in COVID-19 cases across ACT public schools in recent weeks.

To help stop the further spread of COVID-19 in our school, we are encouraging and implementing the following measures:

• Students who are COVID-19 positive or displaying symptoms (including a runny nose, sore throat, cough, fever) should test and must not attend school while unwell.
• Parents and carers must inform schools if their child is COVID-positive.
• Keep up to date with vaccinations.
• Families can access a free rapid antigen test (RAT) from the front office of their school. Nasal and saliva tests are available. Test when symptomatic or as a precaution.
• Practise good hand and respiratory hygiene.
• Distance where possible.

For the latest COVID-19 advice please visit the ACT’s COVID-19 website.

Stranger awareness safety message

This is a reminder to ensure your children and young people understand the importance of stranger awareness safety and information has been included on how to report an incident.

Please support us to keep our children safe by having conversations about moving safely around the community. You may wish to visit the Australian Federal Police website section on Child Safety for tips. In addition, the Safety4Kids is a non-government website that has useful information and links. The Constable Kenny website also has a number of tips for parents for younger children.

If you become aware of an incident or notice anyone acting suspiciously around a school or student, contact police immediately on 131 444 or in the case of an emergency call 000. If you witness an incident or if you have any information that could assist police, contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Information can be provided anonymously. We would also ask that you notify the school so we can also support the wider school community to be aware of incidents.

Apply now for the Future of Education Equity Fund 2023

Apply now for the Future of Education Equity Fund for the 2023 school year. Eligible low-income ACT families can receive one-off payments for financial aid to help cover the costs of their children’s educational costs, such as sport equipment and activities, music lessons, school uniforms and excursions.

The Fund is open to eligible students enrolled in preschools that are attached to an ACT government school, through to Year 12 in the ACT. Further information and the online application form is available at https://www.education.act.gov.au/support-for-our-students/financial-and-resource-assistance-for-families

Evaluation - Active travel programs

TCCS has engaged First Person Consulting (FPC) – a Melbourne-based evaluation consultancy – to manage the evaluation and the surveys. We will not be collecting any identifiable information from anyone completing the survey and all responses will be kept confidential and anonymous. FPC will collect and analyse all responses and provide key results to TCCS in aggregate.

Parents/Carers:

https://fpc.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9zU82MwDxaxYEwS

Library News

BOOK WEEK News

Families, Book Week is coming up very soon. We will be celebrating books and reading right through Week 6 – August 21 – 25, with the official 2023 theme being READ, GROW, INSPIRE. All of our classes have been reading the books on the shortlist, which are the books that are in the running to win the Book of the Year Award.

There are also many students (and staff!) who have started to think about a costume for our annual Book Character dress up day. We invite all students to come dressed up on Friday 25 August as a favourite book character. We do like to remind families that dressing up should not be expensive or time consuming… there are lots of ideas on various websites that will give great ideas for easy costumes.

Author Visit

We are also very excited that our author visit is happening in a couple of weeks! All students from K-6 have taken home a permission note; please return these as soon as possible with payment. Our classes have been reading many of the books written by our authors, Kate and Jol Temple, and I know some have also been finding out extra information from the website https://katejoltemple.com/. We can’t wait to meet them!

Overdue Books

Overdue notes were printed today to remind students which books need to be returned to the library. Please help your child have a look for missing books.

As always please feel free to contact me with any book or library queries at pamela.gaukroger@ed.act.edu.au

News from the P&C

Term 3 Working Bee 🐝 🐝

The Term 3 Working Bee will be held at 9am on Sunday 20 August. Many hands make light work – so please spare a few hours to help make our school grounds shine! There are a range of jobs we need to do, so don’t worry if you can’t do any heavy lifting, there are lots of small jobs too. We will finish off with a BBQ lunch. All welcome!

P&C Father’s Day Stall

The P&C will be running a Father's Day stall on Friday 1 September (week 7). We would love to have a group of volunteers to help us run the stall, any time between 8.30am-1pm on that day. Please contact classparentrepsmps@gmail.com to confirm your interest!

Colour Fun Run

The P&C are excited to be hosting a Colour Fun Run on Friday 8 September – so be sure to get your permission forms back! It will be a huge colourful mess, and we think it will be one of the most exciting days on our school’s calendar. We would love to welcome parents and family members to attend. If you would like to volunteer please complete the volunteer section on the Permission Slip.

The Colour Fun Run is also a fundraising activity by the P&C to help fund phase two of the Adventure Playground. If you would like to help raise funds then please go to schoolfunrun.com.au and create a student fundraising profile.

Uniform Shop

The volunteers run P&C Uniform shop is open:

Every Monday & Friday 8:45am-9:15am, and every second Wednesday 3:00pm-3:30pm (even weeks only)

Volunteers are still needed once a fortnight on Wednesday afternoons so the shop can re-open every week on Wednesdays. If you have half-an-hour to spare, please get in touch with the shop coordinators: Liz and Julie at uniforms.mps@gmail.com.

Orders for new uniform items can be placed via www.flexischools.com.au and will be sent home with students – no need to collect from the shop.

Donations of pre-loved uniform items are gratefully accepted during open times, or can be left with the office.

Coding and Coffee

We are excited to introduce a fun new before school activity – coding with our new robots! Students, parents, and siblings are welcome to play with the (easy to use!) robots, from 8:30-8:55am in the school café on Thursday mornings, starting week 5. So come grab a coffee or milo, and get coding!

Communications Officer | Macquarie Primary School P&C

E: coms.macquariepandc@gmail.com

Notes / Reminders

All notes are available on our school website.

Community Notices

Contact Details