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Dear Parents and Carers
This year is our School's Review Year, which is a cyclical process during which we look to create our plan moving forward to ensure the continued quality education, growth and development of students in our school. We will be supported by DOSEL staff as we work through this to ensure we are meeting the requirements of the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA)
We remind you that every minute at school counts.
The slip parking on Majestic Drive outside the school near the admin building is a Drop-Off and Pick-Up area only between the hours of 8am and 9.30am and 2.30pm and 4pm. During these times you are only permitted to be parked for 2 minutes to allow the drop off and pick up of students, vehicles are not to be left unattaended.
Buses will be exempt. Council will be patrolling the area so please ensure you follow the signage installed
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Wednesday 19 February - Foundation Rest Day #3, Parent Teacher Meetings
Wednesday 26 February - Foundation Rest Day #4, SSV District Swimming
Monday 3 March - Year 2 Incursion
Tuesday 4 March - Year 6 Leaders at Grip Student Leader Day
Wednesday 5 March - Ash Wednesday
Friday 7 March - School Closure
Monday 10 March - Labour Day Public Holiday
Diocesan Consultation & Assembly 2024 - 2025
Last weekend the Diocesan Assembly took place. This forms part of the Diocesan consultation process with representatives from across the diocese gathering.
What is the consultative process trying to achieve?
Through prayer, respectful dialogue, and attentive listening, this process aims to arrive at an agreed set of recommended pastoral and organisational initiatives our Diocese intends to put these into practice over the next five years, to enable our faith communities to become more Christ-centred, synodal and missionary.
This is another opportunity for our Diocese, guided by the Holy Spirit, to choose the steps we now want to take, to promote community, inclusion, solidarity & co-responsibility for mission as we continue to journey together in faith, hope and love.
This week, a Diocesan Consultation & Assembly prayer card will be sent home. The card also has further information and a QR code to access the website where you can find further information about the process.
Respectful Relationships
Respectful Relationships education is a core component of the Victorian Curriculum from foundation to year 12. It is all about embedding a culture of respect and equality across the entire school community.
Initiating conversations about respectful relationships with children is crucial for their emotional and social development. By addressing topics like kindness, empathy, and communication, parents create a foundation for healthy interactions. These discussions promote awareness of boundaries, consent, and mutual understanding, fostering a safe environment where children can thrive. Teaching respect from an early age equips kids with essential skills to navigate friendships and romantic relationships, building a future based on empathy and equality. Open dialogues about respect empower children to recognise and value their own feelings and those of others, cultivating a positive and harmonious approach to all relationships.
Here is the link to this report:
St Clares Primary School - Respectful Relationships
For more information:
Be You/ Beyond Blue https://beyou.edu.au/
Immediate Crisis Support in Australia:
1800RESPECT - https://www.1800respect.org.au/
Kids Helpline - https://kidshelpline.com.au/get-help/webchat-counselling
Liz Hunt
Mental Health in Primary School Leader
We have paid subscriptions to Numbots and Timetable Rockstars
We encourage all students to spend at least 5 minutes on either of these programs, depending on their year level.
Contact your child’s teacher, if you require the login details
NumBots is all about every child achieving the “triple win” of understanding, recall and fluency in mental addition and subtraction, so that they move from counting to calculating.
Numbots is geared towards Foundation, Year 1, Year 2 and then any students in Year 3-6 who are not yet fluent with automatic recall of addition and subtraction facts.
Watch this video with your child to show them how to use it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEtVaPpWSQo
Encourage your child to do 5-10 minutes of Numbots per day.
Times Table Rockstars is a Maths app aimed at Year 2 to Year 8. It is carefully built in a specific sequence of small steps to help children learn and then practise their times tables, building speed and accuracy as they play. It is played online. It is best played for five to fifteen minutes, three to five times per week.
Having a really good grasp of the key facts will give your child confidence, speed and accuracy in their Maths as they build onto a solid foundation.
The Numbots and Times Table Rockstars sites are designed by experienced teachers and developed over years of trials and understanding of how best to learn Maths number facts. They are both built to offer children a few key facts, over and over until they know them - then introducing some more.
Reading and Fluency: Tips for Parents from Reading Rockets
Adapted from: Joanne Meier
You’ve got the books. But what else can you do to make your children better readers this summer?
You can help them read more quickly and accurately. Schools call this reading fluency. Your kids will call it fun!
When kids can read fluently, it’s easier for them to understand what they’re reading. And they read aloud easily and with expression. This makes reading a lot more enjoyable.
Less fluent readers read more slowly and word by word. Their attention is focused on sounding out each word; so, they pay less attention to understanding what they’ve read. Their comprehension and their motivation can suffer. Of course, beginning readers aren’t fluent yet, but by the end of first grade, kids should be reading books at their grade level with ease and expression.
Reading at home is a great opportunity to help your child continue to develop reading fluency.
Here are four things parents and caregivers can do to help:
Choose the right books
Help your child choose books that he can comfortably read. The “five-finger test” is a useful guideline for beginning readers. As your child reads, count the number of words he/she cannot read per page. In general, there should be five words or fewer that give him trouble on each page. If a book contains several pages on which you count more than five words that he/she can’t read, consider reading that book to your child until he/she develops more reading skill.
Listen every day
Once you’ve found a collection of books that your child can read, listen to your child read every day. Be patient — new readers often read slowly! Offer help when your child gets stuck, and always give lots of praise and encouragement.
Read it again, Sam
Encourage your child to reread favourite books, and make it fun! Repeated readings improve children’s fluency and comprehension. They also provide opportunities to practice reading with expression. Children will enjoy giving the wolf a scary growl or using a squeaky little voice for a mouse.
Read to your kids every day
Model your own fluent reading as you read and reread books with your child. Even though your child may be able to read on her own, continue to find time each day to read books to her that are just beyond her reading level. She will enjoy listening to more advanced stories, and she will hear a great example of fluent reading.
SCHOOL FEES
School fee payment options 2025
Here is the link for the St Clare's Parent Access Module (PAM)
St Clare's PAM
You username is the email address that you have registered with the school. The first time you log in we ask that you use the forgotten password feature to set your own password.
ALL parents must access PAM to receive up to date information and grant necessary permissions. Students will miss out on events if permission is not granted.
SCHOOL ATTENDANCE
How to Help Kids Stay Safe Online
Adapted from: https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/blog Office of the eSafety Commissioner
- Start the chat
It’s not possible to be at your child’s side every second of the day, so it’s important to talk with them about online safety issues to help develop their critical thinking and ability to make good choices. It’s also good to let them know they can come to you for help if they have any concerns. You may feel they know more about the latest technology than you do, but you have more life experience to guide them.
- With primary school aged children use online devices in the open living spaces at home to make parent supervision part of the expectation for your child.
- Take the opportunity to set some boundaries around when and where they can use devices like tablets, smart TVs and gaming consoles, to help limit potential tech tantrums — you could even fill in an Early Years Family Tech Agreement
- Screen free time before bed is important for good sleep. Consider charging devices in a central location at a regular time each night to allow an hour screen free before bed.
- While you are all at home more, it’s a great time to co-view and co-play with your kids, so you can understand what they are doing and experiencing online.
- Learn about the games, apps, social media and platforms they are using at The eSafety Guide, including how to protect their information and report inappropriate content or conduct.
- Use parental controls and safe search options
Parental controls can help block your child from accessing specific websites, apps or functions. They can also monitor your child’s use of connected devices and set time limits. But beware! You cannot always rely on them — they should be used in combination with other online safety strategies.
- Parental controls are available on most tablets, smartphones, computers, TVs and gaming consoles.
- You can also download family safety controls or buy robust filters out of the box.
- You can set up child-friendly search engines, or select safe search settings on digital devices, to help prevent your child from stumbling across inappropriate sites and content.
- Check smart toy settings
It’s surprising how many toys or devices can connect online these days, from drones and smart teddies to tablets and wearables. While they can be both entertaining and educational, they can reveal your child’s personal details and location — and allow other people to contact them without you knowing. You can help keep them stay safe by:
- setting strong passwords
- turning off location settings
- limiting the amount of personal information shared.
The eSafety Gift Guide has advice on what to check for and how to stay safe.
- Look out for unwanted contact and grooming
Unwanted contact is any communication that makes your child feel uncomfortable or unsafe, even if they initially welcomed the contact. It can come from a stranger, an online ‘friend’ or even someone they actually know. At worst, it can involve ‘grooming’ — building a relationship with the child in order to sexually abuse them.
You can help by:
- making sure their accounts are private — including chat functions on games
- encouraging them to delete requests from strangers and any contacts they don’t know in person
- checking in with your child as they use online devices in the open living spaces at home
- reporting and blocking anyone suspicious on a website or service
- remembering that if suspicious online contacts become aggressive or threatening you should contact your local police.
- Know the signs of cyberbullying
Kids who are bored by long periods at home can pick at each other, and that happens online too. So it’s important to keep an eye out for cyberbullying. It can include mean posts, comments and messages, as well as being left out of online group activities like gaming.
- Remember, when they are away from school, kids have less access to their usual support systems, including friends, teachers and counsellors.
- eSafety research shows that girls are more likely to be affected than boys and the person doing the bullying is generally someone they know from school.
- Watch out for signs such as your child appearing upset after using their mobile, tablet or computer, being unusually secretive about their online activities or becoming withdrawn.
- Cyberbullying can make social isolation worse and the longer it continues, the more stressed kids can become, impacting on their emotional and physical wellbeing.
What to do if your child is being cyberbullied
As parents, our first instinct may be to ban our children from social media, disable the wi-fi or turn off the data access. But this can actually compound the problem, making your child feel as if they’re being punished and heightening their sense of social exclusion.
There are four simple steps that can help minimise the harm:
- report the cyberbullying to the social media service where it is occurring
- collect evidence of the cyberbullying material
- if the material is still public 48 hours later, make a report to eSafety — we work with social media platforms to have the harmful content removed.
block the offending user.