As we settle into the rhythm of Week 7 next week, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the kindness, collaboration, and hard work that make our classrooms and school community buzz every single day. The sun, smiles, splash of colour and energy of last Friday’s Colour Run and Community Picnic was a sight to behold. A massive thank you to our families and staff for showing up in such high spirits—it was the perfect safe night and reminder of how vibrant our school community truly is.

This week on Tuesday, I was fortunate to be able to attend an exciting Year 1 excursion to the Museum of Play and Arts (MOPA). This was a terrific experience for all our Year 1 students and provided many opportunities for collaboration, teamwork and the importance of taking turns and being kind and respectful for each other. 

What a fantastic day for our Junior and Senior Cross Country! With beautiful weather and plenty of sunshine, conditions were perfect for a great morning of running and cheering. It was wonderful to see so many students getting involved, giving their best effort, and showing great sportsmanship out on the course. From determined finishes to encouraging classmates along the way, the positive energy was everywhere. A huge thank you to our Sports Captains, who were absolute superstars all day — helping out, encouraging runners, and keeping the energy high throughout the event.

A big thank you as well to the many parents and family members who came along to support and cheer from the sidelines — the encouragement made a huge difference and helped create such a great atmosphere. Well done to all of our runners for their effort and enthusiasm. It was a fun day and a great display of school spirit! It would not have happened without the extreme dedication and safe planning and preparation from Mr Corey and Miss Sam B. Congratulations Red House.

Today our entire staff participated in a very productive school closure day focused on affirming and refining the way we teach and manage our learning environments. Our teaching teams including our learning support partners visited several local catholic primary schools to observe high-quality instructional models in action. All of our classrooms at SCoS are calm, predictable, and highly engaging environments. By visiting other schools, our teachers were able to see firsthand how different educators implement and embed, Explicit Instruction, Engagement classroom routines as well as Modelled and Guided Practice.  Following these visits, our staff returned for workshops back at school. These sessions allowed us to reflect on what we saw during our school visits and how best to plan for student participation and positive behaviour expectations in our own classrooms, specialist subjects and out on our school yard. 

This week I also met with 3 new parents from Prep and a parent from year 1 to discuss increased ways to support closer social connections with families within our different year cohorts. If you are a parent in your student (s) year level and interested in harnessing greater social opportunities for families please contact me for a discussion at school as I am more than willing to offer my support with parent social opportunities. 

Important Reminder: Weekend and Out-of-Hours School Access

While we love seeing our school as a hub for our community, as principal I must provide a clear reminder regarding the use of school grounds outside of supervised hours (especially on weekends and before/after school).

The safety of all our students and my duty of care is of primary concern. Please be advised that no students are permitted on the school site without close parental attention and supervision. We have received recent reports of unsupervised children playing and bike riding on our school grounds. For the safety of the children and the security of our facilities, this practice cannot continue. 

Site Security & Access

• Locked Gates: All school gates remain locked outside of school hours to protect our learning environments.
• Mandalay Gate: This gate is equipped with a keypad code strictly for the use of TheirCare students and families during their designated OSCH care sessions. Please do not share this code or use it for general weekend access.

We ask that all families respect these boundaries to help us maintain a safe, well-kept environment for our students to return to each Monday morning.

Thank you for your cooperation in keeping our school safe and secure. Families are also asked to support our safe play expectations that we teach and remind our students of each day by having regular conversations at home with their children about the importance of playing safely at school. This reinforcement at home by parents greatly assists us at with our 3 positive behaviours for learning expectations of: 

           * We are Respectful        * We are Learners        * We are Safe 

When students engage in unsafe behaviour on the yard, they are discreetly removed from the area to reflect quietly on their actions alongside teachers and school leaders. In instances where safety cannot be maintained, parents will be notified to collect their child to ensure the wellbeing of all students and staff. This is in line with our duty of care policy, parent / guardian code of conduct and student code of conduct policy.

Enjoy the Long Weekend everyone and we will see you all back at school on Tuesday

In partnership,

Nathan

Project Compassion

This Lent, our school community is invited to be a part of something incredible. Once again, we are called to stand hand in hand with thousands of others across the country and Unite Against Poverty by supporting Caritas Australia’s Project Compassion.

 Last year, our school was a part of a nationwide movement that raised over $10 million to bring opportunity and change to vulnerable communities across the world. This year, with your support, we hope to have an even greater impact.

 Throughout the term, there will be different opportunities to participate in activities and donate towards this cause. These include:

• Pancake Breakfast
• Project Compassion boxes in our classrooms
• Pop with Purple - Casual clothes day on Thursday 2nd April

Your generosity will enable Caritas Australia to provide life-changing support to communities facing poverty, food insecurity, lack of education and water shortages, while building resilience against future challenges.

Andrew Chinn - Workshops and Concert

On Tuesday 17th March, Australian religious songwriter and singer, Andrew Chinn, will be visiting our school to share his songs with our children. Andrew’s songs, such as “These Hands”, “Rainbow”, “An African Blessing” and “Rise Up!” are used in classrooms and liturgies around Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada. The concert will take place in the COLA, at 2:25pm). We look forward to seeing you there.

Catholic Education Week Bulletin

World Day of Prayer - Friday 6th March

Loving God,
we pray in unity with the people of Nigeria
and with all who gather for World Day of Prayer.
May we find our rest in You
and be moved to act with compassion, justice and love.
Amen

Dear Parents, 

This week, we launched a whole school focus on Friendship, with a particular emphasis on friendship behaviours in the yard. This initiative will be led by our Year 6 Wellbeing Leaders and Student Voice team, who are excited to help promote, model and celebrate strong friendship skills across the school.

Throughout the term, students will be encouraged to actively demonstrate the following friendship qualities:

• Kindness
• Respect
• Trust
• Inclusion
• Co-operation

When students are observed showing these qualities during break times, they will receive a coloured counter that matches their House colour. Students can then place their counter into their House jar, located near the office. Each week, House totals will be shared with the school community, building a sense of collective pride and teamwork. At the end of the term, the House with the highest total will be rewarded with some extra play time.

In addition, each Friday, each year level will nominate students who have consistently demonstrated positive friendship behaviours. These students will be acknowledged and celebrated over the PA system.

We look forward to partnering with families in strengthening these important social skills. You may like to ask your child about the friendship qualities they are focusing on at school and celebrate when they demonstrate these at home or in the community.

Together, we can continue to build a culture of kindness, inclusion and respect across our school.

Kind regards,

Mark Lanigan, Claire Penman, Maggie Lee & Taylah Coatsworth (The Wellbeing Team)

School Closure Day - Staff Professional Learning

Today’s school closure day provides an opportunity for staff to continue to focus on our instructional teaching practice and the implementation of our school’s instructional model.  This work is in line with Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools’ (MACS) system-wide Vision for Instruction and we are fortunate to be spending the morning visiting schools from across our region.  Staff will be able to view other classrooms at work, observing explicit teaching in different settings, before returning to school for workshops and sharing.  It promises to be a rich day of development for staff and we look forward to bringing the best learning from the day back to our classrooms to impact students here at St Catherine of Siena.

Knowledge-Rich Learning

Our teaching of Humanities, Health and Sciences has been undertaking a quiet transformation over the past twelve months at St Catherine of Siena.

We have redesigned our approach to create a knowledge-rich curriculum, that centres the acquisition of knowledge as its goal, supported by coherent, sequenced and carefully selected units of work.

Why knowledge?

A knowledge-rich curriculum aligns with the science on how students learn. Cognitive science supports the idea that ‘knowledge sticks to prior learning’ and knowledge plays a central role in building skills, thinking critically and creatively, and solving problems with increasing independence.  Building knowledge also supports reading comprehension.

The features of St Catherine of Siena’s knowledge-rich curriculum:

• Structured, sequenced and coherent - each unit builds student knowledge over time and links to prior learning
• Provides opportunities to investigate and answer big questions
• Vocabulary is explicitly taught
• Opportunities for review and revision are explicit and planned for
• Thinking skills are taught and practiced
• Opportunities for application and sharing of knowledge are planned for
• Specialist learning subjects support KRL across the curriculum
• Learning includes hands-on, practical experiences
• Learning experiences are multi-sensory and multi-modal
• Incorporates community connection, incursions/excursions and/or practical real-world connected action 
• Is accessible to all - caters for different learning needs and preferences
• Teaching is not reliant on a slideshow

We look forward to sharing this learning with families over the coming terms through Seesaw updates and learning showcases across the year.

Homework  

Our homework processes and expectations were emailed to families following our last newsletter.  In short, Years 3-6 are expected to complete daily reading and maths fluency tasks 3-4 times a week and our Junior students have daily home reading.  All junior students should now be reading daily at home. From Term 2, additional maths options will be provided to our Year 1 and 2 students as well.

School Crossing Update

City of Greater Geelong has asked all schools to remind families that to maintain a safe and consistent environment across all school crossings, it is essential that all students dismount and walk their bikes across the road every time.

Riding through a crossing can lead to:

• Reduced visibility and reaction time for both the student and approaching vehicles.
• Loss of control, especially in wet weather or crowded crossing areas.
• Increased risk of collisions with other students who are walking.
• Confusion for drivers, who expect pedestrians—not cyclists—within the crossing space.

We ask all families with students who ride to school to remind students to dismount at the crossing on Warralily to keep our students, families and Joel safe.

Lost Property

Just a reminder to parents that the Green lost property box is located at the student reception near the office. All named and un-named uniform items including hats can be found here. Our goal is to ensure that lost items are returned to their rightful owners in a timely and organised manner. To help with this, we ask that all students clearly label their personal belongings with their names. This simple step greatly improves our ability to return lost items. 

However, it is the responsibility of students and parents to check this and locate any uniform items. Any non-uniform items remain in the box for 2 weeks before being dropped to goodwill, un-named drink bottles are disposed of each Friday.  Please remind your children to take extra care with their belongings and by working together, we can help reduce the number of lost items and ensure that any misplaced belongings are returned to students as promptly as possible. 

Thank you for your cooperation and support.

Friendly Reminders:

Office Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM 

School Gates: The gates are open from 8:30 AM to 8:45 AM. Students arriving after this time must enter through the office.

Late Arrivals: If students arrive after the bell music, they must be signed in at the office by an adult. A late pass will be recorded and sent to the classroom teacher. 

End of Day: If students are not collected by 3:30 PM, they will be taken to the office, parents contacted and supervised until 3:40 PM. 

After this time, they will be escorted to After-School Care. This will incur a fee payable to TheirCare.

Try booking Link 

Please find updated dates for your diary 2026 - Please note these are subject to change and will be updated regularly

Updated 2026 SCHOOL DATES T1 Wk6