Whole School News
- Mrs J Weeks
- Mar 1, 2024
- 3 min read
T1, Week 5
2024 Photo Permissions
Here at MCS we love sharing in and celebrating the good news stories of our school. To help communicate these to our community we often desire to share photos and sometimes video of those engaged and invested in these celebrations. However, some students for various reasons cannot have their photos published to the broader community and as a safety precaution we will need to know who these students are so we can protect them appropriately. Each year we will send a Parent Communication that requires a response about preferences for photo inclusions in our school communications. This notice was released last week through the Sentral Parent App. For more detailed information please read the MCS Photo Permissions document prior to making an appropriate response for your children on the Sentral Parent App.
Port Stephens Leaders Morning Tea
Our Primary and Secondary Student Leaders were invited to a morning tea to meet and be thanked by Hon Kate Washington for their service to their school community.
Hon Kate Washington encouraged our leaders to search for what they are passionate about and to serve their communities with purpose. It was inspiring to hear of businesses who have followed their purpose with passion and to stand alongside many other student leaders.
Click to expand:
NAPLAN
This week Secondary students have been completing NAPLAN readiness assessments. Primary students will commence these next week. These assessments are intended to ensure that students are familiar with the format of these tests and the tools that are available to them. A significant component of these tests is the ability to use headphones which allows many of the instructions to be read aloud. As such, students will need to ensure they have headphones at school, during these tests.
NAPLAN Testing will begin on Wednesday, 13th March and run through to Monday, 25th March. Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will participate in tests for writing, reading, conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy. There will be opportunities to complete catch-up tests after this window, however there is a very specific sequence that these assessments are mandated to be completed in. As such, students who are absent will primarily be provided the opportunity to make these tests up by completing a second assessment on one of these existing days to ensure they stay as close to the prescribed sequence as possible.
On NAPLAN days students will need to ensure
They have a fully charged device.
They have headphones.
If they are using wireless headphones, these are also fully charged.
Further information is available by reading this brochure or visiting the NSW Education Standards Authority website.
Students and parents can access the public demonstration site to familiarise themselves with NAPLAN and the types of questions and tools available. Excessive preparation for NAPLAN is not required nor recommended.
If you have any questions about NAPLAN, please contact Mr Mark Walter.
BYOD Progress
It has been wonderful to see our student devices coming in and being engaged for key learning tasks this week after getting connected to our systems, signing in and gaining access to programs and apps for learning.
The move to BYOD has placed increased responsibility on our students as the users of their devices and we are working on-site to assist our learners in the correct and responsible use of their devices from Kinder - Year 12. The Technology Policy and Student Agreement is currently being shared and taught by our staff, and signed off on by our students to help establish the safe and appropriate use of technology within the school environment.
Please see a copy of the 2024 MCS Technology Policy and Agreement. At this stage this is for our Year 3 - 12 students with K-2 Infants students receiving a slightly altered version more suited to their use and level of understanding.
In addition, we are also developing a Technology Strategy Document which will establish not only the "what and how" of technology use at MCS but will also outline why we use technology, how we view it in our school and the measures we’ve taken to keep our community safe and well informed. This document will be shared with our staff and then our families in draft form before the end of term. Review and feedback will be welcome to help us craft the way forward for using technology into the future at MCS.
Sentral Parent App
The Sentral Parent App is the main avenue that we will communicate with you about excursions and other school activities that require you to give permission for your child to participate. It appears that there are occasions when the Sentral Parent App logs out if you haven’t used it for a while. Please ensure that you are logged into the Sentral Parent App so that you are receiving any alerts to new information that you need to access in the system.