Jesus in his interactions also connected with us today in our associations with others.  He did not come to create a country club or a tribe of people who could say: ’‘We’re in and you’re out.  We’ve got the truth and you don’t." Jesus came to reveal something that was true everywhere, for everyone and for all the time.  The Christ mystery  is much bigger than Christianity as an organised religion.  If we don’t understand this, Christians will have little ability to make friends with, build bridges to understand, or respect other religions or the planet.  Richard Rohr

Father's Day

This Sunday we celebrate our Dads and the influence they have in society.  

Firstly, many thanks to Ebony Dwyer and her team of helpers who conducted the Father's Day stall in the Foley Centre today. Thanks to Ebony who stored the gifts in her home and for the Mums who organised the preparation of wrapping the gifts which was done over many working bees done at home (with refreshments to keep them engaged).  
I have just watched one of the Prep classes walk back from the Father's Day stall and the looks on their faces says it all, that they are excited to be able to give this gift to their fathers.  How pleased was Stella Messina to have purchased the barbecue implement which Dad will possibly use this weekend!

Tomorrow we  have invited our Dads to come into our school to be with their offspring for a range of activities.  Last year we were overwhelmed by the number of Dads that arrived.  It took us all by surprise.  Tomorrow, after the afternoon of activities there will be sausage sizzle to commence the weekend for our families.
Happy Father's Day to all our Dads.

Learning Walks

Watch out for the news in Kat Q’s newsletter section this week.  In the past two terms we have invited parents to come and discover how learning happens at Clairvaux at our Year 2-6 and Prep-1 Information nights. Now we invite you to register for a learning walk next term.


Brendan

THESE SURVEYS WILL REMAIN OPEN FOR THE DURATION OF THE UPCOMING WEEKEND - WE REALLY DO APPRECIATE THE RESPONSES SO FAR RECEIVED AND THIS WILL HELP US MOVING FORWARD CONSIDERING OUR WHOLE COMMUNITY.

In 2025, our school is participating in Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools – School Improvement Surveys (MACSSIS). MACSSIS is an annual process whereby schools listen to the thoughts and feelings students, families and staff have about how their school can improve. These surveys help inform the ongoing improvement of schools across the Archdiocese of Melbourne.

One of the main goals of the family survey is to identify the strengths to be celebrated and continued to work on and areas for improvement in our school. MACSSIS data benefits everyone within our school and provides valuable community insights on areas that each school can focus on. Clairvaux  believes it is important to encourage families as well as staff and students to have a voice and contribute to shaping the ongoing improvement of the school.

This feedback is invaluable to our progress as an effective school community and is backed by evidence-based research and best practices, and a great way for us to monitor trends from year to year. 

MACSSIS is a set of surveys that have been built specifically for Catholic schools in Melbourne by the Learning Services team at MACS, in partnership with researchers at Learning First and in wide consultation with principals in our schools. In 2025, students, families and staff are invited to participate in MACSSIS via our secure and purpose-built online platform. The online platform is where our school leaders will access the summary reports that visualise the results of the student, family and staff surveys. 

On September 3rd families were emailed a unique code to fill out the survey anonymously. We really do value this feedback and would appreciate as many families as possible taking the time to help us make informed decisions about the future of our school processes. You can watch a short clip here.

The only data we do see is how many families from each year level participate. The year level with the most surveys filled in will receive an extra long playtime once we have the results!!!

St. Bernard’s Day - Lapathon for Mannya

Last Monday,  the sun shone as we celebrated St. Bernard's day and took part in our annual lapathon to raise money for our sister school, St. Aloysius primary school, in Mannya, Uganda.  

Thank you to those parents who were able to join us in our celebrations at our mass and lapathon, and a special thank you to the parents who organised the delicious sausage sizzle lunch!  So far we have raised over $3000 in cash towards our Mannya fundraiser.  Over the next week we will continue to accept your generous donations.

Click here for  Lapathon Link to video 

Hi, I’m Buster. One of the many happy students at Clairvaux. I’m here to talk to you about St Bernard’s day. Every year at Clairvaux we celebrate St Bernard’s day with a lapathon to raise money for our sister school, St Aloysius in Mannya. At the lapathon, the whole school runs laps of the oval to raise money for Mannya. My favorite part of the day is getting a sausage at the end. 

This year, we celebrated St Bernard's Day on Monday, instead of Tuesday, which was actually St Bernard's day. We had a great day full of celebrations. At the start of the day, we had a whole school mass, where Father Sang came to celebrate St Bernard's day with us even though it was his day off. Throughout the rest of the week, students will donate change. All of the money will be sent straight to Mannya and will be used to get sports equipment, food and stationary items for the students. In conclusion, St Bernard's day was a massive day filled with loads of fun activities and in the end, it was way more fun than it was exhausting!
Buster O’Brien Year 6MM

Our Theme for St.Bernard’s Day this year was “Let your Light shine for others”

The following photos show some artwork completed on St Bernard’s day…

Sacrament of Confirmation

Confirmation Preparation Day  -  Wednesday 4th September

Next Wednesday, all Year 6 Confirmation Candidates will be taking part in a ‘preparation day’ for the Sacrament.  They will wear casual clothes for the day and a shared pizza lunch will be provided.   Activities on the day will include:

• Meeting Bishop Martin Ashe who will preside over the Confirmation ceremonies

• Artwork for the church
• Taking part in a liturgy
• Fun activities exploring saints
• Most importantly, practising important parts of the Confirmation ceremony in the Church.
• Meeting other children of the parish who will also be making their Confirmation

Important reminders

• A symbol has been added to your stole
• Booking has been made for a Confirmation mass
• Registration for the Sacrament of Confirmation has been completed and paid for through the parish of St. Bernard www.stbernards.org.au
• Confirmation card details have been completed and returned to your child’s classroom teacher 

Confirmation ceremonies at St. Bernard’s Church

Sunday 8th September 1pm

Sunday 8th September 3.30 pm

Tuesday 10th September 6.30 pm

Year Level Mass

Year 4 classes will be celebrating a Year Level mass at St. Bernard’s church on Friday 6 September at 12 noon.  All year 4 families are invited to join us at this mass.  This celebration will be focusing on social justice and our call to look after ‘those in need’. Fratelli Tutti, is a letter that Pope Francis has written to everyone in the world, asking us to reach out to those in need, whoever they are, wherever they may come from. We are all challenged to think of ourselves as a single global family living in a common home, and neighbours to all.   As part of this mass, our Year 4 students are invited to bring a non-perishable food item to donate to our “ Vinnies panty” - a food bank set up by St. Bernard’s to help those struggling in our own community.  Please refer to the Seesaw slide sent out to all Year 4 families.

Year 3 3CG  - Lanterns as a symbol of ‘Light’



Year 3RW   Clairvaux - Valley of Light

Julie Routley 
Religious Education Leader

At Clairvaux, we will always strive to work with parents to support students so that they can fully function in our school and learning spaces. 

At Clairvaux we believe that: 

• No student’s wellbeing and learning should be impacted by any one student on a continual basis. 
• No teacher’s wellbeing and teaching ability should be impacted by any one student on a continual basis.

At Clairvaux we have a clear behavior management process in place. Our staff have worked extensively to refine our practices and ensure consistency in our school. This involves staff using positive reinforcement and following our behaviour flow chart with steps of reminders. Our behavior management plan involves class teachers notifying parents only when a student reaches step three, which is one step before involving leadership to address significant issues or major behaviors which will also involve parental communication and potentially a reflection sheet. As communicated earlier this year, please understand that teachers cannot spend time communicating frequent, general classroom management actions, as this would detract from their primary focus of teaching and supporting all students.

Further to this we are committed to continuing our development of our behaviour curriculum where we explicitly teach our students the expectations we have of them and the reasons behind these expectations. This is reinforced by classroom norms and routines via routines.

In addition to our positive reinforcement, explicit teaching and consistency we also assist our neurodiverse students who require extra supports on an as needed basis, such as: class break times implemented to support concentration and participation, sensory supports as required e.g. wobble stools, wobble cushions, fidget tools, visuals, behaviour and safety plans, social stories about inappropriate behaviours, LSO support for individual breaks outside of the classroom (as well as support in the classroom), extra teachers rostered on to monitor children on yard duty and off yard play timetabled to support successful outdoor play with peers. 

Parents may receive a notification via PAM to inform you that your child has not followed the Big 5 on three separate occasions throughout the day after reminders had been given and your child has moved through the first three steps of our school Big 5 Behaviour Process. (Step 1-REMIND, Step 2-RETHINK, Step 3-RESET). Steps are given for not following our Big 5: Listening to the Speaker, Following Directions, Speaking Appropriately, Moving Safely and Keeping hands, feet and objects off others. We value your support in reminding your child that the Big 5 rules need to be followed in all classes at Clairvaux. By following the Big 5 students show respect and allow teaching and learning to occur for all students. A notification such as this is so that you are aware of a days incidents. There is no need for further communication about this unless there are no changes seen in behaviour going forward. 

Our management plan is clear for our community to understand. Once a child is demonstrating behaviour that is inconsistent with our expectations and is reaching step 6 there are varied responses that may occur such as: 

• Student sent to the office, parents contacted,
• In school exclusion-work in another room/space for the remainder of the day with no outside play (This would occur if the student is not an immediate threat to the safety of others. This would involve a re-entry conversation with the student the following day). Parents contacted.
• Student’s parents contacted to collect their child from school (which would involve a reentry conversation the next day with parents), 
• If behaviours continue or depending on the severity of the student’s action, leadership will determine whether further possible actions are required. 

We understand and prioritise each student's privacy, so we will not disclose any discussions, consequences and/or personalised behavior plans to other families, just as you would expect your own child’s privacy to be respected. Our ultimate collective goal as parents and educators is to develop respectful and responsible students/citizens. The focus of contact made with you is about your child’s actions and consequences. It is not about discussing the actions and consequences for other students as this is the conversation had with their parents. Your trust in our processes, helps us maintain a constructive, safe and happy learning environment for everyone.

As part of Child Safe Standard 2 all MACS schools have been provided with a Student Code of Conduct (this can currently be found on our website under policies, enrolment 2.1). It is important to note that this policy applies to both primary and secondary schools. In light of this, when we discuss the content with our students, in the primary setting, we will use child friendly language.

We have sent a copy of the policy home via PAM for parents/carers to discuss with children. As you know your child best, the language you use to explain the contents of the Student Code of Conduct is at your discretion. We require parents to read through this code of conduct with their child and agree to on their behalf a recognition of acceptance of the code via PAM for our records before the end of this term.

Behaviour Flow Chart

We thank you for your support.

We are so proud of the steps we have taken over the last few years to bring us to the point we are at now with our teaching and learning framework.

Our instructional model based on the Science of Learning is one that we are continuously striving to refine. We have been informing our parent community via a range of modes:

• We launched our 'playbook' for parents to gain an understanding of how we teach and learn at our school - which is able to be viewed on our website in the 'How we learn and teach' section
• Last year we invited parents to join us over two sessions for a Teaching and Learning Open Night where we took you through some key concepts and examples of how and why we teach like we do and then offered a chance to view the classrooms and work samples.  
• Our next step is to continue to offer Learning Walks around our school.

What is a Learning Walk? It is an invitation to parents to come to the school for a set period of time to be led on a facilitated and structured learning walk of the school/ classrooms during the school day. Not to look at the decor - but to learn more about the learning that is happening. The focus of the structured walk is children and their learning as opposed to teachers and the teaching.

We have run some learning walks last year already for parent groups within our school and open up the invitation to our wider school community to enjoy this year.

The date we have selected for an open invitation is term 3 week 3 Tuesday 5th August beginning at 9:10am. Please allow 95 minutes for this event.

The countdown has started until Clairvaux Carnivale on 16 November. Carnivale is our major fundraiser to complete the playground updates, organised by the P&F Committee and proudly supported by Buxton Real Estate.  

Ride tickets are already on sale and many families are getting ready for the big day. All the activities and entertainment are revealed in our monthly Carnivale newsletter, and on our socials. Our social handles are listed below. 

We will make Carnivale a special day, but we need your help to make it a fundraising success! 

There are several ways you can help…

• Volunteer to assist the fundraising team
  Can you contact about 10 businesses to ask if they could donate to Carnivale? It will make a big difference to the fundraising team who need to gather over 200 items. We can provide a list of companies that haven’t been approached yet and the donation endorsement letter from the school. 

• Silent auction and prize donations
  For the silent auction and prize games, we need a large quantity of goods and vouchers for services of any value - coffee vouchers are great too. Maybe you have a business or have a connection to a shop or restaurant to ask. Businesses are publicly acknowledged for the contribution. 

• Distribution team
  Could you help put up posters in local shops, kindergartens and daycare centres, or drop flyers in local letterboxes?  

• Have a Carnivale sign at your house 

If you live on a main road near Clairvaux, we would like to display a Carnivale real estate board or sign at the front of your house. Having many signs around the area will boost attendance on the day. 

• Spread the word
  Share the Carnivale posts or ask a business you know if they can support the event. Ask your hairdresser, pet store or local café whether they could make a donation to help us finish the playground updates.

Your support will be greatly appreciated! 

Get in touch 

Please complete this form to tell what you can help with, or email clairvauxcarnivaledonate@gmail.com
or contact Gemma on the Carnivale Committee 0480 349 756