TERM 1 WEEK 5 NEWSLETTER

Dear Families,

This week is a very special week in our St Michael’s Community. Not only have we had a wonderful celebration of “Two Two Two’sday” yesterday, we are also celebrating together on Friday, our Beginning of School Year Mass. 

This Mass marks the beginning of our liturgical celebrations for 2022 and is also the Mass where our Year 6 school leaders will be commended with their leadership positions. 

At St Michaels, all students in Year 6 have a leadership role. We are in a unique position as a one stream school, to be able to offer this very important role to all our year 6 students. The students work together as a class to help make decisions in our school as well as undertaking team positions that cater for the variety of things we do here at school.

The four leadership teams are:

Mission Team- lead stewardship and social justice initiatives and support the organisation of school Masses and liturgies

Social Team- plan some of our student body events; organise the play equipment in the hall and on the playground; contribute to fundraising ideas

Sport Team- help the teachers with the distribution of sporting equipment in the school; lead wellbeing initiatives;  support sports carnival team organisation (cheers etc) 

Environment Team: support and plan for environmental awareness and environmental stewardship of school gardens, recycling initiatives etc

Thank you to our Year 6 leaders who have already commenced the year with great enthusiasm and positive leadership. Fr Sean will be blessing the students badges and presenting them, as part of the Mass.

The Beginning of the School Year Mass will be attended by Year 6 and their parents. Mr Tuckwell will film the Mass for all other grades to participate in within their classroom next week. The Mass will also be sent out next week, to all families to watch via COMPASS. On the email you will be directed to click on a vimeo link- just like our Online Assembly.  

LENT and the LAUDATO Si ACTION PLATFORM
Next week is the beginning of Lent. Lent is a special time of the year where we are encouraged to think about others, especially those in need  and share our time, resources  and prayer. 

Last year, the Laudato Si' Action Platform with its seven goals was launched, encouraging the global church to respond to the cry of the earth and to the cry of the poor. One of the concrete ways that schools can do this is through their support of Caritas Australia's annual Lenten appeal, Project Compassion.

The theme of Project Compassion in 2022 is ‘For All Future Generations’ and reminds us that the good that we do today will extend and impact the lives of generations to come.

The students across our Diocese of Wollongong, will explore the themes of Project Compassion during the six weeks of Lent and beyond.  Stage 3 (Years 5 and 6) have been invited to  attend the online launch of  Project Compassion on  Shrove Tuesday, 1 March 2022, via a Zoom from the Caritas Australia National Office in Sydney.

During next week, our school will observe two special days: Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. Fr Sean will be visiting our school on Wednesday, to participate in an Ash Wednesday Liturgy.

Thank you to Mrs Mitchell, our Religious Education Coordinator and all staff, for your preparation of these two special days. 

TWO TWO TWO’S DAY (22-2-22) 
Yesterday, students and staff joined in the fun of this special day by coming to school dressed in items representing the letter T or number 2…. Tutus, tennis shoes, ties, top-hats, tigers, tinsel, tea-towel capes, tights and even tea-bags were some of the creative ideas the students had for their costume. 

It was fantastic to see all of our staff join in the fun of this special day. We finished the day with a whole school “Two’s” dance at 2:22 on the 22/2/22.

Click on the link to see some photos of the day. During our online assembly this week, you will be able to see some videos of the school dancing!

PARENT COMMUNICATION
At St Michaels we endeavour to keep families well informed of the great things that are happening here at school. We have an Online Assembly each week, which you can view via a COMPASS email, with a link to the video or else the video will also be on our Facebook page. 

Every fortnight on a Wednesday, we email the newsletter to all parents. Our first newsletter for this term was in Week 3 (there was no newsletter in Week 1 as only staff were on site). 

It is really important that all families read the newsletter, as that is the one place where all the major information for our school is contained. There is information also in the newsletter about upcoming events, which you can then put on your calendar. 

Our first newsletter was a long one as it contained a lot of information about: 

• Welcome to new families and staff
• Staff list for 2022
• The start of a new school year events; 
• Message from the Premier
• Covid and mental health support for families
• NCCD collection of data
• Photos of our new Kindergarten children and photos of all classes
• Links to our two school Facebook pages
• Specialist lesson information
• Religious Education information
• Finances and school fees
• Important dates and school calendar
• Forms that need to be completed by all families
• Swimming Carnival nominations
• Medical information
• Positive Behaviours for Learning information
• Covid frequently asked information
• Diocesan Social Media Statement
• Information about Safer Internet Day
• Scholastic Book Club Orders
• curriculum information. 
• Charity Fun Run information

This is very important information for all our families and especially for our new families. Unfortunately, when I looked at our “readership” of the newsletter that week, only approximately 50% of the school families read it. That means, approximately 50% of the families did not find out about our school events or other important information.  

I understand it is very easy to miss an email (with the many that we receive from work and others). If you happened to miss reading the newsletter, you can always find it again on our school website under “Newsletter Archive”. I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about anything in the newsletter. We are here to help :) 

Thank you for your continued support of our school. Have a lovely week everyone.

God Bless
Katrina West