St. Michael's Primary School ~ Term 1 Week 4

IMPORTANT DATES

Principal's Message

Dear St Michael’s School Family,

Thank you for all of your support to make the start to our school year such a success! It was a wonderful celebration last Friday with our beautiful Mass, thank you to Fr John Paul, with  so many of families joining us and then visiting our classrooms and enjoying the BBQ cooked by Kyle Small.

This week it has been great to have our families at school sharing their valuable knowledge and insights of their children with the teachers. What a great start to a positive and strong  partnership to support our students' growth. 

Our educators and students are doing amazingly well with all of the Magnify Sandhurst new teaching and learning that is happening at St Michael's. This is an exciting and highly progressive endeavour that is being implemented across all Sandhurst schools.  Next Tuesday 25 February, we invite our families to join us at 3:30pm - 4:30pm to learn more about Magnify Sandhurst and all that is happening at St Michael's to support our students' learning, growth and engagement. 

We begin our Lenten Season on Wednesday, 5 March - Ash Wednesday. St Michael's will attend the Parish Mass at 9:30am and we invite our families to join us. This is a season for prayer, reflection, almsgiving and fasting to help us to deepen our relationship with Jesus and to live out his mission of service to others. We will once again be supporting the Caritas Project Compassion fund and awareness raising this term.  

I ask you to pray for Pope Francis as he battles pneumonia. He is currently in hospital and his condition is described as complex, however, he is in good spirits. We ask our loving God to heal our much loved Pope so he can continue to spread the Gospel message with his unwavering passion, love and commitment to all of humanity. 

Peace and blessings,

Lisa Hitchcock 

Principal 

School Advisory Council and Parent Representative Group 

We will hold a combined School Advisory Council and Parent Representative Group (PRG) gathering on Wednesday, 5 March. The School Advisory Council members have been invited to meet with Glenn McMahon our Catholic Education Sandhurst Ltd School Improvement Leader about the principal appointment at 5:30pm.

The PRG will then gather with the Council members to at 6pm to celebrate the beginning of the new school year and complete Child Safeguarding learning and compliance processes. 

If you would like to nominate to join our School Advisory Council or join our PRG we would certainly appreciate new members. They are both great ways to connect with other families and support your child/ren's education and make our school even better. 

If you have any questions about the council or PRG please contact the school. 

We invite you to come along on Wednesday, 5 March at 6pm!

2025 Pupil Free Days

Term 1: 28-29 January Staff Professional Learning Days and 1 April -Behaviour Curriculum Professional Learning

Term 2: 22-24 April Staff Professional Learning Days (The Neuroscience of Learning)

Term 3: 13  August CESL Staff Spirituality Day

Term 4: 20 October Dan Petro Behaviour Analyst Professional Learning, 28 November 2026 Planning day and  17 - 19 December Staff Professional Learning Day and Magnify Sandhurst Days

FOUNDATION REST DAYS

Our superstar Foundation students will have the following rest days as they adjust to school life: 

• Wednesday 26 February 

STUDENT ILLNESS & ABSENCES

A reminder that if your child has gastroenteritis or fever please notify the school and record on your child's absence notification. This will help keep our school safe and our students healthy.

Gastroenteritis exclusion from school - 48 hours from last symptom of vomiting and/or diarrhoea.  

Communication at St Michael's 

Please note when contacting staff through email or Class Dojo they will reply within 48 hours. Staff will not be monitoring communication platforms during their class time, as well as before 8am or after 5pm. This will allow our staff to disconnect and to maintain a healthy work life balance. 

Please use the school phone or mobile 0418 105 060 to communicate urgent information or pass on messages about students that are time sensitive - e.g. change of pick up or bus travel arrangements. 

Student Attendance

St Michael's goal for each of our students is a minimum of 95% attendance. This ensures students can maintain their learning, friendships and growth in all areas of their development. Research tells us that students with an attendance rate below 90% are educationally at risk. If you need support getting your child to school please let your child's teacher know. 

School Fee Accounts

School fee accounts have been sent out this week.  These can be paid with payments - weekly, fortnightly, monthly, termly or annually. Please make contact with the principal if you have any concerns over the payment of your school fee accounts. School fee relief is available. If you have a health care card please contact the office as there is a significant reduction in fees for holders of a current health care card. 

Thank you to our families for your attending to the payment of school fee accounts.

St. Michael’s Primary School is committed to child safety and the inclusion of all children.

Swimming Carnival

On Friday 7th February the NERSA School Swimming Sports were held at the Tallangatta Pool.  All children participated with great enthusiasm. We are proud of their efforts in the pool and for cheering on their school buddies. Congratulations. 

The following students will be attending Divisional Swimming Carnival today and we wish them all the very best!

Matilda Piper, Carla Barnes, Luke Furze, Boyd Small, Archie Bryant, Mietta Ristrom and Cleo Small.  

GOOD LUCK from all at St Michael's. 

Mrs Mez Moffat - Grade 5/6

Year  5& 6,  Term 1 so far………

What a great start to the 2025 school year within the Yr ⅚ class. We have already enjoyed some wonderful  learning in the classroom, and beyond the classroom and school.

Here are some photos with a short description from the students about what they are LEARNING…….

Will: Mrs Moffat’s Dog, Leila, has joined the year 5/6 class. 

George: I loved doing the Swimming Carnival because we got to cheer on our School.

James: We had the Swimming Carnival, Archie, Boyd and Carla were the age group champions.

Matilda: At the start of every year the grade sixes get their leadership positions, this year the educators presented their badges at Church, which most of you would have seen as they are now all School Leaders.

Year 6 attended Just Leadership with Caritas at St Francis of Assisi in Baranduda were they learnt all about how to support developing countries through Project Compassion. Stay tuned for their fundraising event at the end of this term!

Mrs Sally McGuire & Mrs Hannah Baker - Grade 3 & 4

We have had a very busy fortnight in year 3/4! 

We are well underway with our new English program. Students have learnt new phonics rules and practised reading words and sentences, and spelling words with these sounds (e.g. 'ea' making the sound /a'/ as in 'great').

We have been enjoying our novel 'Matilda' by Roald Dahl and have learnt some new vocabulary such as 'boasting' and 'distinct'. From this, students have begun planning and writing their own narrative text- we can't wait until these are done so we can share them with you!

We are loving new challenges in Maths and are finding that the Learning Pit isn't such a bad place to be! (Please ask us what this is! Climbing out is the best part)

We enjoyed playing sport with the Year Two class this week as we practised 'Fair Play' and have been creating some beautiful portraits with Ms Beveridge in Art. 

Keep an eye on our Dojo page for more updates and photos! 

Mrs Karen Beveridge CRT - Year 3-6 Specialist

Art 3/4 and 5/6

Students have been learning how to sketch self-portraits. Students have viewed portraits by famous artists as inspiration for their own artwork. They have used oil pastels to highlight features. This week students have explored the techniques of Roy Lichenstein to produce a comic cartoon self-portrait

Science

During Science, the 3/4 students are focusing on Physical Science, specifically, developing an understanding of the different ways heat energy is produced. They have investigated the production of heat through friction and they have identified different sources of heat.

They have also investigated and conducted an experiment about how heat energy moves and flows from one object to another. Students will learn that we can measure heat using thermometers and will investigate the effects of heat energy on our everyday lives.

5/6 students are focusing on Physical Science, specifically, light. When investigating shadows, they conducted an experiment to examine how varying the distance between an object and a light source affects the size and clarity of the shadow. This week students are classifying materials as transparent, translucent or opaque. 

Sport - Years 3-6

Students have engaged in a variety of Bluearth challenge games including tail tag, hunter, beat the ball, capture the flag, Lord of the Rings and Barry. It has been fantastic to see students focusing on self-umpiring, teamwork and cooperation.

Ultimate Frizbee

Wodonga Catholic Parish News

Hello all,

✍️please find the link below for the latest Parish News. PDF also attached

Some important housekeeping on page two of the news this week,

Do you have a significant anniversary or birthday coming up? Would you like to share your news in our parish bulletin? please contact me via email wodcath@bigpond.net.au  or call our office

📲Ph: 60243366 ☎️

Be kind to each other and don't forget to share your smiles.  ☺️🙃

Sonni

What's On

Neighbourhood House - Tallangatta

A belated Happy New Year from all of us here at the House and welcome to our new-look newsletter!  We will be sharing info about our upcoming activities with you along with reflecting on past events.  Be sure to read to the end to find out about other events happening in our fabulous little community.

We have just launched an exciting new program called “Connecting Community” to help bring our community members together and reduce loneliness.  We are currently in the planning phase of some more new activities and will be back in touch soon when we have more news to share.