From the Principal's Desk

Principal News:

Welcome to Week 5!

Thank you to all families for the support you give to your children and our school. We have a wonderful school community and feel very proud to be a part of it.

Just a few reminders:

If parents or carers have any concerns or questions about your child and their schooling, please firstly contact the classroom teacher to discuss this. Classroom teachers are available before and after school and at other times by ringing the office to make a time. Teachers can also be contacted via email. Please email the school and the message will be forwarded on.
Please remember to put in an explanation if your child is absent from school. This can be through the COMPASS portal or a phone call. The office will call parents if the absence is still unexplained after a day.
Parents, Grandparents, carers and visitors should always come to the front office when they come into the school for any reason such as volunteering or giving a child a message. Please do not go straight to a classroom.
If children arrive late to school we ask that parents and carers come to the office first before taking their child to the classroom so that they can be signed in.

Thank you for your help.

PAX Word of the Fortnight: INTEGRITY

Integrity is doing the right thing even when it’s hard or when no one is looking.
Integrity is abiding by the rules because you know that it’s the right thing to do.
Integrity is being honest, telling the truth at school, at home and in the community.

PAX Leaders show their integrity by:

Keeping their promises.
Telling the truth and being honest.
Not allowing others to take the blame for something they did.
Doing the right thing and not expecting a reward.
Respecting other's feelings.

Having integrity helps us work well with others and encourages good friendships.

Assembly Week 8:

On Friday 16th June students who play a musical instrument, and receive lessons for this instrument, are invited to perform at our assembly. If any students would like to play (one short piece of music due to time constraints), please come and see Mrs Pennington to register your interest before 9th June (Week 8).

Student Successes:

Congratulations to Charlotte McRae on representing PSSA at the North West netball trials on Friday.

Good luck to Kai Prater who is at North West touch this week.

Tommy and Ollie Cuttle entered 5 events in the keyboard section at the Armidale Eisteddfod on the weekend. They played two duets together and three solo pieces each.

They won their age section duet and Tom placed 1st and Ollie 2nd in their age solos. They were both awarded Highly Commended for their other pieces where they were competing against other children with more experience and ages ranging up to Year 12 students. A great achievement for them considering they have only been learning piano for 6 months!

A HUGE congratulations to the MGPS 3-6 choir who performed at the Armidale Eisteddfod today. They came third in a very competitive section. Well done to everyone who has been involved in the preparation for this event including Mrs Ruthie Clendinning who is the choir teacher and conductor, Kees Grenyer the pianist and Miss Landow. A fabulous result after all your hard work. Well done to everyone involved!

Please let us know about any successes so we can add them each week.

Macrame Class:

Kim See (our Kinder SLSO) and Grace Cudmore (our school social worker) have started running a macrame class for interested Stage 3 students on Mondays at lunchtime. They are hoping to offer this to Stage 2 next term. They began yesterday and everyone was very excited to be making a key ring as their first macrame piece. Thanks to Ms See and Grace for doing this for our students.

Premiers Spelling Bee:

Our school will hold our annual Premiers Spelling Bee on Thursday in Week 7 (8th June) at 11:30am.

Classroom teachers will select the finalists in their classrooms. You can access the lists with a password on the website: https://artsunit.nsw.edu.au/program/nsw-premiers-spelling-bee. Please contact the office for the password as we do not have permission to publish the passwords online in the newsletter.

If students have any questions about the Spelling Bee they can talk to Mrs Townsend who is organising the event.

Attendance Matters:

We have set our school a target to achieve 90% attendance 90% of the time for 2023.

Can you help us do this? Coming to school each day between 8:30am and 9:00am and leaving at 3pm is just a simple way we can achieve this together. Let's do this together.

Staff Spotlight:

Chris Schaeffer

Hello, my name is Chris and I am the "General Assistant" at Martin's Gully. I have been at the school for a number of years with a little break in between.

I grew up on our family farm at Wongwibinda and went to secondary school at TAS. After school I got my first real job working for Elders selling rural merchandise in western NSW and South Australia before returning to Armidale.

I am married to Emma who many of you would have had the pleasure of being taught Art. We have three children Audrey, Elliott and Freda. We live in Uralla in a lovely 1920's home which we have been renovating and have a large garden which keeps us busy. I enjoy working with metal and timber and problem solving. One of my regular questions "Excuse me Mr Schaeffer are you able to make a ???" ....... ( various things from shelves, room dividers, iPod storage units and reading desks) all from limited materials and a small budget. I enjoy the challenge.

That's a little about me. I really enjoy working with the staff and kids at MGPS.

Finally, we have quite a lot of sickness in our school including COVID cases. RAT tests are available at the front office should you require them for testing. Students should not come to school if they have symptoms such as a runny nose or a cough. They may return to school when they are symptom free. There is no isolation period required.

Have a fabulous week!

Felicity Pennington and Peta Deiderick