From the Principal

Dear Parents and Carers

Loving God,

In this Catholic Education Week, 

when we celebrate Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne,

we thank you for the teachers, students, families and administrators

who together create school communities of faith, hope and love.

We ask you to bless our schools

as they continue the mission of Catholic education.

May they always be places where young people 

are formed and inspired by the light of Christ

and share the joy of the Gospel with all the world.

We ask this prayer through your son and our Teacher, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Tomorrow our St Michael's School Leaders and Social Justice Leaders will attend the St Patrick's day mass at the Cathedral in East Melbourne, followed by Catholic Education Week activities that follow in the park. The students, Eloise and I are greatly looking forward to the day.

Caritas Friday last week

Last Friday was our first Caritas Friday for 2023. Thanks to everyone for your fabulous efforts in creating your Futuristic Hairstyles. This was a great awareness raising event and we look forward to tomorrow’s Blue and Green day too. Check out the Religious Education page in this newsletter for photos from last week. We look forward to seeing everyone wearing something blue or green tomorrow.Catholic Education Week 2023 ~ Forming Lives of Faith, Hope and Love in the Light of Christ

St Michael's Staffing

Administration

This week we welcome Ms Josie Ferraro to the St Michael's School office. Josie has worked previously in various Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools in administration, accounts and bookkeeping and has great experience with our internal systems through MACS. Josie has had an initial induction into the role at St Michael's and will work Wednesdays in our office until the end of this term. Josie will then work three days in our school office from the commencement of term 2. We welcome Josie to our St Michael's family.

Five/Six B Classroom Teacher

As you are aware, Mrs Lyn O'Brien leaves us at the end of this term to have a baby. We wish Lyn the very best in this chapter in her life. We welcome Mr Paul Mitchell to the Year Five/Six Level to work with Mrs Katrina Balzat in Five/Six B. Paul comes to St Michael's with a wealth of experience in teaching, in both the Primary and Secondary Sectors. He has undertaken leadership roles in Catholic Schools and has completed post graduate studies in Student Welfare and Maths Education, among other post graduate studies. We are pleased to have him onboard at St Michael's School.

2024 Prep Enrolments

HAVE YOU ENROLLED YOUR CHILD FOR PREP 2024? If you have a child ready for Prep 2024, we encourage you to please put in an enrolment form as soon as you are able. This will help us with organisation purposes. To access an enrolment form:

• Drop into the school office to collect one
• Email office@smashburton.catholic.edu.au and ask for a form to be sent home
• Visit the Enrolment section of our school website and download a form

Calendar Dates for 2023 School Year

We have now updated all the main dates for the school year on our School Website in the Community Section under "School Calendar". These dates will also be found in the newsletter. You can use these dates for any future planning for your year level and family planning. We will endeavour to keep these updated regularly and notify you of any additions or changes to dates through the school newsletter. 

School Closure - Monday 24th April

We wish to inform you of a school closure day that will be happening early in term 2, Monday 24th April. This is the first day of term 2 as well as the day before a public holiday, ANZAC day. Our Professional Learning focus for this day will be around the Mathematics curriculum. We have been given a grant through Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools this year to spend on professional learning and resources in this curriculum area. More details about this will be shared in future newsletters.

Unfortunately Extend has notified me that they are unable to provide childcare on this date. We apologise for any inconvenience and will inform parents if there are any local services operating on this date.

NAPLAN this week

Our Year 3 and 5 students have begun NAPLAN testing this week, national literacy and numeracy testing. This is the first time all schools are undertaking NAPLAN online so practice sessions for these were set up in the weeks leading up to this week to enable students to become familiar with the online platform. Well done to all the students for taking on these tests with a positive and can-do attitude.

St Michael's Enhancement Session

SAVE THE DATE! We have an enhancement session coming up on Saturday 25th March, 9-11am, during which our plan is to undertake some painting in some small areas of the school. Dust off the old drop sheets and get your rollers and paintbrushes ready for this event! An Operoo notice has gone out this morning so please inform us of your availability via Operoo. Look forward to seeing you there.

Student Diaries

We hope you have seen the new student diaries and are becoming used to working with them with your children. The main purpose of these diaries is to practise recording important dates and information, an essential skill for organisation in school life, personal life and beyond. We ask that students' nightly reading is recorded in the diary and for this to be signed by parents. Students may also wish to record what home tasks they wish to complete on certain nights of the week around their sporting events, chores and personal engagements. Classroom teachers may work with students to enter important school dates into the diaries as well. Many say that we now no longer require physical diaries, however if we consider our daily work lives and organisation, we will notice that many people still physically record their daily / weekly schedules on paper in addition to using an online calendar.

Year Prep to Two students also recently received a Reading Log book as a precursor to a school diary. We hope you are getting into the swing of using these as aids to your organisation.

St Michael's Easter raffle

If you've been through our school office in the past week you will notice that the Easter Bunny has made an early and special delivery of some chocolate treasures for us to see in readiness for our annual Easter Raffle. We welcome all families to be present for our special assembly on Thursday 6th April (final day of term 1) at 2.45pm in the Hub where the PFA will lead us to draw the Easter Raffle. We have a special visitor hopping in to visit on that afternoon too. See here for more details.

Nude Food at St Michael's

Holiday fun

Are you looking for something fun to do over the holidays with the children? Check out what Salesian College has on offer for both girls and boys at their Bosco campus in our Community Section.

Assemblies

Assembly dates for 2023:

Open Days