Message from the Principal

Dear Parents and Carers,

The past couple of weeks have been busy and productive at St Michael's. Thursday of last week, we held a very successful swimming carnival. As a result, we have several children who will represent St Michael's at the Diocesan Swimming Carnival to be held in Gunnedah next Friday. Thankyou to Ms Emma Martin for organising the carnival and to all the parent volunteers who helped out on the day to ensure a great event. It was wonderful to see so many spectators as well, which always adds to the atmosphere. 

On Friday last week, we inducted the 2025 student leadership team and presented them with their badges at the Beginning of Year Mass. As always, we were joined by families and parishioners, which is always great to see. Fr Curran celebrated the Mass for us and thankyou to Miss Cronin for organising a lovely celebration. Already our leaders - Jack Kenafick, Michael Maughan, Jasper Lendon and Zandah Shorter have been proactive and being positive role models for our younger students. Well done boys.

This week, we commenced our Guided Reading groups across the school. The students have been placed in ability level groups for Infants K-2 and Primary 3-6. Special mention to Miss Summerell for organising the groups and trialling various combinations of timetables to ensure that every child reads to an adult Monday to Thursday while at school. Guided Reading is part of our Literacy Block and is an activity that magnifies the Diocesan visio of Literate, Numerate students for a hope-filled future. We have purchased hundreds of new readers to cater for every level of reading within our classrooms and we are excited to follow the growth in reading for every child as the year progresses. 

Our Mini Michael's cohort has now enjoyed two days of Prep. Heartfelt thanks to Mrs McNair for masterminding this initiative. Her expertise and experience in this area is second to none. The children are certainly enjoying their experience and love being part of the playground with the other children. Our fixed playground equipment and sandpit area has certainly taken on a new energy, since the facelift in the holidays. All children are enjoying the addition of the 'mud kitchen' and various sandpit toys. Thankyou to Mr McNair for constructing and installing the kitchen.

At our P&F meeting last week, it was decided to hold a dinner in May. You would have received the COMPASS alert yesterday with the flyer and the flyer is attached to today's newsletter. The venue will be the school, in the main building library. This year the focus for the P&F is friend raising, not so much fund raising. The dinner will be a wonderful opportunity to mix and mingle and should be a fabulous night. Please mark the date on your calendar and further information will be forwarded in due time. 

I hope everyone enjoys a fabulous weekend.

Take care and stay safe,

Bronwyn