Welcome to the 2019 school year!

We have an exciting year planned, one that is supportive, challenging and engaging!

A big focus for Term 1 will be our School Fete. Please mark Saturday 16 March (10-2pm) in your diaries. We will be doing various things leading up to the fete, starting with having the first three Fridays as uniform free days. Please support these days by bringing in an item to donate. Information has been provided regarding what to bring. Thank you in advance for supporting these days and the upcoming requests. 

Tomorrow, we will hold our Opening School Mass. This is a special event to mark the beginning of the school year, where we come together as a community to celebrate and pray together. All are most welcome to attend. This will start at 9.30am in St Michael's Church.

On Monday, we will hold our Year 6 Leadership Ceremony where we will present our Year 6 students with their leadership badge and shirt. A special moment for them to begin their final year of Primary School.

This year, as mentioned, our school theme is 'Growing with the Spirit'. We will centre this with linking to Scripture, particularly Matthew 13:32...

'Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree.'

I love this Scripture passage in the context of a school environment for many reasons. Firstly, our students at school are the seeds that will grow into the large tree. Their potential is unlimited and our responsibility is to work together to support them in this journey of self-discovery. Secondly, it is quite the contrast between the tiny seed and the large tree. This encourages our students to be accepting of all, no matter your appearance or difference - to celebrate the diversity we have at St Michael's. Lastly, a tree is quite an image, a place of shelter, a home for various animals - life giving. We at St Michael's like to think of our school community as a place of nurture, of acceptance of love. We will begin unpacking this theme and scripture with students throughout the next few weeks and across the year. 

Meet and Greet - Wednesday 13 February

Please pop in and say hello to your child's classroom teacher between 5.30-6.30pm in classrooms. Social drinks and nibbles to occur in tuckshop area afterwards.

Enjoy the week ahead!

Pat Ellis

Principal

Congratulations to the following children who have achieved a Harmony Award in Week 2 and will receive their award this Friday at morning gathering.

Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree. Mt 13:32

Welcome to the 2019 School Year. Our theme for the year is Growing with the Spirit. Staff, students and the St Michael’s community will have many opportunities to consider how we strive to provide an authentic education for all students that is supportive and empowering. In Matthew’s Gospel we find Jesus explaining to us that our faith is like the mustard seed; so tiny but has the power to grow to a giant tree that sustains others. I invite you to consider how you will nurture your faith this year so that it may flourish and grow to its full potential.

Our Opening School Mass will be tomorrow, Thursday 7^th February. All are welcome to help us celebrate the start of our school year in eucharist.

Mini Vinnies

Keen to help out in your own community? Mini Vinnies is for children to be involved through prayer, understanding and action in the social justice needed in our community. All interested in finding out more are invited to attend lunchtime meetings for Mini Vinnies.

Our first meeting will be this Thursday 7^th February. Our first priority will be organising volunteers to help with our Doorknock Appeal. We will be doorknocking in two local streets, adjacent to our school. The Doorknock will be on Thursday 14^th February from 3:30-4:30. Adults are required to help us with this special project. If you have time and are willing to help us next Thursday please contact Ms Meaghan Younger at school

Cricket Clinics
Cricket clinics will commence for all classes next Thursday. The 4-week program offers our students the opportunity to develop fundamental gross motor skills of catching, hitting and bowling as well as knowledge of the game. We are fortunate to have the specialised coaching made available through our Sporting School grant.

School Swimming Carnival
Our school carnival will take place on Tuesday 12th March (Week 6) at Queanbeyan pool. This year, students aged 8 years and above will attend the carnival. Students from K-2 will remain at school for a water fun day and special recess. More information specific to both the carnival and fun day will come home next week.

Hockey Taster
Hockey ACT are hosting their annual ‘Come and Try’ day on the weekend of the 16/17th February. Visit http://www.hockeyact.org.au/News/come-try-day-2019 for more information.
Saturday 16th February National Hockey Centre, Lyneham 9am -12pm
Sunday 17th February Greenway Hockey Centre 9am-11am

SunSmart
A reminder that all students should be wearing a school hat during play times. Hats can be purchased from the Front Office. It is great to see that many students are coming to school with sunscreen already applied. We have sunscreen available for students to reapply throughout the day.

Cross Country Carnival
Save the date: 4th April, 2019 (Thursday Week 9)
If you are willing to assist on the day as a course marshal, your time would be much appreciated.

Please contact me via email if you have any questions, feedback or are able to offer your assistance at any of our sporting events throughout the year.

Looking forward to another big year of sporting participation,

Erin Hardwicke
erin.hardwicke@cg.catholic.edu.au

This year we will be including a weekly Literacy and Numeracy section in the newsletter. This section will keep you informed of what training is occurring for teachers, tips and strategies for use at home and general literacy and numeracy experiences occurring across the school.

LITERACY

This year we are continuing to roll out the SoundsWrite program. The second half of last year we saw huge progress in our infant student's reading abilities. SoundsWrite is a phonics program that is a highly structured, multi-sensory, incremental and code-oriented, instructional approach to teaching children to read and spell. Last year Mr Webb, Miss Lewis and Miss Frogley were trained to deliver the program. Starting over the next few weeks, Mrs Krippner, Mrs Anderson, Ms Younger, Mrs Whalan and myself will also be trained. This is a 4 day training program.

This year we will be modifying our Kindergarten Home Reading Program to be aligned directly with the SoundsWrite program being taught in class.

NUMERACY

In 2019, we will be involved in various projects focusing on Numeracy. The first project will be a 'Cluster Improvement Model' approach with other schools, building teacher knowledge and leadership in Mathematics and Numeracy Education. It will be based on an Action Research Cycle. Miss Frogley and Mrs McCann will be involved in the K-2 Cluster (which we will be hosting each term) and Mrs Blakey and Mr Webb involved in the Years 5-8 cluster.

Along with this project occurring, our Years 4-6 teachers will be involved in MathsBURST Enrichment Program. This is an inquiry-based teacher professional learning and student enrichment program which will develop students' mathematics understanding through spatial reasoning and STEM practices. 

Each week, we will add to this AIP section. We hope as the weeks progress, it becomes evident how we are focusing on our school goals, our challenges, our successes and our next step along the journey. It is important that home and school work together and that trust is developed and strengthened. There is a huge wealth of experience across our school this year and we are committed to continuing to adapt and modify what we do, to ensure each child is engaged and improves. 

Three main areas we are focusing on this year are...

1. Structures and practices refined and implemented to embrace, challenge and support student-centred learning.

2. Delivery and development of curriculum that is cohesive, challenging and relevant to the needs of the learner.

3. A positive learning culture of high expectations of all, valuing diveristy and effort. 

We look forward to updating you each week so it is clear on how we are progressing with our school focus areas for 2019. 

At St Michael's we are a Fresh Tastes School. Wherever possible, we look at ways to promote healthy eating. We know we can do better in 2019. 

The Fresh Tastes Iniaitive is not just looking at what we eat, but looking at ways to look after the environment, waste management and the Health curriculum we teach.

We would like to continue to strengthen a Culture of Sustainability at St Michael's in 2019. In this section of the newsletter each week, we will provide updates on how we are travelling along these areas, provide tips and strategies for home (hopefully including some parent healthy recipes) and general information to better educate us all. 

We are interested in forming a Sustainability Parent Group who could work along Mr Webb and the Year 6 Sustainability Leaders to lead in this area to implement better practices across St Michael's. If you are interested in joining this group, please email Mr Webb (damien.webb@cg.catholic.edu.au). 

The APPetizer is a new section where we will showcase an app that we use at school.

The hope is that it will provide everyone with greater understanding about how we use apps and technology at school and perhaps initial conversation at home on effective use of technology.

The app of the week is Popplet lite. A great space for children to sort out their ideas for a project through brainstorming. With the ability to draw, type and add photos, it demonstrates great versatility for students to use the app at their own level. This is suitable for Kinder through to Year 6.

Special wishes to those children who celebrated their birthday in the holidays:

Nick 1/2F, Joshua 1/2W, Alexander 5/6B, Stefano 3/4YM, Henry 5/6B, Jillian 3/4AK, Isabella 3/4AK, Ana 1/2W,Cameron 3/4AK, Zac 5/6FW, Josiah 1/2F, Anthony 5/6B, Chiara 1/2W, Prisha KL and Jimmy 1/2W

Special wishes to those children who celebrated their birthday this week:

Jordan 3/4AK, Maya 1/2F and Adam 3/4YM

We hope you have a great day!!

At St Michael's, we use a range of pedagogies (the method and practice of teaching) based on the needs of the learners in our class. For us, effective teachers use techniques that best serve the learning needs of their students. This may differ somewhat from class to class.

There are many things that students can learn themselves through discovery, with the teacher structuring the learning to suit. There also are many things that require the teacher to teach in a more direct way.

Students not only learn by being exposed to learning opportunities but they also need to be explicitly taught those things it is important for all students to know. Some students will learn these things quickly and with only minimal direct teaching. Other students will need concerted direct teaching and correction by the teacher or the classroom support team, before they master the learning required.

Effective teachers help students learn on their own as well as with and from others. They know that students learn best if they are provided with opportunities to learn not only from the teacher but also from other students and from sources outside the school that are now more readily accessible through various forms of technology.

We have effective teachers at St Michael's and our team works closely together in the best interest of each child. If you would like to chat about your child's needs and how home and school can work closely together, please contact your classroom teacher directly.  

Every Wednesday students participate in a Wellbeing Lesson. These lessons will focus on understanding our school values, building, maintaining and restoring positive relationships and developing strategies to be a good friend and an engaged learner. 

This week we started to look at acceptance. We discussed the importance of friendship and being aware that we are all different, unique and special. At St Michael's, we would like to celebrate diversity and promote inclusion in all areas. 

Church Cleaning Roster

Dear Parents and Friends of St Michael’s Parish - we need some new and energetic people to help with the Church cleaning roster. It isn’t a hard or time consuming activity. It involves several tasks – vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, mopping and general cleaning and each team member usually takes one task. The roster involves teams of volunteers, each with a team leader. We usually start at 9.30 on a Saturday morning, and the task takes from 1 to 1.5 hours. However we can arrange for you to do your section anytime that suits your busy life – eg Friday afternoon etc. The roster allocates 2 rostered cleaning times per 6 months, so not a big ask really. If you can help with this, please email or text me at margaretkenna@bigpond.com or 0408864285. I hope to hear from you soon - Margaret Kenna

Vinnie's February Doorknock Appeal

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish are undertaking the Vinnie's Doorknock appeal again this year. For the 2019 Doorknock there are 105 collection areas for them to cover, up from 100 areas last year – the increase is due to the completion of dwellings in Lawson. To cover these areas will require 73 collectors, up from 63 collectors last year.
We have had over 20 collectors who participated last year not participating in 2019 - which makes it difficult to cover all our areas. We are looking for assistance from anyone who would be willing to undertake an area in Kaleen. This would take between an hour to an hour and a half to complete. Help will be very grateful. Please contact Timothy Power - timjim1@bigpond.com or 0437 013 328 if you could give a little of your time to help those in need. 

We are fortunate to have Carrie Coghlan continuing as our school counsellor for 2019. Carrie will be at St Michael's for the full school day, every second Thursday (starting 14/2/19). If you would like your child to access this service, please speak to your child's classroom teacher or contact the Front Office. 

Welcome to the library for 2019!

Student Borrowing
Library lessons for each class will be on Wednesday's. Each Wednesday students can return books and borrow new ones for the week. If you wish to return books at other times, they can be placed in the returns slot on the front of the library desk. I look forward to working with all the students to develop their love of reading and literature throughout 2019.

Book Fair – Catch the Reading Wave!

The Scholastic Book Fair is coming! We are excited to be hosting another book fair early in the year. It is a great fundraising opportunity for the library and we look forward to seeing you there. The students will have the opportunity to visit the book fair during the day and make a ‘wish list’ of books they are interested in.         

Thank you in advance for your support of this event.
Dates: Week 4 Tuesday – Friday (26/2-1/3)
Times: 8:20-8:50am and 3-4pm.
Location: Library

Visiting our Library
We hope that the library is an inviting space for our students and families too. If you wish to come in and spend a few minutes reading to your child/ren either before or after school, please know that you are welcome to do so. We ask that you return the book to the returns slot (on the front of the library desk) and it will be re-shelved for you.

Parent Library
A new initiative to the library this year is the parent borrowing bookshelf. It is located just inside the library, opposite the library desk. The system is based on a book swap approach. Please feel free to take a book and return when you are finished or bring in a book to swap. We are hoping to include literature that is for enjoyment and also related to parenting and educational information. If you have any books to donate to our parent library they would be gratefully accepted.

We would like the library space to be 'the heart' of St Michael's. A space to gather and enjoy. So, if you have any ideas, feedback or questions, please flick me an email erin.hardwicke@cg.catholic.edu.au 

Every week, students participate in Art lessons in their classroom. These focus on areas of Visual Arts, Dance, Drama, Music and Media Arts.

To add to this, in 2019, we are introducing a specific Art Lesson, where Mrs McKeough will teach each class art knowledge and skills. 

In Art, there are 7 elements. These are the building blocks of all Art. During our Art lessons, we will start the term by looking at the element of line and how lines are used to make patterns. 

White ice-cream container lids make great paint palettes.  Please start collecting them. They can be left in the Creative Arts room.​

Monday & Tuesday - Piano Lessons (contact Mary-Liz 0413 425753)

Tuesday Recess - Chess (see below)

Tuesday Lunch - Drama Club (contact Elizabeth McIntosh 6255 9054)

Wednesday Recess - Dancecore (contact Cassie 0417 442750)

Thursday - Guitar Lessons (contact Sam 0408 196855)

These are provided by external operators. Please call the contact or see Lisa in the Front Office for further information.

# CHESS!!
Learn to be a chess champion! Coaching for students at St Michael's Primary School (Kaleen, ACT) is held on Tuesdays from 11:00am to 11:40am, starting on 12 February 2019.

Learning and playing chess helps children develop their logical thinking and problem solving skills, improves their concentration and focus, while also being a great source of enjoyment. Activities include group lessons on a demonstration chess board or interactive whiteboard, puzzle solving and fun practice games.
Students earn merit awards by making checkmates, or by displaying skills and positive qualities, which all good chess players strive to develop.
If your child is interested in taking part, you can collect an enrolment form from the school office, or email enrol@sydneyacademyofchess.com.au for a copy. For all enquiries, please contact Sydney Academy of Chess on (02) 9745 1170.

Issue 1 of the Scholastic Bookclub has been sent home today.  There will be two issues per term and orders can be placed online through LOOP or orders and payment can be left at the Front Office.  If you have any queries, please see Mrs Monro or Mrs Arena.  The school earns rewards for every dollar spent which allows us to purchase resources for the library and readers for the classrooms.

Thank you for your support.

Playgroup will be starting back next week, Wednesday 13th February at 9.00 am.

I am looking forward to seeing how much the returning children have grown over the holidays as well as meeting any new families that may be joining us. All most welcome to attend. - Kylie Arena

We have a new canteen menu for 2019! This is an exciting, healthier change and we thank Empire Catering for engaging in conversations and making these changes. Feedback from the school community assisted in these changes. 

A copy has been sent home with each family and is available on our website. You can now order through Qkr! - all menu items are listed there. Some exciting new additions of Chicken Snitzel roll, baked potato with various fillings, caesar salads or wraps, meatball cheesy sub, wedges, garlic and herb breads and fish and vegie burgers. There will be various specials available online throughout the year including rice paper rolls, Asian Noodle Salad and Greek Chicken Yiros on Pita Bread, just to name a few. We will be moving towards online lunch ordering only in the future, so please download the Qkr! app and start using. 

The canteen require assistance on Friday's from 12.30-1.45 to help pack lunch orders, if you can assist in anyway, please contact Lisa in the Front Office.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

Please visit the Transport Canberra website for all your bus timetable information and new fare stucture.