Principal's Page - Pat Ellis
SleepOut@Home & PJ Day
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for SleepOut@Home on Thursday night last week. It was great to see the important issue of homelessness being discussed with children.
St Vincent de Paul were so grateful for the generous donations of winter items and also for those who donated financially. We raised $707 along with tables and tables of winter blankets, scarfs, coats etc.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help (OLPH) Feast Day
Today as a Parish we celebrated Our Lady of Perpetual Help Feast Day. Whilst we couldn't join as a whole Parish community (including St Monica's School), we celebrated simultaneously through prayer, liturgy and art at each school. We used MSTeams to video across to other classes at St Monica's.
Parish Sacramental Program Update 
Tomorrow Meaghan Younger and I will attend a Parish Sacramental Team Meeting. We will be mapping out the plan for Term 3 and Term 4 regarding students receiving the Sacraments.
At this stage, and we will confirm dates in next week's newsletter, the timeline would be as follows;
Term 3, 2020 - Sacrament of Reconciliation (First Rite) - Year 3 students
Term 4, 2020 - Sacrament of Confirmation - Year 6 students
Term 1, 2021 - Sacrament of First Eucharist (which was missed this year) - Year 4 students from this year (they will obviously be in Year 5 next year when they receive this Sacrament).
From Term 2 2021, we will be back on normal timeline.
We apologise for any issue this may cause. The decision for Sacrament of Reconciliation for Term 3, was because it is the easiest Sacrament to limit crowds and follow the physical distancing requirements etc. The decision for Confirmation in Term 4, was to still be able to support our Year 6 before they head off to high school.
Further information will follow next week with exact dates and timeline.
Semester 1 Rainbow Awards
Congratulations to our Term 1 and Term 2 Rainbow Award students. These names were published in last week's newsletter.
Reports
A reminder reports will be coming home on Monday. We are having some difficulty at present getting our absentee data seeing we moved from one platform to another during Remote Learning transition. We are working with IT at CE to fix this. If any issues arise, reports may be delayed and will have to come home on Tuesday as a worse case scenario. We will advise on Monday if they will not be able to come home then.
I have written a letter which will go home with each report, detailing the changes and explaining the difficulty of completing reports for this Semester. We look forward to parent-teacher-student conversations occurring in Week 2 next term where a much richer and more authentic conversation can take place regarding your child's learning development.
Parent-Teacher-Student Meetings
As mentioned, Parent-Teacher-Student Meetings will take place next term. These will be completed using MSTeams (similar to the way we conducted one-on-one conferences during Remote Learning).
We would like at least one parent and your child to be involved. At the end of the meeting, there would be opportunity for a chat to occur with the teacher without the child. Each meeting will be slotted for 15 minutes.
More information and the booking link is provided below. We will also send this link during the break, when bookings open (Monday 13 July and close Friday 24 July). We would encourage every parent to book in a time with their child for these important chats about learning and to keep the home-school partnership together.
https://stmichaelskaleen.schoolzineplus.com/view-session/7
Beanie for Brain Cancer
Some of our Year 6 students are raising funds and awareness by hosting a Beanie's for Braincancer next Friday 3 July (last day of school). All students can wear a beanie to school and we would ask you to bring a gold coin to donate to this great cause.
Enjoy the week ahead.
Take care.
Pat Ellis