We hope everyone enjoyed their Mother's Day on Sunday. Thank you to all the families who attended Mother's Day Mass last Thursday and the special afternoon tea. It is always great to see everyone at school. My apologies if the timing didn't suit with work and other committments. As you can appreciate, we do our best with all our events to vary times to ensure we can connect with as many families as possible and ensure over the course of the year, everyone gets to attend something whether it is a breakfast, morning tea, during the day, afternoon tea or night time event. It can be disappointing for some students if a family member can't attend an event at school, however, we explain the importance of work and other committments to our students and they understand. If any child is upset, please rest assured that we have systems in place to ensure we flipped that around as quickly as possible.

We have had a great start to our 'Enrolment 2020 Campaign'. Through letterbox drops, signage, social media, emails and word of mouth we have had several new families visit our school over the last week. The feedback has been extremely positive. I would like to thank our Year 6 Community Leaders who have represented us well, showcasing our school on the tours. 

This week NAPLAN has started for Years 3 and 6. Whilst this is a 'moment in time' assessment and a requirement for us to faciliate, it is not a true indication of your child/ren's abilites, skills, knowledge or understanding. It does provide data that can be used, along with other assessment pieces, to create a profile of a student. It is useful to look at trends that are occuring and student growth from Year 3 to Year 5 and so on. Please know that whilst we have prepared our Year 3 and 5 students for NAPLAN, including completing practice tests, no pressure is placed on students before or during the testing period. Please feel free to discuss this further with your child's teacher, Mr Webb or myself. 

On Tuesday, we again hosted 30 teachers from across the Archdiocese of Canberra-Goulburn to participate in a Numeracy professional development day with Leonie Anstey, a Numeracy consultant. Focus of the day was on K-2 Numeracy. Mrs McCann and Miss Frogley attended from our school. 

Uniforms

We have been notified by Lowes (our major uniform suppier), that as of tomorrow Lowes Gungahlin will no longer be supplying our school uniforms.  All uniforms with our school logo will only be sold from Macdonalds Schoolwear at Jamison.  Any uniforms without our logo ie. pants/dresses can still be purchased from Gungahlin. 

As the weather is now turning colder, a reminder that students should be attending school in full winter uniform with a jumper/jacket and long pants. A beanie and/or gloves are also allowed. Please ensure that these items are school items and are of navy blue colour. 

Recently I have had conversations with Principals from some of our Catholic High Schools where many of our Year 6 children end up going. All have said that they have a huge demand and not enough spaces with waitlists being a possibility. I would encourage any parents looking to enrol their child into a high school, to ensure the enrolment application is completed prior to due date to ensure you give yourself the best possible chance of being accepted.

On Friday and Saturday this week, the school Leadership Team (Damien Webb, Meaghan Younger and myself) will be attending the Hawker-Brownlow Educational Conference in Melbourne. This is an opportunity for us to engage in current research, network and continue vissionary and strategic discussions to support St Michael's moving forward. Jo Krippner (Classroom Support Teacher) will be keeping an eye on things in our absence. I look forward to sharing our learnings with you all next week. 

Lastly, St Michael's is now on Instagram. Follow us @stmsps 

Enjoy the week ahead.

Regards,

Pat Ellis

Principal