Filter Content
Dear Parents, Guardians and Carers,
Welcome back to Term Two. We trust you all had a wonderful Easter break with family and friends. It’s been great to see the children back in classrooms and reconnecting with their friends.
Child Safety
At St Michael’s school Traralgon, we hold the care, safety and wellbeing of children and young people as a central and fundamental responsibility of our school. We have a team of Child Safety Champions including Miss Tija Dark, Miss Molly Clavarino, Mrs Mel Celima, Mrs Leanne Kamphuis, Mrs Jodie Ware and myself.
In July 2022, the Victorian Child Safe Standards were revised to be more consistent with Standards across Australia. The 11 Standards set out minimum requirements and outline the actions organisations must take to keep children and young people safe. The 11 Standards include specific requirements such as:
- to involve families and communities in organisations’ efforts to keep children and young people safe
- for a greater focus on safety for Aboriginal children and young people
- to manage the risk of child abuse in online environments
- in relation to governance, systems and processes to keep children and young people safe.
This term our team of Child Safety Champions will be working with teachers and students in promoting the Standards throughout our school. So far, teachers have led our students on a safety walk through the school where the students were able to talk about areas of the school where they feel safe and unsafe. This data will be used by the Child Safety Champions and School Leadership to make informed decisions about how we can continue to make St Michaels a safe and inviting environment for all who visit.
These conversations opened up excellent opportunities for teachers and students to consider “What does it mean to be safe?”, and how we can be physically, socially and emotionally safe. Our next step is to work with the student leaders in creating “child friendly” worded statements and illustrations. You may start to see some of these illustrations in our weekly newsletter, so stay tuned.
Student Agency at St Michaels
This year our Leadership Team will be undertaking some professional development on Student Agency and considering what this may look like for St Michaels. It is an exciting, yet challenging concept, but ultimately will help develop our students to be motivated, independent, resilient and strong learners for life. The idea of Student Agency sits within our School Improvement Plan, therefore there will be a four year focus on developing leadership, teaching practice and students in this space.
There will be no assembly this Friday 5th May due to a Year 5/6 Incursion and the hall being unavailable. A reminder that all children should be in full Winter uniform by Monday 8th May.
Kind regards,
Lia DiCorleto (Acting Principal)
Up and coming dates for your calendar:
Monday 8th May - Yr 6 Camp to the Summit
Tuesday 9th May - Foundation Information Session 5pm
Friday 12 May - Mother’s Day Stall
Friday 19th May - Whole School Mass 11.30am
It was a pleasure to support our School Captains, Rocco,Lucy, Sibella and Ekhai on ANZAC Day as they represented the school at the ANZAC Day Ceremony. They did a fabulous job with the march and laying of the wreath. We are very proud of them.
Each week students from each class are awarded Student of the Week certificates. These children are nominated for the example they have been within the school based on the School Wide Expectation focus for that week. The weekly focus will be from Wednesday until Tuesday the following week. Awards will be presented to students at assembly on Friday.
In Week 2 the School Wide Expectation focus was Safety:
I have the right to feel safe in our school environment.
The award winners for Week 2 are:
| Indi Trease | Senula Bodawaduge | Mason Hill |
| Elsie Rudolph-O'Donnell | Anjali Thusmanraj | Bun An |
| Tomike Ayeni | Joel Wilson | Ashton Pavich |
| Elora Pearson | Jack Owen | Wynter Krausz |
| Ella Hogan | Arlie Graham | Tyson Collins |
| Harley Synnott | Poppy Howe |
St Michael's is once again participating in the Wonder Recycling Rewards Program. Our school is collecting bread and muffin bags to redeem for sports equipment. Could you please keep your bags and place them into the green bin outside of the hall. Bread bags should be as free from crumbs as they can be to keep the recycling process free from contamination (there is no need to wash them). Any questions can be forwarded to Mrs Dortmans or Miss Petesic. Thank you for your support!
Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge
The Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge is now open and (insert school name) is excited to be participating. The PRC application offers a range of exciting features including:
- access to a library catalogue (including book images and blurbs)
- a modern user-friendly interface
- rewarding students with badges as challenge milestones are achieved
- the option for students to mark books as a favourite, give them a star rating or complete a book review
The Challenge is open to all Victorian children from birth to Year 10 in recognition of the importance of reading for literacy development. It is not a competition; but a personal challenge for children to read a set number of books by 8 September 2023.
Children from Prep to Year 2 are encouraged to read or ‘experience’ 30 books with their parents and teachers. Children from Year 3 to Year 10 are challenged to read 15 books.
All children who meet the Challenge will receive a certificate of achievement signed by the Victorian Premier and former Premiers.
To read the Premier’s letter to parents, view the booklist and for more information about the Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge, visit: https://www.vic.gov.au/premiers-reading-challenge
Deborah Gilmour in the school library is able to help with any enquires.
To participate in the challenge please click on the link below:
