Dear Friends,

Welcome to Week 2!  We began this week on Monday with a special gathering facilitated by Aunty Caroline and Aunty Jude, two of our loved Ngunnawal elders, who assisted our Year 6 leadership team with the renaming of our four house groups. These are now significant Ngunnawal words and symbols for each house group, which have been added to our message sticks: Maliyin (yellow house), Malunggagn (blue house), Maga (red house), Buru (green house). Each class also created and presented to our guests class message stick to introduce themselves and ask for their welcome here.  Aunty Jude and Aunty Caroline have added these class message sticks to the AIATSIS Reconciliation collection.

Tuesday included our Parish Reconciliation information evening with the prayer above shared to all in attendance. This letter from St Paul highlights for all for all of  us the importance of forgiveness, kindness, gratitude and most importantly, love. 

Thank you to all who were able to attend last night's Parent Information Night, involving a whole school address, with presentations from our Leadership Team, P and F and School Board, (thank you to Cath and Josie) and then information sharing in individual grade level classrooms. For those who were unable to attend, you will be receiving the handout and important dates via your child today. Please let your child's teacher know via email if you have not received this.

As well as sharing our strategic plan and goals for the year, last night I also discussed the actions we have continued to take from the feedback given to us from our parent community last year.  In our parent survey over 66% of parents noted that they feel guilty when they do not attend events at the school or forget something, which results in their child missing out. As I stressed last night, as humans we are never going to be able to remember everything and commit to everything. There is no judgement from the school if something is forgotten or you are unable to support an event. Teachers are also equipped with resources for students if something is accidentally forgotten e.g. spare crazy socks or wigs!! Let's please begin this year with no guilt or worry!!

As a community, we value positive partnerships with families and effective communication.  I am hoping that you all have access to Toddle 360 (replaces SeeSaw) as our main platform for the sharing of teaching and learning. I am hoping you have all also signed up for our parent partnership meetings on Monday- Wednesday next week (appointments can be accessed via COMPASS). These meetings are an invitation to begin this valued relationship and for parents to have the opportunity to share important information  about their children to our teachers. 

As shared last night, we also continue to focus on the well being of all in our community and are embedding across all aspects of our school the PERMAH well being model. The six essential elements/skills  of well being, that will be explicitly taught throughout the year, these include positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, achievement and health. We will again be offering specific wellbeing programs for children experiencing anxiety next term with our CoolKids program and later in the year and Season for Growth program, for those children who have experienced loss or grief. We also welcome back our school and family counsellor, Kate Worthington, who works at our school on Monday, Thursday and Friday. Kate has  a background in Psychology and Social Work and has been working with children, young people and their parent/carers for over 22 years. Kate has predominantly worked in the field of child protection, early intervention as well as the homelessness sectors. Kate is passionate about working with children and young people and feels privileged to assist them and their family in experiencing positive life outcomes.

Please contact me if you would like to access counselling for your child or complete the on-line referral link:

httpss:catholiccareeeforcecommm/housing/s/school-referral-form

As discussed last night, we will be publishing in the newsletter each week with the calendar events coming up (see article Term 1 dates below).  I encourage parents to come along to our first P and F meeting on Monday, 7pm in the school staffroom and I welcome back our School Board on Tuesday night at 6pm in the board room. We are also excited to have our P and F host our first school community social event, our welcome BYO dinner, next Friday 16th of February 5:30 pm on our school grounds.

As last night was the first formal Parent Information Night we have held at the school for a while, our staff would certainly value some feed back about the evening-format, times, sessions etc. Please email myself or your child's class teacher if you would like to share effective feed back that will help with future planning of these nights for our community.

I look forward to seeing our Year 6 parents and carers at our Opening School Mass tomorrow, 12pm in the Holy Trinity Church, where we will acknowledge and present our Year 6 Leaders for 2024. 

Have a wonderful weekend and a peace-filled week ahead with your beautiful families.

Philippa

Sacrament of Reconciliation 

Thank you to those who have registered for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is not to late to register via 'North Woden Transfiguration' QKR!. Please click here to read the letter from Father John.

If you missed the Parent Information Night please click here for the slides. Students who have registered and signed up for a home group, will receive their workbook next week. 

If you have any questions please email Emily Capper emily.capper@cg.catholic.edu.au or Catherine  at the Parish Office wodennorth@cg.org.au 

Opening School Mass

We warmly welcome our school community to our Opening School Mass for 2024 tomorrow Friday 9th February at 12pm. Our Year 6 families should have already received an invitation to this Mass, as we will be presenting our 2024 Year 6 Leaders and inviting a family member/s to come forward and pin their child's leadership badge on.

Hello everyone and welcome to Week 3!

What a treat we had this week as we began our music lessons with Mrs Jenny Groom and library with Mrs Kate Mertz. I was really impressed by how respectful the classes were during these times and how beautifully they walked between the ELC and the school ?

Thank you to those families who remembered our new closing time of 5:30pm. It is so lovely to see the children so settled and how smoothly the drop off and pick up has been.

Don’t forget that we the P&F welcome BBQ next Friday. It would be great to see some ELC parents joining in the P&F and representing us on the board.

Here are a few pictures of all the fun we have had so far!

Important Dates - Linked to School Calendar

*Please note that dates can change through out the term

Happy Bithday to students who are celebrating this week: Addyse P, Alexander S, Isabelle C, Sideri P, Austin J, Arlo S.