Enrolling Now

We’re enrolling now for 2026! Applications are fee-free and can be made online. If your child is due to start Kindergarten next year, the best time to make your application is in Term 1 this year.  

Learn more about our school and the enrolment process here:

https://www.smtdow.catholic.edu.au/

Mental Fitness Gotcha4life update: Pam Cheetham

This week, our school community came together to celebrate Mental Fitness Week. It offered us a chance to pause, reflect, and engage in meaningful learning about the protective factors that support strong mental health. We also enjoyed some extra daily fun along the way with our gotcha playground moments, student-led ‘kindness colouring’ initiative and a mufti day to end it all. 

                                          Building staff mental fitness 

Student led artworks in their own time      Student led colouring competition

                                        Gotcha moment recipients 

                                     Building mental fitness in class lessons

This week each term serves as a timely reminder that mental fitness is something to prioritise not just now, but all year round. Taking care of our mental wellbeing is an ongoing journey that benefits every aspect of our lives, from learning and relationships to resilience and overall happiness. We look forward to developing this even further for the remainder of the term.

Waste Free Wednesday Update

Week 6 Results

Kinder: 88%

Year 1: 64%

Year 2: 95%

Year 3: 66%

Year 4: 50%

Year 5: 59%

Year 6: 61%

Congratulations to  Year 2 who are the GOLD waste free warriors and Kindergarten who are the SILVER waste free warriors.

Parent Feedback Survey - What you want to know about most in the upcoming parent/teacher conferences

Recently we communicated that the parent teacher conferences will be held on Wednesday 2nd July (Week 10) after reports will be made available to you. The structure of the conferences will align to our faith, learning and wellbeing framework. To help teachers know what you would like them to focus on during the parent/teacher conferences, a google survey was shared with you to get your general feedback. Below is a snapshot of the data from this survey. There were 37 responses and the top two priority areas or what parents would like feedback on from their child’s classroom teacher are:

• Peer relationships and social skills

• Motivation, effort and learning engagement 

This will be communicated to teachers to ensure they provide you with some feedback in these two areas. Thank you for taking the time to provide us with these insights.

Awards news

As you are aware, we have awards assemblies every fortnight in which students receive awards to recognise their effort, growth or achievement in their faith, learning or wellbeing. We often get inquiries into how teachers award superstar, vision in action awards and end of term Living the Vision Awards. Below is an overview of the awards system at St Michael’s

• Superstar Awards are presented at a fortnightly assembly awarded by the classroom teachers.Each student will receive at least one superstar award per semester.  
• Vision in Action Awards: presented at the Monday morning assembly awarded by any teacher, SSO or nominated student for demonstrating our vision in their actions.
• Principal’s Awards are given for 5 awards (superstar, Vision in Action, St Francis of Assisi award)
• Living the Vision Awards are awarded at the end of the term. These are awarded by the classroom teacher/s to students who have demonstrated they are either inspired by Christ, aspiring to excellence in learning or living fully in community across the term. These are equivalent to a Principal’s award. .
• Gold Awards are earned for 3 Principal awards.
• The St Michael’s Blue medallion is obtained when a student receives 2 gold awards.

If students have received a High Behaviour aligned to the High and Low behaviour definition matrix within a two week period leading up to an awards assembly, they will not be awarded a superstar award. This award will be held over until the following awards assembly. Parents will be notified of this prior to the assembly.

Choir - Wollongong City Eisteddfod

Congratulations to our very talented Choir who participated in the Wollongong City Eisteddfod on Tuesday night. They sang with such pride and enthusiasm and came away with a "Highly Commended". Well done to all of you!

Mrs Amy Sammut - Assistant Principal

ICAS Competition: Register Now!

I am excited to offer students in Years 2–6 the opportunity to participate in the 2025 ICAS competitions. These assessments are designed to recognise and reward academic excellence in the areas of Digital Technologies, English, Mathematics, Science, Spelling Bee, and Writing.

ICAS provides valuable feedback on your child’s progress and is a great way to extend and challenge students. Participation is optional, and parents can choose which subjects your child/children enter. More information, including registration details and key dates, has been sent via Compass. Please refer to the Compass post for further instructions and deadlines.

Celebrating Writing Across the School

We are incredibly proud of our Year 5 and 6 students who recently submitted entries to the Whitlam Institute’s What Matters? writing competition. The quality of their work has been nothing short of outstanding, demonstrating not only writing skill and creativity but also a deep sense of purpose and passion.

What has truly stood out, is the wide range of genres students chose to express their ideas, from persuasive pieces and heartfelt narratives to poetic reflections. Given the opportunity to write about issues that matter most to them, students explored powerful themes such as social justice, environmental sustainability, identity, and community.

These entries are a testament to the impact of our classroom practices. Through explicit teaching, the Writer’s Workshop model, and a strong emphasis on student voice, we are seeing our young writers grow in confidence, clarity, and conviction.

Congratulations to every student who took part. We’re so proud of your thoughtful, articulate, and passionate contributions, and we look forward to hearing how you go in the competition.

Please take a moment to read some of the amazing writing our students have produced. I’m sure you’ll be as inspired as we are.

Delicate

Our world is delicate, and like a piece of coal. Easy to burn, yet very precious. As precious as a diamond. As she spins on and on, time is ticking away. Climate change is lapping at the edges of glaciers like waves on the sand. Pollution is eating away at everything we know, animals, forests, oceans, valleys, mountains. Animals are on the verge of extinction and it’s all because of…us.

Climate change isn’t just bad, or awful, or mean, it’s greedy. Harmful. Effective, but in a careless way. Sea levels rise, and continue to rise, each year. Temperatures carry on ascending, forcing animals into shorter hibernations, therefore preventing them from fattening up for Winter. Rising temperatures mean more frequent and intense extreme weather events. 

We need to take action now. We can't wait another 20 years. We can’t wait until next month. The more we wait, the harder it will be to fix our mistakes. But to do that, everyone has a role to play. You can do your part by switching to renewable energy sources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, using public transport, using less water or even just using reduce, reuse, recycle as your guideline.

It will take a long time, and a lot of effort, but together, we can fix climate change. Together, we must fix climate change.

What’s one of the utmost disgusting things you have ever seen? It might be slime, zucchini, breathing someone else’s ‘breathed air’, toddlers with smushed food on their faces, or dirty shoes. But for me, the most atrocious thing I have ever seen is pollution. Why? You might ask. Well, did you know that plastic takes 20-500 years to break down, sometimes even longer. It also fills the earth with debris, contaminates our resources, while also contributing to a wide range of illnesses, not to mention how much it affects animals.

Pollution impacts animals' health, safety, diet, and even survival. Both marine and terrestrial animals become tangled in litter, such as plastic bags or fishing gear, which leads to injury, suffocation, or even death. Some animals, such as dolphins, can mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them. Ingesting plastic, toxic substances and other harmful materials causes internal injuries, poisoning and starvation.

Experts prove that we are producing over 380 million tons of plastic each year. All of this plastic eventually goes into the ocean. An example of one of the places all this garbage goes is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Ocean. It is 1.6 million square meters in size, which is about three times the size of France. This proves that we are being too wasteful. We need to fix this issue.

Animal species are rapidly decreasing, with 100-10,000 species going extinct each year. Some examples of extinction are: the pinta giant tortoise, western black rhinoceros, golden toad, pyrenean ibex, spix's macaw, and the bramble cay melomys. Human activity significantly contributed to the extinction of all these animals. If we continue on like this, there will be nothing left except humans. Scientists estimate that by 2100, up to half of existing animal species could become extinct. This is just unacceptable.

People think the world has an endless supply of everything we need. But we don’t. We’re eating away at the earth, instead of caring for it. Humans are treating the earth like it doesn’t matter. But it does. It matters to me. They say life in 2075 will be better, but I don’t think we’re going to make it. The reason why, not just you or me, but every single one of us.

By Sienna P (Year 6)

The Weight Of One Life

What is one life worth? In a world with billions, it's easy to feel like you're tiny, like one single voice in a maze of noise but life is a gift, no matter how quiet or invisible you feel. It’s something extraordinary, that so delicately, blends into our everyday tasks, activities and responsibilities. Not many people seem to realise the fact that we do not last forever. Life is a thing we should all cherish and be thankful for, and live throughout everything we do.

Life isn’t always fair. It’s not always daisies, sunshine and rainbows but, that doesn’t mean we should act out by bringing others down, because who knows, it might just influence someone else’s life. Be careful with your words and actions because they can spread in ways that we could never fully grasp.

Every life has a purpose. Including yours. If you throw your life out the window you're destroying great opportunities of discovering who you were truly meant to be. You could be the person who teaches, who brings help, who changes someone’s day or even their whole life without even realising it. That’s the power that one of many lives can hold.

Everyone was born for a reason. Even when the world feels like you're deadlifting 100kg weights and the path isn’t clear, your existence still matters. It’s all in the way you smile, in the way you take care of others, in the way your presence can bring comfort and hope to someone else’s day. You don’t need to be famous or rich to matter, you just need to be you. So hold onto your life. Protect it, love it, and remind others to do the same. Lift people up instead of pulling them down. Because sometimes, the smallest acts leave the biggest marks in people's lives. And in a world that mostly feels loud, cold, or crazy be the hushed kindness that makes it just that little better.

Did you know that more than 720,000 people commit suicide every single year and that it is the third leading cause of death amongst 19 to 29 year olds? That’s crazy! This is due to all the bullying and unkind things we are doing to one another. If you feel hurt or feel lots of pain on the inside just know that help is available. You can try splitting. Splitting is an effective defense mechanism where you perceive people or situations as either really good or really bad, failing to recognise the problems of the world and the existence of both good and bad qualities in people or situations. Or just call: 13 11 14 or message: 0477 13 11 14. Lifeline Australia. But just remember, you matter to someone. You matter to me.

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love, and I know that somebody loves you. 

Remember, your life matters to not just me but everyone, so cherish everything because tomorrow isn't a promise to anyone. One decision, one act of kindness, one man’s story can ripple externally in ways we may never fully imagine.

By Darcy F (Year 6)

Write-on Competition:  We’re excited to see such strong engagement in writing across the school! A fantastic example is the Write-On competition where 84 students have expressed interest in taking part, showing a real love for writing.

This year’s theme, “Could they be changing?” encourages students to think creatively and connect their writing to real-world experiences. Each school can submit three entries to the competition (one per stage) and all participants will receive a Certificate of Entry.  We are looking forward to seeing the wonderful writing our authors craft here at St Michael’s! The competition closes on the 20th June. 

Mrs Chelsea McLeod - Instructional Coach