Dear Members of our Community of Faith,

 

A very warm welcome to the new school year! I am very excited to be here at St Mary MacKillop College and am looking forward to getting to know the school community and working together to continue providing a school environment where students’ faith, character and education are  nurtured  and  developed.  I  sincerely  want  to acknowledge the work of Kevin Tingle in his role as Principal of  SMMC  over  the  past  seven  years  and  all  the  staff involved from the school’s inception until now.

 

A special welcome to our new Kinder children who begin their school journey today. Thank you for entrusting them to our care. We look forward to watching them learn and grow throughout the year. Also a special welcome to our new families: Barry-Smith, Stewart, Alkemade, Murphy, Griffin, Price and Burton familes.

 

I have enjoyed meeting with staff over the past few weeks and thank them for their dedication to their roles. They wear many hats to ensure we run a varied and quality curriculum and many hours of work has been put in to prepare for the coming year. Welcome to the new staff who have joined the team this year. Our staff and an indication of their roles for

2016 is as follows:

 

  • Miss Fiona Nuttall – Office extraordinaire
  • Mrs Shelley Callanan – Office extraordinaire
  • Miss Tania Mclean – Kinder
  • Mr Andrew Flores – Gr.1/2
  • Mrs Terry Josephs – Gr.3/4
  • Mrs Vera Galvin – Gr.3/4, Italian, Church History, 7/8

HSIE

  • Mr Mathieu Couture – Gr.5/6, 7/8 Science, 7/8 Music, 11 Modern History, Secondary PE
  • Mr Luke Burton – Gr.5/6 and 7/8 TAS
  • Mr Kieran Williams – 11 Ancient History, 9-11 Drama,

7-10 Art, 7/8 Computers

  • Miss  Jess   Godwin   –   7-11   English,   9/10   HSIE, Secondary PE, 9/10 El History, 7/8 Drama
  • Mrs Kathleen Horsfall – 9/10 Science/RE, 11 Biology,

11 Chemistry

  • Mrs Therese Mott – 8-11 Maths, 11 Ext Maths, 9/10

IST

  • Mr  Kevin Tingle  –  7/8  Hobbies,  Gr.3/4,  Community

Service, Education Support

  • Mrs Caroline Barber – Library, 7 Maths

 

  • Mrs Chris Tingle – Stephanie Alexander Program on

Fridays

  • Fr Peter Murphy, Fr Chris Heffernan and Fr Brendan

Lee   –   providing   spiritual   support   and   running

Religion Lessons with the students

 

LEM Phonics Course

On January 21st, 22nd and 23rd Lindy Bonham from Sydney conducted  a Phonics Course in the  SMMC Library  for some of our Primary Teachers. LEM Phonics is a systematic and explicit way of teaching the 42 sounds that make up our English language, which are needed in order

to write, read and spell. We had lots of fun learning about

the letters and letter combinations (phonograms) that represent each of these sounds and the many rules (and exceptions) for spelling a variety of words. The teachers are looking forward to implementing this programme.

 

Working Bee

WOW! A big thank you to all those who were able to attend  the  working  bee  last  Saturday.  What  a  great

community effort. There was literally a ‘buzz’ that came over  the  place  around  9am  and  three  hours  later  the school was transformed and looking ready for the new

school year. Thank you one and all. Your time and efforts are much appreciated and invaluable to making our school a great learning environment for our children.

 

New Classroom

It was with much excitement we took delivery of a new classroom last week, just in time to start the new year. The Gr.1/2s will make their home in there this year with Mr Flores.   We   hope   to   continue   the   paving   from   the

undercover area to the end of the classroom in the near future. Thank you to Kevin Tingle for all his work in securing this new building.

 

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you need. My email address is  principal@smmc.nsw.edu.au. Alternatively, you can call me on the school number.

 

God Bless

 

Luke Burton

Principal