ABOUT - Term 4 Week 7 - 28 November 2024

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

"Never see a need without doing something about it."
Mary MacKillop

BEAUTIFUL YEAR 2 FIRST RECONCILIATION CELEBRATION IN ST JOSEPH'S CHURCH

Our Year 2 class led the St Joseph’s congregation in a beautiful “Christ the King” Mass last Sunday.  The Mass was prepared by our Year 2 class in celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation the students received earlier this month.  Congratulations Year 2 on this important milestone in your faith journey.

YEAR 1 POLICE STATION VISIT

Our Year 1 students had a fabulous visit to the Police Station yesterday.  We thank the police officers for taking the time to show the children around the station and for organising a ride back to school for the students in the police wagon.  This excursion was part of the Year 1 Geography unit, ‘People and Places’. 

KINDER/BUDDY LUNCH

Our Year 6 and Kinder students enjoyed a picnic lunch at the park today followed by an ice block.  This activity is for the Kinder students to show their appreciation of their Year 6 buddies and to thank them for helping look after them during their first year of school.

YEAR 4 LAKE BURRENDONG EXCURSION

The Year 4 students and teachers left for their excursion to Lake Burrendong Sport & Recreation Centre this morning.  The children will enjoy many activities including kayaking, free time in the pool, archery and slip ‘n’ slide and be back at school tomorrow afternoon in time for the school buses.

SCHOOL BASED SWIMSAFE LESSONS

Our school based SwimSafe program begins next Monday, 2 December and concludes on Friday, 13 December. Those children enrolled in the program need to bring their swimmers, towel and entry fee of $1.00 (for those who don't have a season ticket) every day for the next two weeks.  Please note that children will NOT participate in swim lessons on Thursday, 12 December as this is the day of our end of year school pool parties. The children will be transported to and from the pool each day by bus, saving valuable time and energy.

If you would like your child to participate and have not yet completed the online enrolment and paid the $43.00 to school, please ensure that you attend to this by tomorrow, Friday, 29 November.

The link to enrol online is below.

KNOWLEDGE EXPLOSION

The Knowledge Explosion, for all children in Years 3-6, will commence next Wednesday, 4 December and continue in Week 9 on Wednesday, 11 December between 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.  The Knowledge Explosion exposes the children to new activities that they may not otherwise have a chance to experience.  This year the activities include:   earring making, cooking, aqua aerobics, boxing, lawn bowls, sand art, painting, Christmas craft and  Meccano.

YEARS 5/6 CANBERRA EXCURSION EXPO

Family and friends of our Years 5 and 6 classes are invited to attend the Canberra Excursion Expo to be held at school next Friday, 6 December at 2:00 p.m.  Come along and view the video showing all the fun and excitement the students experienced.  The children's booklets will also be on display.

CHRISTMAS CAROLS ON THE CASTLEREAGH

Our school has again been invited to perform at the Gilgandra Christmas Carols to be held on the lawn of the Cooee Heritage Centre on Sunday, 8 December. 

As mentioned last week, the evening will run a little differently this year, with the following changes:

• There will NOT be a sausage sizzle.  Please bring a picnic dinner, blanket, chair and bug spray.
• From 5:00 p.m. there will be many fun family activities including a Nativity Scene with live animals and actors, a hands-on carpenter’s workshop and special guests, Glenn & Leanne Coombs, who will tell the Christmas story, through voice and painting.  Families are invited to walk around and view the many attractions before the carols commence.  There will be ice blocks, lollies and chips for the children.
• The Carols will commence at 6:00 p.m. 

If you would like your child/children to join our choir please fill in the tear-off slip that was sent home last week and return it to school by tomorrow Friday, 29 November.

HELPER NEEDED TO SELL FAIRY FLOSS AT CHRISTMAS WONDERLAND

Prue Starr has very kindly offered to man a stall at the Gilgandra Christmas Wonderland on Thursday, 19 December to sell the fairy floss and showbags that were leftover from this year's school fete.  Prue is looking for someone to help her at the stall from 4:30 p.m. If you can help out, would you please inform the ladies in the office or contact Prue directly.

GILGANDRA PUBLIC SCHOOL

Gilgandra Public School has asked that we inform our Joey's parents who have children at after school dance lessons at the public school, that their children need to be supervised at all times.

LEAVING FAMILIES DINNER

Those families leaving St Joseph’s this year are invited to our Leaving Families Dinner to be held on Thursday, 12 December at 5:30 for 6:00 p.m. in the school grounds.  This is our way of saying thank you to those families for their involvement with the school over the years.  So, bring the family for tea and please feel free to stay on while the children go off to the social.  An invitation was posted to our leaving families last week.  For catering purposes please RSVP to the school on 6847 2828 by Friday, 6 December.

K-6 SCHOOL SOCIAL

Thursday, 12 December - 7:00 p.m.

All students are invited to our school social to be held at the Gilgandra High School Hall on Thursday, 12 December from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.  Parents are most welcome to stay or to leave their children at the social and collect them at 9:00 p.m.

YEAR 6 GRADUATION MASS

Families and friends of our Year 6 students, as well as any other St Joey’s families who wish to attend, are invited to the Year 6 Graduation Mass at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, 17 December in St Joseph’s Church.  Following Mass, a morning tea will be held for our Year 6 students and their parents. Please bring a plate to share for morning tea. 

END OF YEAR PRESENTATION CEREMONY

Our school community is invited to attend our annual end of year presentation ceremony to be held at the Gilgandra High School Hall on Tuesday, 17 December commencing at 12:00 p.m.  We look forward to sharing this  celebration of our school year with you.

POSITION VACANT: ASSISTED TRAVEL SUPPORT OFFICER

The Department of Education currently has a position to fill to assist with the transport of a student with additional needs to travel safely to and from school.  This position is for three days a week.

Further information about this role is contained in previous newsletters or can be found at:

https://education.nsw.gov.au/public-schools/astp/atsos  

All successful applicants need to obtain a Working with Children Check, obtain the necessary proof of identity and complete the Expression of Interest form online.

HOW TO APPLY: The EOI and documents should be sent to ASTP at atso.astp@det.nsw.edu.au

MERIT AWARDS

Congratulations to the following students who received Merit Awards at Assembly on Tuesday: 

KINDER: Jordee Burgers for trying hard to sound out tricky words when reading out loud, Tessa Hamilton for great contributions to class discussions in Science, Harry Harvey for super sentence work about ‘Koala Lou’ and Jack Jeffery for great work to sort animals into their groups during Science.

YEAR 1: Bridie Jordan for being a cheerful and friendly classmate, Esther Jijo for taking care with her work, Alex Moeris for being an attentive and enthusiastic student and Maka Matekenya for using neat writing to present more detailed stories.

YEAR 2: Grace Johnston for great drawing of 3D shapes, Samuel Luckie for working diligently on his Essential Assessments with great results and Samson Starr for showing a commitment to improve by asking for help when clarification is needed.

YEAR 3: Mary Lesslie for bringing a zest for learning into our classroom each day, Bridie Moeris for always completing her work quietly and without fuss and Hannah Peart for working diligently to complete assessment tasks.

YEAR 4: Taylor Alexander, Pearl Mudford, Laycee Hazelton, Archie O’Connor and Olivia Yates for writing excellent alternate endings to ‘Rising Water’.

YEAR 5:  Estelle Hazelton for working hard identifying and placing coordinates onto a grid and Charlie Howard and Oscar Medd for meaningful contributions to our Antarctica discussions in Geography.

YEAR 6: Alana Spora for great results in the Statistics and Probability Assessment, Arabella Chandler for being a dedicated student who approaches all tasks with care and consideration, Jocelyn Altmann for persistence in her quest to master fractions and Milla Morris for always challenging herself and "Giving of Her Best" even when the tasks are difficult.

CLASSROOM NEWS

Kindergarten

We have been very conscientious workers this week finishing our portfolio tasks. In Maths we explored more properties of 2D shapes and drew some houses and boats using squares, rectangles, triangles and circles as well as revising tricky teen numbers. We wrote about a snowman and made beautiful paper plate Christmas pictures and curly bearded Santas in Art. Some Christmas lights were put up in our room as the countdown to the festive season begins. During Religion we re-visited the story of Noah’s Ark and discussed the beginning of the Advent season that is approaching. We focused on how animals move in Science and grouped them according to their classification. Intensive swimming lessons begin next week, so don't forget to bring your swimmers, towel and money each day. We had a lovely buddy lunch today with our Year 6 friends who have looked after us since we began Kinder.
Mrs Alison Newstead & Miss Lisa  Harvey

Year 1

Year 1 had an amazing time at the Police Station yesterday. We were able to have a tour of the station and see how things operate behind the scenes. We were handcuffed, fingerprinted and locked in the cell! The children all had a look through the Police cars and were driven back to school with flashing lights. A huge thank you to Steve, Josh and Joey for giving up their time to make our excursion possible. In class we read the "Black Book of Colours", a story about a boy who can’t see colours, but he can hear, smell, touch and taste them. We talked about how Braille is used to represent letters and allows people who are blind or vision impaired to read and write using their fingers. In Maths we collected data and used the information to design the perfect playground. We are looking forward to intensive swimming next week. Don’t forget the children will need their swimmers every day. Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Julia Jeffery & Mrs Prue Best

Year 2

Congratulations to Year 2 on your beautiful Mass on Sunday, I was very proud of you all for your reverence, beautiful reading and singing. Thank you to all of those who came along for this special day, it was lovely to have the church full of family and friends. We had our baby photo guessing competition in Science and enjoyed looking at how the teachers have grown and changed. During writing time we have been writing Christmas narratives and focusing on making sure we have an interesting story line as well as each paragraph having appropriate punctuation and descriptive words. We are looking forward to starting intensive swimming next week, don’t forget your swimmers and towel each day as well as $1 for the pool if you don’t have a season ticket. Enjoy a restful weekend!
Mrs Nikkola Thomas

Year 3

Year 3 has been busy learning about the letter patterns for the ‘g’ phoneme such as ‘g', 'gue', 'gg', 'gu' and 'gh’ in Spelling this week. We’ve also been working on planning and composing a factual account of Malala Yousafzai. These have been coming along nicely. During Mathematics we’ve learnt that doubling is multiplying by 2 and halving is dividing by 2. We’ve used the array structure to coordinate the number of groups with the number in each group and generated multiplication fact families, linking multiplication and division fact families. In Religion we’ve read the Annunciation scripture and discussed how this story is an example of Mary being open to receive God’s gift of Jesus. We painted some great Santas to decorate our classroom in preparation for Christmas. Have a good weekend.
Mrs Phillipa Haling & Mrs Swade Wilson

Year 4

As you are reading this we will no doubt be having an awesome time at Burrendong! We will give a full report in next week's About. We were excited to receive some standing desks into our classroom this week. They are proving to be quite the novelty at the moment as the children have the option to spend some time standing as they work. Some children love them, whilst others prefer to sit. It’s nice to have the option. In Geography we have been looking at changes since colonisation and the effect this had on Indigenous Australians. We have also looked at the Murray River and realised a lot of Indigenous tribes were located along this river system including the Darling and Murrumbidgee Rivers.  Enjoy the weekend!
Mrs Melinda Morris

Year 5

We’ve had another busy week in Year 5! In Science with Miss Harvey we are experimenting with balloons and how we can use our breath to make a toy car move. Next week we are going to make balloon rockets and fly them across the classroom. During Geography we are learning all about bushfires. We learnt how they start, what keeps them going and the three different ways they can be transferred. We have been busy working on our leadership speeches. We are almost finished and are now practising saying them to each other. Next week we will practise them more formally in front of the class and in the church, as we prepare to present them in Week 9. In Maths we are consolidating our understanding of angles and how to use a protractor. We have read angles, created angles and identified them. Have a fantastic weekend everyone!
Miss Abigail Dobson

Year 6

The end of the school term is quickly approaching and in Year 6 we are enjoying many additional activities. Today we shared a picnic lunch with our Kinder buddies at Hunter Park then had an ice block and a free swim. We have been leading dance practices with Year 3 as we prepare for our end of year social and looking forward to the different activities during the Knowledge Explosion next week.  In Religion we have been learning about the rituals and symbols associated with the Sacraments of Marriage, Holy Orders and the Anointing of the Sick. During Maths we have been extending our knowledge of fractions by finding a fraction of a fraction and calculating the value of a whole when only given fractional value. Abbreviations and anagrams have been our focus this week in Grammar and we wrote an acrostic poem about our friends as part of our poetry unit in Text Types. Have a lovely weekend.
Mrs Meichelle Schier, Mrs Donna Colwell, Mrs Haylee Barry

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Gilgandra High School