Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

Gosh - the winter weather certainly arrived in force this past week.  Wednesday was a very chilly day with the westerly wind making things quite uncomfortable outdoors.  Despite the cold, the opportunities for our kids continued with Year 4 attending Tallebudgera and Prep visiting Sea World on the first ever school excursion.

And next week will see more things happening at the school.  Be sure to check the calendar and class SeeSaw.

Preppies visited Sea World

Our Preppies went on their first ever school excursion this week when they visited Sea World.  The excursion was part of their current units of work and they just loved the seals, dolphins, smelly penguins, cool jelly fish, huge stingrays and my personal favourite, the sharks.

Thank you to our staff team who planned, organised and ran the excursion so that everyone had a safe and memorable day.  Special thanks to the mums, dads and grandparents who also helped supervise.  A job well done.

Helicopter to visit (Wednesday)

The Pacific Air Show is being held on the Gold Coast on the weekend of August 16-18.  It was an enormous event in 2023 and this year will be just as great.  One of the promotional events the air show runs is a competition for students, where the prize for the winner, is a flight to school in a helicopter. This year, one of our students, Ella (5V), has won the prize!

The helicopter is scheduled to land on the school oval at 9:00am on Wednesday 24 July.  Arriving 30 minutes after the start of the school day will give us time to organise classes to view the event. The oval will be marked out with a landing / exclusion zone (30m radius) and classes can view from these safe positions. We will do a practice at some point this week so we can see where the sun is positioned so we can organise the best vantage points for students.

The helicopter will land, wait for passengers to leave the exclusion zone and the take off again. No other children will be near the aircraft. Once we watch the helicopter depart, we will all return to class for the day.

Media and permissions:

As this is an external promotional activity (supported by the school and Department), there will more than likely be television and print media joining us.  There is a strong likelihood that the media will take crowd images as well.

We assume that all families are supportive of this so:

• If you give consent you need to do nothing further.
• If you DO NOT CONSENT to the possibility of your child being included in these images, please email BOTH Mrs McMurtrie and your class teacher as soon as possible. These students will still view the helicopter landing, but we will stay separate from the main group to avoid being filmed or photographed.

Joining us?

Families are very welcome to join us to view the event. Please follow the directions of staff and always remain outside the exclusion zone. You are welcome to take photos as well.

Respectful relationships lessons at school

Across the next eight weeks at school, all students will be involved in learning about the Protective Behaviours and Healthy Relationships curriculum. We will be teaching and reinforcing to students the importance of making decisions to enhance their health and safety.

All content and activities are directly from the Australian Curriculum, are age-appropriate and is presented by staff, free of discrimination, and mindful of the wonderful diversity that exists in different relationships and families.

If you are happy for your children to participate, nothing is required of you as we will be automatically including all students in these lessons.  However, we respectfully support parent wishes to withdraw their children from the program should they wish.  We ask that parents complete the 'Opt Out' form that was sent home earlier this week and return it to school before the due date.  Please contact your child's teacher should you require more information.

Public speaking coaching sessions start next week

Is your child is interested in competing at the AB Paterson Public Speaking Competition on 2 September this term.

The dates of the competition are:

• Year 4 - 6 Heats
  • Monday 2 September
  • Times to be advised 
• Year 5 – 6 Finals
  • Tuesday, 3 September
  • Times to be advised (Normally late afternoon)

• The year 4 section is not a competition but students who participate receive valuable experience in public speaking.
• We can offer unlimited spots for Year 4 speakers however, there is a cap of five spots for each of Year 5 and Year 6 competitions. This means that we might need to conduct a selection process that we have called a ‘Speak-Off’. It will be through this process that the successful five students will be selected.

Speaking times are:

• Year 4: 2 minutes
• Year 5: 4 minutes
• Year 6: 5 minutes
      

Thursday afternoon preparation and coaching sessions

We will be working with Mrs Hardwick (our school coordinator of this competition). Given our passion for public speaking and experience in this area, we are offering Thursday afternoon FREE coaching sessions:

• Venue: Staffroom
• Time: 2:30-3:30pm

These free sessions are not compulsory, but we are offering these to help our speakers fine tune their speeches and delivery, in preparation for the AB Paterson competitions. If you would like to access these sessions, please email Mrs McMurtrie with your child’s details (including how they will be going home at 3:30pm). 

We will send home paper letters with interested students containing with more details about the competition.

Kind regards

Vic