Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

This has been yet another terrific week of activities and opportunities for our students.  In the past four school days alone, our children have:

• Visited Toowoomba for the girls in STEM 'It takes a spark' conference
• Afternoon busking – the kids were great!
• Wakakirri rehearsal after school
• Running club before school - 3 days
• Rugby league training session before school
• AFL training session after school
• Chess club after school
• IT clubs on Tuesday & Thursday afternoons after school
• Selection process for debating teams (Year 6)
• Selection for school sports teams (Years 5&6)
• Prep Mother's Day celebrations
• Year 1 Mother's Day celebrations and
• Kokoda training session (Saturday from 6:00am)

Our school staff is amazing in what we offer our students. 

Honour your financial agreements with the school

It is expected that all debts that families may create and hold with the school are met - regularly by instalment or paid in full.  We are always willing to assist families where we can but I refuse to allow school funds to abused.  If families:

1. Have an outstanding account with the school, excursions and camps will not be available to your children until payments are up to date or finalised. 
2. Request the IT resources be supplied as part of the resource scheme, then the resources will be provided all year.  They will not be removed from your child.  
3. Are paying by instalments, we need to see regular payments.  
4. Have money owing from last year or previous years, the balance will remain on your account and be passed to the next child should your child graduate to high school.  Please refer to point 1.      

Please contact Mrs Hibbert on 55968333 if you have any concerns or questions.  

NAPLAN is being held across the next two weeks

If your child is in Year 3 or Year 5 this year, you will need to have them ready for NAPLAN (Starts this coming Tuesday morning).  Across the past few months, we have been putting the necessary systems in place at school to make sure it all goes smoothly because NAPLAN will be completed on-line this year and students will need their iPad ready.  Parents do not need to purchase any additional items to the regular school requirements but children will need their device (fully charged), earphones and the NAP browser app ready every day.  If you would like your child to have every chance to do well, they need these resources and they need to be at school on time.  We start the tests each morning.  

And to all of our wonderful mums and grandmas...

Have a great week

Kind regards

Vic

The prep area was inundated with princesses and princes on Friday morning as mums and children alike dressed up in celebration of mother's day. The students pampered mums by giving massages and painting nails and created a variety of crafts to take home.

Then later in the day, the Year 1 team opened their classrooms for afternoon tea and students had fun sharing work and many activities with their mums. Check out the galleries below.

Congratulations to:

• Chelsea L (6D)   -           1st prize of a $100 massage voucher from Health Link Massage at Westfield Coomera and $50 movie voucher from Event Cinema Westfield Coomera
• Aurora S (1C)   -             2nd prize of a $100 massage voucher from Health Link Massage at Westfield Coomera
• Georgina B (4P)   -          3rd prize of a 2 hour house clean voucher from Mop and Sparkle
• Allanah D (Prep S)    -    4th prize of a Scentsy pack from Scentsy

Thank you to our sponsors for providing these prizes and to all of our families for their support of the raffle. We hope all of the mum’s enjoy a lovely Mother’s Day this Sunday.

As a child, my world was limited by the distance my bike would take me.  Today, a child's world has no such boundaries.  They can access the world and not physically leave their home.  This access is awesome but can be fraught with invisible peril.  We would never give our children a street map to navigate themselves through Brisbane for a few hours alone.  But because they are in the house, we allow them to travel further and communicate with others and without any supervision.  I already know what will eventuate if you allow your children this unchecked freedom.   

Our school will not promote social media use by students because of the necessary supervision required.   Parents need to be aware of the potential dangers if they allow their children to enter this space.  Social media (including Messenger) and the WWW is a dangerous place for children.   Children in primary school are just not developmentally equipped with the skills to manage in these environments without your direct help.  They do not have the emotional capacity to manage in the minefield of social commentary.  You only need to scan community Facebook pages to see that adults often lack these skills as well.  

I urge all families to study the content of the e-safety site and if children simply must have social media access then parents must always supervise all on-line activities.  As I said, I already know what will happen if you don't.   

https://www.esafety.gov.au/

Mrs Pinnington, Miss Bray, and three Coomera Rivers' students, Imogen, Hannah and Josie presented in two workshops at the 'It Takes a Spark' conference in Toowoomba on Thursday.

Most conferences currently being offered on STEM, STEAM and Entrepreneurship tend to be targeted towards teachers and involve a series of speakers and the occasional mini-workshops. This conference was designed to be different because it is designed by students and teachers for students and teachers.

The intent of the 'It Takes a Spark' conference is to bring together girls and their teachers to connect with inspirational female industry role models, share their current school based activities and projects using an authentic sharing and experiential model, create networks of teachers and student teams, and solve social justice design challenges.

The participation of the students was as important as teachers as the intent was to ignite, empower and nurture both students and teachers to be leaders of STEAM and entrepreneurship within their schools.

The workshops and social justice design challenges were all hands-on and students and teachers experienced first-hand what it is like to be part of great STEAM and entrepreneurial learning. 

Pizza Pizzazz:          

Our next music performance is our mid semester concert called Pizza Pizzazz. There will be two concerts so please mark the following on your calendars and keep an eye out for the permission slips heading home soon.

Date:  Wednesday 19 June

• Concert 1:  Hawaiian Notes
  • All String Students, Prep and Year 1 Choirs.
  • Students arrive 5:45pm, Concert time 6:15pm-6:40pm

• Concert 2:  Supreme Quavers
  • All Band Students, 2/3/4 and 5/6 Choirs.
  • Students arrive 6:15pm, Concert time 6:45pm-7:10pm

Year 3 drama classes

Thank you to the families who sent in props for their children to practise with in class, please continue to send them in :) 

Thank you to the families who supported our music groups this week for busking.  As always we had a brilliant time performing for you.

Broadwater Touch selection

Congratulations to Chezaan for being selected to represent the Broadwater district in U12 Girls Touch. Chezaan was also selected in the Broadwater Netball team.  This is a great achievement.

Running Club is back

It was great to see everyone getting back into Running Club this week.  We encourage students to bring spare shoes and socks as there is often a very heavy dew on the grass in the mornings. Reminder that we have Running Club on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 7:45am -  8:15am.  It is open to students and parents of all ages.

Rugby Union trials

We will be holding trials at school on Monday to select students to attend the District trials that are coming up soon.

Inter-school sport starts in two weeks

It is just over 2 weeks until inter-school sport starts for our senior students.  Training is looking great and our teams are showing great commitment to their sports.

Before-school basketball sessions on Tuesdays

Mr Murillo, an accredited basketball coach, is running free basketball sessions on Tuesday mornings.  See Mr Murillo or Mr Burrows for more information.

The cooler weather is certainly settling in and it's even chillier when it's 6:00AM! The Nerang National Park was the location for this week's practice and our Crusaders were up early on a Saturday morning to tackle our longest training session.  While it was only meant to be a 2.5 hour training session, it turned into 3 hour training for half of our group when they took a wrong turn.  The hills were steep, the terrain was rocky but our effort was phenomenal.  Our teams are more than ready for the Schools Cup on June 1.  We covered a distance of around 14 km and our GPS watches tell us we climbed an equivalent of 134 flights of stairs.

A really big congratulations to our students and teachers and thank you once again to our sponsors at WildEarth.

Woolworths has just launched their Earn & Learn program, and we're joining in again. For those parents who aren't aware of the program, if you shop at Woolworths between May 1 to June 25, you can earn stickers.  Our school will be collecting those stickers which we can then redeem for new school equipment including art and craft supplies, sports gear, teaching aids and much more. There are thousands of things we can choose from.

So for any parents who shop at Woolworths, please collect the stickers and drop them in to our collection box, which is located near the volunteer sign in iPad in Corporate Services.  Thanks for helping us out!

On Wednesday 15 May we will have the team from the Commonwealth Bank at Coomera Rivers to open student banking accounts.

Please see the flyer below for times and what you need to open your account.  If you have any questions, please email the P&C.

The next lucky recipient of the Woolies Breakfast is Year 2!  Please see all the details in the below flyer.  Thank you to Woolworths Coomera East of their ongoing support of our school and community.

In the next week or so we will be sending home details of the following community events:

• Friday 14 June - Bingo Bonanza - our annual parent social event (with onsite babysitting available)
• Friday 21 June - Grandparent's Day
• Saturday 3 August - Coomera Rivers Community Fair

Make sure to mark these dates on your calendar today!

Please remember that if you would like to volunteer in any part of our school or on school excursions you MUST be a registered and inducted volunteer.  This is a legal requirement to ensure that we promote student and adult safety while you are at school.  We teach the children exactly what they need to do in certain circumstances so it is important that you know too.

To volunteer in any part of our school or on school excursions you MUST be a registered and inducted volunteer.  The induction is super easy.

Details below on how you can register ….