Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

This has been another eventful week at school and next week looks to be even busier with the school musical being our headline activity.  Nonetheless, please enjoy scrolling through the photo galleries from this week as they are filled to capacity with what has been happening.

P&C meeting

The P&C meeting for October is planned for this coming Tuesday evening.  Two key agenda items include:

• The 2021 school resource scheme costs and inclusions; and
• Term 4 human relationships education for all students.

Please come along to have your say.

Human relationships education is coming this term

HRE is part of the Australian Curriculum so it must be taught at school.  However, teaching children about sexuality and personal safety can evoke strong opinions from parents so it is important that all parents know what is covered in the program. 

Our school will be using the True Relationships organisation again this year to assist teachers with the All School Program that will be covered.  Click here to go to the website that will provide more information about the program.  All students will be involved in the lessons - except if their parents opt them out.  

I have included the two information brochures below - one senior school and one junior school.  I encourage you to peruse them closely and contact your child's teacher should you have any questions.  Remember, the P&C meeting on Tuesday evening will be the BEST place to come to find out more information.

Lower primary brochure for download

Service recognition

Congratulations to our Business Manager, Andrea Porch on winning the Community Award at the Queensland schools conference gala dinner this week.  She won the award for her outstanding service to our community where she supports the School Council, P&C Association and our OSHC.  I am delighted for her to receive this recognition as it is very well deserved.

Important dates

We will keep adding to this list of events as we finalise our plans the conclusion of the 2020 school year.   Please check this list each week and add the pertinent information to your fridge calendars.  

Kind regards

Vic

Congratulations to everyone who has been recognised this week.

Prep to Year 2

Year 3 to Year 6

Dress up day was awesome!

Book Week Dress Up Day would have to be one of the biggest highlights of the year. Witnessing the creativity and ingenuity of the costumes certainly has everyone entertained ~ even our staff joined in on the fun, coordinating costumes and creating team themes that were imaginative and in some cases..... comical.

This year the theme of 'Curious Creatures, Wild Minds' saw many mad scientists, Einsteins, tourists and aliens and then we also enjoyed the many characters come to life from various story books. The bonus behind any event like this is that students begin discussing characters from the books they enjoy and then inspire others to check them out, thus highlighting the importance of celebrating this valuable event.

While students paraded their costumes for their class and year level, teachers were tasked with the difficult decision of selecting a class winner. This winner was then sent to the cohort deputy who was assigned the most difficult task of deciding an overall 1st, 2nd and 3rd year level winner. This was no easy feat.

A massive thank you to our P&C who once again supported our event and donated the prizes for our lucky recipients.

1st Prize ~ Movie Voucher
2nd Prize ~ Mini Golf Voucher
3rd Prize ~ iPlay Game Voucher

Congratulations to our year level winners and to all parents, grandparents and family members for your effort in making this day so fun for everyone.

Gallery 1

Gallery 2

Gallery 3

Tech girls movement

The Tech Girls Movement Foundation delivered an online workshop this week for some of our students for the Australian Government initiative Academy for Enterprising Girls (AEG) across Queensland. This program is designed to help create an entrepreneurial mindset and build confidence in female students aged 10-18.

The workshop was facilitated by Jaq who is a Neuroscientist & a University Lecturer in Robotics with a real passion for changing gender inequity in STEM fields.

15 girls from Year 6 enjoyed a morning of designing, creating and sharing their entrepreneurial ideas and finished off with an app design to solve a community problem related to the Global Goals. Plenty of smiles to end the session with their certificates and swag bags.

Year 3 investigate shapes

Well done to the students in 3B and 3GB this week when they were busy investigating the characteristics of two and three dimensional shapes.

Aiden shares his appreciation

For homework, Aiden wrote a letter to Bluecare to thank them for all their services throughout COVID.  And they were very appreciative.

The wise little owl

Lyra and Harper both have a copy of a book called The Wise Little Owl. Their Aunty Alle is the author and before she passed away in 2014 while battling breast cancer, she wrote a few children’s stories.  The Wise Little Owl is the second book published.

This book is now in our school library thanks to the kind donation from Lyra and Harper.  

Science and puppets

Students in 1D and 1C have been exploring light and sound within their science unit and had lots of fun making shadow puppets this week.  They experimented with the shadows created by the sunlight.  Learning is fun!  

A budding author is recognised

Last term, some of our talented and passionate Year 4 writers entered the 2020 Seven Steps Narrative Writing Competition, as part of their Hour of Power, Story-a-thon group with Mrs Walsh.  Late this week, the winners, runners up and highly commended recipients were announced.

We are excited to report that Maya from 4C was shortlisted and awarded highly commended. This is an amazing achievement in a national competition with over 1900 entries. Congratulations Maya!

Year 4 day camp

The arrival of coronavirus to our shores earlier this year meant that many of our planned school activities for the year were either cancelled or changed.  Year 4 camp was one activity that changed from a sleep-over camp to a day camp.  A change of venue and a change of season saw the students and teachers head off to Runaway Bay Sports Centre this week to take on the teamwork challenges programs. 

It was a full day of collaboration and creativity where teamwork was brought to the forefront.  Thank you to the Year 4 staff who supported the students across the day.  They did an amazing job.

And in classrooms

Reading, writing, investigations and maths this week have all resulted in some terrific learning outcomes.

Gala Day against Picnic Creek

Picnic Creek State School will be coming to Coomera Rivers to play us in a soccer, rugby league and netball.  All of our teams have been training hard and are looking impressive. Thanks to the coaches for giving up their time to provide these sporting opportunities for our students.

Soccer

Thanks to Scarlett, Kaysiyah, Adisynn and Ariana (5R) for assembling our new portable goal posts.

Prep KidFit

Cricket Queensland have kindly provided each Prep student with their own cricket ball to practise their throwing and catching skills. This is through the Mascot Challenge. If your child is keen to play cricket, head to playcricket.com.au for information.

Given the scale of our school workforce, we have chosen to have a single staff appreciation day instead of multiple days for the various roles within our school.  The Staff Appreciation Day is planned for Friday 30 October. 

Please let our staff know how much you appreciate them by sending them a personal message or, should you choose, by providing them a small gift.  I know just how hard they work to contribute to this community and ultimately, your children.  

Day for Daniel

We are recognising Day for Daniel on Friday 30 October with a free dress day.  We would like everyone to wear their best red clothes and provide a gold coin donation to the Daniel Morcombe Foundation.  For more information about this event, please click here.

The 2021 book lists are ready for on-line ordering through our provider.  Follow the simple steps outlined below on how to place your orders.

Families will receive an electronic copy of book lists from their child's teacher next week.  This will enable you to hit the back to school sales in early 2021.  

The Power of Friendship

We love seeing new friendships form at OSHC.  Every day we see our children playing with each other, and sometimes we witness a new bond be made between kids that wouldn’t usually play together. This is what the service is all about! It’s great hearing all about new and old friendships, whether they are the same age or not, same gender or not, everyone seems to find someone to play with! It’s very sweet seeing the older kids play with the younger ones. We see them skip together, help each other play bulrush, help them throw a basketball into the hoop and so much more! What’s even better is seeing the seniors play in the home corner with the younger ones, participating in dramatic, imaginative play.

Friendships are such an important part of the service. To celebrate this each month, we make friendship bracelets to give to our amazing friends!