Week 9 was an amazing week!  Thank you so much to our teachers and P&C for their tremendous work in creating some very special memories for families.  We held:

• Hosted visitors from New Zealand schools
• Volunteer's afternoon tea
• Writer's Camp
• Pizza Pizzazz (our Semester 1 music concert)
• Athletics trials (across 2 days)
• Regional school's NAIDOC Awards
• Grandparent's Day
• The Great Debate
• Inter-school sport
• And more. 

Please check the galleries for each of these events.

National recognition for Coomera Rivers

Coomera Rivers has been recognised as a finalist in two categories of the Australian Education Awards this year.  I am delighted that our teachers and school are being recognised alongside some of the most prestigious schools from across Australia.  In some instances, we are the only primary school in the category.  This is a truly impressive achievement and I am so proud of the school staff.  This follows on from 2018 where we received our first 2 finalist nominations and we actually came second in one of the categories.  Adding a perspective to this achievement is that there are nearly ten thousand schools in Australia.

Week 10

The final week of Term 2 is looking very busy too.  Our celebration assemblies, inter-school sport, report cards, chess finals, STEM Olympiad, Sailing, NAIDOC Day celebrations, Regional band camp and Cutting Edge Kids Conference are all planned out and ready.  I know that everyone will represent our school brilliantly well.

Report Cards

Reports will be available to parents from Tuesday through QParents.

Report cards will be emailed home to families on Wednesday.  If yours do not arrive, please check spam folders as sometimes they can end up there due to the mass generation of reports and your computer protecting you.  If you do not receive the report by Wednesday night at 6:00pm, please email the school and we will send you a copy directly.  

Please read through the report with your children.  There should never be any nasty surprises as teachers contact families to discuss progress regularly.  If your child receives a C grade then this is exactly where the Australian Curriculum wants them to be. Anything higher is an even stronger achievement and is hard to acquire.  

Teachers spend many hours producing reports for the coaches, deputies and me to proof read.  Errors will still sneak through - despite our best efforts.  If there is a typing error on your child's report, please contact the school and we will have it amended and returned to you within 24 hours.  

Have a great week

Kind regards

Vic

Congratulations to the following students for receiving a Student Excellence Award this week. 

Grandparents Day at Coomera Rivers is one of the most important and special events on the school calendar.  It started in 2011 and each year has seen it grow in both the number of grandparents attending and for some, the distances they travel just to share the morning with their grandchildren.  

The day is a great opportunity for our students to recognise the important role grandparents play in helping our communities to thrive.  By passing on their heritage, skills and experience to third generations, grandparents provide a foundation of identity and connection that helps younger generations build enduring relationships with family and community.  This years Grandparents Day was a huge success! Our students were able to share their learning, and we as a school were able to deepen our relationships with families and extended families within the community.

There were just under 600 Grandparents on site and the buzz of excitement was unmistakable.  Our P&C organised and planned an amazing event for our families.  Well done to everyone for all of your efforts in making this special day the success it was.

Our reputation for having a strong debating program was only strengthened this Friday when our Year 6 students competed in The Great Debate. The Great Debate is now in its 5th year and sees students from Year 6 compete in two debates against Pimpama State Secondary College's Year 7 students. While some may argue that a debate between a high school and a primary school seems a little unfair, our students embrace the challenge and prove that anything is possible when you put the time and effort into giving it your all.

The topics and our teams this year were:

That all parents should do parenting courses (CRSS - Negative)
CRSS Team: Kilarney, Isabella L, Isabella W & Zharia

That smoking cigarettes should be illegal (CRSS - Affirmative)
CRSS Team: Ava V, Georgina, Imogen & Ashton
Chairperson: Joshua J
Timekeeper: Erana

Our students spoke with conviction, confidence and maturity beyond their years that saw them win both these debates. So it looks like all parents are off the hook and don't need to complete those parenting courses and if we have it our way, tobacco companies are going out of business!

The Great Debate is one of the first debates for the year within our extensive debating program at Coomera Rivers. This competition also serves as an exemplar debate for the Coomera Alliance Debating Competition that involves 9 other schools in our local area. These schools formed part of our audience on Friday and we are sure they learned a lot about what makes a powerful debating team and the role of each person on the team.

A very big thank you to our adjudicators, Councillor Cameron Caldwell and Rod Dixon and Francesca Thorn from Toastmasters Runaway Bay. All three adjudicators are masters in the public speaking and debating world and were blown away by the calibre of speakers.

Debating provides students with an opportunity to critically analyse contemporary issues through multiple lenses and always look at both sides to any argument. No only are they developing their oratory skills and confidence but they are developing essential skills that will make them knowledgeable and articulate future leaders and citizens. Debating is a program we value highly at Coomera Rivers and we look forward to future debates throughout the year.

Congratulations to our students on a very deserving win and thank you to Pimpama State Secondary College for partnering with us in fantastic and worthwhile competition.

Three of our most talented young authors attended the Jacobs Well Writers Workshops this week.  Their works will soon be be published.  

What a great evening of music making it was!!  The Prep Choir was ever so cute, the string ensembles were sensational and the Junior and Senior Bands finished the evening with a bang.  And of course we could never forget the Year 1 Choir singing about how small the world is, the Year 2/3/4 Choir singing about pirates and mice and finally the Year 5/6 Choir singing about how we are all family. A wonderful evening with many light-hearted moments and of course, with pizza for dinner and donuts for dessert, nobody could ask for much more.

A huge thank you to all the teachers involved - Mrs Morris, Mrs Blyth, Mrs Stephenson, Mr Owens and Mrs Zander - for all their hard work over the last term and a half, but more importantly, a massive thank you goes to all of the students involved.  The hours of practice they have put in at home, the time devoted during lunch break or before school rehearsals meant that they wowed us all last night.  Congratulations to them on their amazing talent and efforts.  A final thank you goes to the mums, dads and extended families who have ensured our musicians have time to practice at home and make it to rehearsals each and every week.

Bring on the next performances!!

STOP PRESS!        

The Year 2/3/4 Choir have been invited to perform on Monday’s assembly! All students will need to arrive at school by 8:15am, move to their classrooms as soon as the first bell goes and have their name marked off before quickly making their way to the hall so we can get ourselves ready on the choir risers.

Congratulation to all of our athletes who competed on Tuesday and Wednesday this week in our Track and Field events.  Thank you to everyone who helped make the day such a great success. 

There are 42 records that we maintain and ten of these were broken this year.  Impressively, our Runner's Club, Strength & Conditioning Club and Kokoda training continues to see the 800m records given a shake.  Three of the six 800m records were beaten this year and the remaining three only survived by a few seconds.

Early in Term 3, our school team will compete at the District Athletics carnival.  It's a great achievement to be selected in the school athletics team and we wish them well at the carnival.

2019 Age Champions

• 10 Years Boy - Keagan
• 10 Years Girl - Zharnae
• 11 Years Boy - Ashton
• 11 Years Girl - Ava
• 12 Years Boy - Nathan
• 12 Years Girl - Lily-Mae

Coomera Rivers Athletics Records

Inter-school sport

Good luck to all of our teams that will be in their last round of ISS on Monday.  Here are the results from last week (Week 3 of competition).

Good luck to Natahalia, Trey and Spencer when they represent South Coast at the state hockey championships this weekend.  They are true talents of the future.  Here they are getting ready for their flight to Townsville.  

This year, Coomera Rivers State School put forward four nominations for the South East Region NAIDOC awards. One of our year six students, Aryannah was successful in her section of the regional awards.

Aryannah has recieved the 2019 South East Region NAIDOC Barna Jarjun Student Excellence Award for the category of Social, Emotional and Academic Growth.  She received her award at the awards ceremony at Pacific Pines High School this week, alongside her family and some staff from Coomera Rivers.

We congratulate Aryannah on her tremendous growth here at Coomera Rivers and are excited to have had her successes celebrated. Great job Ary!

NAIDOC Week will be celebrated at Coomera Rivers in Week 10. All classes will be writing their own class Acknowledgement of Country to display at the entrance to their room, or in a prominent position in your classroom.  We will be including the Acknowledgement of Country at class meetings too.  All classes will also be celebrating NAIDOC Week in Week 10.  Make sure you see what they have been doing.

Does your family identify with being a New Zealander and/or Pacific Islander?  We would love for you to complete the following 2-minute survey to help us gain more information about our school community.

If you would like to speak further about future cultural initiatives or activities as mentioned in the survey, please click here to email Miss Jemma Findlay.

Please click here to start the survey .

This week at OSHC we have been focusing on working together as a team. We have aimed to provide as many opportunities for the students to communicate both verbally and non-verbally, with the purpose of developing their team work skills.  Each afternoon, the students and educators have been enjoying playing group games during rotations. Adding to this, the senior students have been taking turns at explaining and coaching their favourite group games to their peers.  One of the students favourite activities this week was playing group trivia in the OSHC room.  After gathering from rotations, students had a great time and demonstrated their ability to work well with other students across all age groups. We are looking forward to providing more opportunities similar to these in the coming weeks.

Attached to this newsletter is information regarding the 2019 University of New South Wales International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS).  This is a highly recommended assessment program offered for students in years 2 - 6. Focus areas include Digital Technology, English, Maths, Science, Spelling and Writing.  You have the choice of which test or tests you'd like your child to participate in. So if you believe your child has a real talent or strength in one or more of these areas, why not have them sit the assessment and receive recognition for their aptitude? Each participating student will receive a diagnostic report as well as a certificate to recognise their achievement.  These tests are particularly useful for students wishing to apply for scholarships and/or high school excellence programs.  For further information, please click here to email Wendy Artz.

The Term 2 afternnon tea for volunteers was held this week.  While the group was small in number, it was big in passion for our children and our school.  We were able to raffle off a few small prizes and spend some time with the team, sharing some very interesting and funny Bingo stories.

Thank you sincerely to everyone who contributes time to our school as a member of our volunteer army.