Coomera Rivers State School eNewsletter

Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

It was only 100 school days ago that we excitedly opened the school gates for the 2021 school year and now Semester 1 draws to an end. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the opportunities that we provided to our children across this time. The list of these activities, training sessions and clubs for children is extensive. If your children have not been involved, I encourage you to investigate what is on offer before, during and after the school day each week. I am especially impressed with the school soccer teams who have trained twice each week before school. The amazing part is that their inter-school competition finished some time ago but they just love learning about the sport and improving.

I hope that the staff of the school is able to enjoy a relaxing winter vacation period following their very hard work this semester. I know they will use this time to recharge their batteries in readiness for Term 3.

Report cards

You will have received your child's report card this week. I hope that you are able to discuss the grades and outcomes with your child and celebrate their efforts and successes. For many, this is the result of a lot of focused work.

Phones and driving

Please be careful when driving around our school. We need all adults to watch for children in and around the crossings and car parks as I can assure you that children are not always watching traffic. Please stay off phones while you are driving. It only takes a split second for an accident to occur.

School opinion survey

The annual school opinion survey is being conducted when we return next term. I will send home information in the first newsletter on next term. I encourage all families to be involved.

Kind regards

Vic

Well done to these students on earning their awards this week.

The school held early NAIDOC celebrations this week, so that we could honour the special occasion during the school term before the official week commences on July 4th. As Imogen and Aliyah explained in our live streamed ceremony on Monday morning, NAIDOC Week celebrations are held across Australia each July to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC is celebrated not only in Indigenous communities, but by Australians from all walks of life. This year’s theme is Heal Country. We were honoured to have a number of special guests assist in our celebrations. Mrs Justine Dillon, Ngarang-Wal G.C.A.A Inc. led a Welcome to Country and smoking ceremony. Students and staff walked through the cleansing smoke in reflection and artist Ms Rhianne Williams took our newly commissioned artwork through the smoke to be blessed. The artwork is a representation of the school as a meeting place for different community groups with the Coomera River featured. The artwork will take pride of place in the school and images from the painting will soon be seen worn on staff T-shirts.

Next term the Yarning Circle area will be transformed with native plants and to commence this process the school's Bullang Jarjums team presented the school with a grass tree.

Following the ceremony guests enjoyed a morning tea in the iCentre and viewed a special NAIDOC week display. Mr Michael Crandon, Member for Coomera, contributed to the display - loaning the school a special didgeridoo which was created in 2009 as part of a special program for at risk youth. He also loaned us the incredible before and after photos and story of it being made so our students could learn about it.

NAIDOC Week gallery

This week, selected Year 5 and 6 students were invited to attend a day that models a real STEM conference at Griffith University. By being part of the 'Cutting Edge for Kids Conference', our students and Mrs Pinnington attended a keynote lecture followed by three hands-on STEM challenge workshops presented by STEM Ambassador students from local secondary schools.

Some of the workshops our students participated in were:

Rube Golberg machine:
- Students will collaborate in small groups or a large team to design a Rube Goldberg machine. They will be supplied with a variety of materials to complete a challenge to design a contraption that allows for chain- reactions

Trampoline:
- Students will observe transfers in energy as they work together to construct mini trampolines. Students will be challenge to achieve the highest bounce of a given object.

Bye Bye Bycatch:
- Wherever there is fishing, there is bycatch—the incidental capture of non-target species such as dolphins, marine turtles and seabirds. Modern fishing gear, often undetectable by sight and extremely strong, is very efficient at catching the desired fish species—as well as anything else in its path. A staggering amount of marine life is hauled up with the catch, and then discarded overboard. Despite new technologies and industry recognition of the issue, bycatch is still a major problem. Students will design an alternative to super trawlers, exploring sustainable seafood practices that protect non-target species.

Brilliant Bridge Building:
- Explore the engineering behind constructing the ultimate bridge. Get it right or the whole thing could come tumbling down!!

Awesome Airways:
- Take a long, deep breath for this workshop that explores the respiratory system and our ‘Awesome Airways”!

Supply Run:
- Map a path to deliver goods across nations while being careful of the routes you choose. Think outside the box to find the friendliest and fastest pathways in this mathematical challenge!

This is a very popular conference each year and our students were very appreciative to be able to attend. This was a fantastic opportunity to work collaboratively in Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths challenges with students from other schools while building team relationships with Year 5/6 students from CRSS.

A remarkable act of kindness

Frankie showed amazing character this week. She noticed that her friends were worried about missing their events at the athletics trials day, so she made them personal timetables. Frankie wasn’t participating in athletics herself, so this kind act was completely selfless.

String art

Students in 3/4WH had a blast today with our string art project. Students brainstormed events in history. They then were given a piece of string to create this event and worked in groups to research some fact about the event. After this students walked around to view each other’s presentation and then created a timeline of events. The children blew us away with the events they wanted to research such as Pompeii, 9/11 and the moon landing. Take a look at these pictures and see if you can guess what events they choose.

Illustrators have fun

2B students shared their writing and their artwork to illustrate their stories. Well done!

Push and pull

To finish the Year 2 Push and Pull Forces unit, 2H had a day of making their own car that could be pushed or pulled. Some of us even added a rubber band to make it move on its own after being wound up.

Students in 2T continued exploring push and pull forces. Students were able to work in pairs and create something that needed the push or pull force. There were a few pomp pom catapult’s made, a swing and many other interesting creations. There was some fantastic collaboration and team work happening between students.

Marvel - ous readers

These young readers from 2A certainly enjoyed their Marvel readers this week.

Monsters help in maths

3GN have been using monster-plication to help them with learning their times tables. Great work everyone!

4F construction company

Part of learning about our environment is creating habitat for native creatures - like bees for instance. 4F have been making their very own bee hotel and we will be placing this in our bush land areas to encourage more native bees in the area.

Writers get to work

Well done to these young authors from 4B. They have been showing great commitment to their creative compositions this week.

Prep art show

The prep art show was on display earlier this week. They have been doing some tremendously creative work. Well done!

Teachers v Students

Semester 1 finished this week with the Teachers v Students chess competition. Thank you so very much to the staff who stayed back after school to spend time playing students from their classes. I know that the students were thrilled to have you visit.

Club champions for Semester 1

We also finished our club tournament as well. We have a lot of fine young talent in our club and players have really improved across the past semester as we learned about strong openings to control the centre of the board, developing our pieces, castling and more. Thank you sincerely to our coaches, Mr Ingram, Mrs Hardwick and Mr Burrows for their commitment to the club each week across the semester. Congratulations to:

Xander: Beginner champion
Leo: Junior champion
Archie: Intermediate champion
Jason: Senior champion

Dance

Payton (2DF) participated in her first ever dance competition at a nationals over the weekend & placed second. This is an outstanding achievement. Well done Payton.

Athletics trials

On Tuesday, Coomera Rivers held its athletics carnival where selected students compete in Track and Field events throughout the day. This also allows us to select our District Athletics team, that will head to compete against other students at Griffith University in early August.

Each student did their best and was a pleasure to see a high level of competition throughout the day. We had some records broken and presented our Age Champions with their medallions after their efforts.

Thanks to all of the students and staff who supported the PE team throughout the day.