Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

This has been a very busy week and the inclusions in this issue of the newsletter attest to this.  Read on to see the brilliance of our children.

Sports days are next week

The biggest item on the calendar for next week is our annual Sports Fun Days.  We have three carnivals.

• Monday - Senior school sports fun day (Years 4, 5 and 6)
• Wednesday - Junior school sports fun day (Prep and Year 1)
• Thursday - Middle school sports fun day (Year 2 and 3)

Important information at a glance:

• All carnivals commence at 9:00am but I recommend all families arrive by 8:45am.  Bring a chair, sunscreen, shade and maybe a picnic rug.  Wear your house colours to earn bonus points too.
• Parents must adhere to the government's current Covid restrictions and this means that masks MUST be worn when you are unable to socially distance.  Please also ensure you check-in using the Queensland check-in app.
• Students MUST stay with their house or class.  Once we start rotation activities (session 2), parents can join their children.
• Flat races start the day and families cannot come onto the oval (safety reasons).   A collision between a Year 6 sprinter and a 4 year old will only end badly.
• Morning tea will be around 10:35am
• Rotation activities commence at 11:00am and parents can move around with the classes as they compete.  These are a great photo opportunity.
• We will try to hold a parent v teacher event but it will depend on time.
• Lunch will be around 12:45pm.

And above all, the only focus we have for the day is participation and fun.  The only winners will be the house with the most points on Thursday afternoon.  

Visit the sections later in this edition regarding Subway lunches and other sports day merchadise.  

Sport houses and colours:

• Colman (Red()
• Foxwell (Blue)
• Pedley (Yellow)
• Siganto (Green)

This photo will scare you

Regular reades of the newsletter will know that I will often implore parents to help keep our children safe by obeying road rules and using patience and respect.  And while we have not had an accident, we have had some close calls.  The photo below shows how these close calls happen.  This young girl was called across the road by an adult after school earlier this week.  The photo is a screenshot from a dash cam video that was sent to me.  You can see the school crossing and supervisors about 25m behind the young girl.  My heart was in my mouth when I saw the girl run out into traffic without a adult escort.  Just out of camera shot was a parent who I could tell had summoned her across.  I hate to think what could have gone wrong.

Please do not do this to your children.  No amount of teaching our children about road safety will overcome the directions that adults give them.  All of us have an obligation to keep our children safe.  Please don't do this any longer.

Solar update

Our solar panels are all installed and only the connection remains.  This will be completed across the vacation.  477 solar panels will certainly generate a lot of power.  We will be able to monitor our system generation and our use once the system is set up.  Check out these drone shots.

Diamond level is elite

Congratulations to these students (& their very proud parents) for achieving Diamond Level at our school.  They join other class mates who have been acknowledged a little earlier in the year.  Diamond Level reflects the highest level of human skills and character virtues.  And more incredibly, a select few have earned this level each year since Year 3.  

Year 3 and 4

Year 5

Year 6

Parent teacher interviews

I will email the link for booking Term 4 parent-teacher interviews, to families at around 7:00pm on Wednesday evening.  The booking schedule will remain open until Wednesday 6 October at 7:00pm.  Please book early as spots disappear very quickly.  Please see your child's teacher if this date does not suit.  

Interview date:  Monday 11 October

Venue:  School Hall

Chicken Pox

We have had a case of chicken pox confirmed at school.  It is just the one case at the moment but plesae keep an eye on your children's health.

Traffic around school

The City of Gold Coast wants to ensure that motorists comply with school zone road rules at and around schools to achieve a safer environment for children and the broader school community. These rules also help to optimise traffic movement and safety.

Please take extra care and obey the signed parking rules when parking on the roads and streets around the school.

Park Safe Vehicles - Licence Plate Recognition (LPR)

As part of the City Parking Plan 2015 to improve parking behaviour on the Gold Coast, City Parking Officers will soon patrol school zones using vehicles, clearly badged as Park Safe vehicles.  These vehicles use Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) which is camera technology fitted to Park Safe vehicles to ensure motorists are parking safely.

Park Safe will operate on school days at student drop-off and pick-up times focusing on pedestrian areas around schools. If a vehicle is found to be parked illegally the City will issue an infringement notice to the registered vehicle owner by post.

Offences to be aware of:

• stopping 20 metres before or 10 metres after a sign posted crossing
• stopping 20 metres before or 10 metres after a bus stop
• stopping within 10 metres of an intersection or corner
• stopping within a bus zone (bayed area)
• stopping on a footpath or nature strip within a built-up area
• stopping in a way that restricts access to a driveway
• stopping on a yellow painted line
• stopping in a loading zone
• double parking for any period of time.

Please park safely and legally to avoid a fine.  For more information visit www.cityofgoldcoast.com.au/parksafe

Keep well

Kind regards

Vic

We had three talented Year 4 students represent us this week at the AB Paterson Public Speaking Competition. Floyd, Lia and Alana took their mySpeak speeches to the next level by participating in this prestigious competition that involved over 120 Year 4 students from across the Gold Coast. The Year 4 competition doesn't actually have award winners or grand finals, but is the introductory level that provides students with the experience of speaking to an unknown audience. While Lia and Alana spoke on the topic of 'Imagine', Floyd entertained the crowd with his comical poem on 'If animals could talk.' All three students were outstanding and will be strong contenders next year, when they return as experienced Year 5 students. We were very proud of them.

Thank you to Vuly who have provided our school community with TWO bikes to raffle!

The first opportunity for our students to be in the draw to win one of these amazing bikes, will be our upcoming Rivers Reward Raffle. Stay tuned for all the details.

The other bike will be part of our Birthday Party raffle. As you know, due to COVID restrictions our planned event had to be postponed but a new date, in early 2022, will be announced shortly.

We are super excited and very grateful to Vuly for this kind donation.

To check out the full range of Vuly products, click here.

Our award winners this week are:

Year 2 visit Currumbin this week

This week the Year 2 students went on an excursion to Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary. For Science this term, students have been learning about living things, their life cycle and what they need to survive. The day out provided many wonderful experiences for students to consolidate their learning. They enjoyed a range of engaging encounters at the Sanctuary including seeing the pelican and eel feeding, watching the 'Wild Skies Free Flight Bird Show' and exploring many animal enclosures. Their favourite part of the day was feeding and patting the kangaroos in the glorious spring sunshine. It was a wonderful day!

Other highlights included:

• A huntsman spider on the bus - Mrs Fischer bravely saved some scared girls from the vicious kid-eater
• One bus broke down on the highway
• A very cheeky Macaw bit Indy! (just a pinch, no blood)
• And we had a few sleepy kids (and parents) on the way the way home

Year 3 spend a day at the museum

This week our Year 3 students enjoyed their visit to Queensland Museum in Brisbane.  There were many cheers of excitement and enthusiasm as we made the trip up the highway and entered the city.

We learned many new things in the Classifying Animals presentation which was engaging and hands-on. Our students discovered the difference between vertebrates and invertebrates, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and more!

There were exclamations of wonder when entering the Dinosaur exhibit and we got up close to fossils and replicas of huge dinosaur bones! Other highlights included the hundreds of animals displays, the ANZAC memorial centre and we even saw LIVE green pythons!

Thank you to our team of teachers and volunteers who assisted us over the two days. This excursion leads us into an awesome Term 4 Science and Information texts unit.

Regional chess tournament

Last Monday, Jason, Amity, Michael and Oliver went to Emmanuel College to represent in Coomera Rivers in a team chess challenge. The opposition was mighty tough, playing against players from Kings, TSS, CAC, AB Patterson College and St Josephs College. Each player played 7 rounds, and each win contributed to the team's overall score. Our students loved the challenge of playing against some of the strongest players on the Gold Coast, and although they didn't win every game, they were all smiles and happy to have the opportunity to participate in such an elite level of chess.

Thank you to Mr Burrows for leading our team at the tournament.

Introducing the Gold Coast through poetry

This term, Year 3 has been learning about writing poetry.  To give 3/4WH a real purpose and audience for their writing we wrote our final pieces for a class of year 6 students up in an aboriginal community named Kowanyama. These students will be travelling to the gold coast soon to visit possible boarding schools. Our poems were all about what they will get to see, hear, taste and experience here on the Gold Coast.

We explored Kowanyama on Google Maps and students were blown away by the fact that their entire town has less people then we have just at our school. The Year 6 students will be writing a poem back to us about what we could see, taste, smell and hear in Kowanyama if we were able to visit.

Our Indigenous Use garden is created

This week, Steve and Brett from Jacobs Well Environmental Education Centre, visited Coomera Rivers to help us with the first stage of our Indigenous Use garden.

Our students learned about native plants that can be used for food, medicine and a variety of other purposes, and then planted many of these plants. They were able to taste some native honey, finger lime, lemon myrtle cordial and a variety of spreads made with native fruits, nuts and berries.

It was a fantastic experience, and we look forward to continuing to develop this space and maximising the learning opportunities it provides.  Thank you to our school Indigenous Champions for developing our progams.

Young learners show off their hard work

This week:

Tension is tight in 2B

This week, 2B took a virtual ride on the world's longest roller coaster to help build tension for a Tightening Tension writing task!  The results were superb!  Well done to our young authors.

Year 1 fire visit

Year 1 were excited to have the fire truck visit this week.  And so did Mrs Davies.  She loved getting dressed up.

Maths investigations this week

It was investigating shapes in Year 3

And 3 dimensional shape invesyigation in Year 5

Our very own Dancing Queen

Congratulations to Payton from 2DF on her competition results the state championships last weekend. Payton represented Queensland in both Jazz & Hip Hop.  Very talented.

Year 4 help out with our flash mob

Congratulations to these outstanding Year 4 dancers who have been chosen to lead the Prep and Year 1 students in the flash mob next week.  Thank you to each of them.

Don't forget to head up to the classrooms at 2:25pm any afternoon next week to see our whole school dance performance.  It is on each afternoon.

Wakakirri is coming

AFLQ Schools Regional Cup

After winning the AFLQ Schools cup on the Gold Coast, our AFL Girls progressed to the Regional Cup which was held at Ormeau Bulldogs AFC on Wednesday.

Our girls have been training every Tuesday afternoon and have been improving each week.  We encountered some very good teams from Toowoomba, MacGregor, Marymount and Redland Bay, and managed to win 2 out of our 4 matches.  We were one win away from progressing to the State Cup. We were really proud of the girls, who gave it their all and left nothing on the field.

They represented Coomera Rivers exceptionally well and it has been a pleasure to see the girls excel in AFL.  Special thanks to the parents who came and supported our team, Mrs Ellison who assisted with our training sessions, and Mr Cope who came in whilst on leave to train and coach our girls.

Running club news

Runners of the week

Subway Lunch Packs are available to order for our Sport Fun Days next week.

• Monday 13 September - Senior Sport Fun Day (Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6)
• Wednesday 15 September - Junior School Sport Fun Day (Prep and Year 1)
• Thursday 16 September - Middle School Sport Fun Day (Year 2 and Year 3)

The $8 meal deal includes a Sub (with your choice of toppings), a cookie (choice of chocolate chip or double choc chip) and a choice of drink.

How to order

Orders are open now, via Flexischools and close on: (Strict deadlines)

• Thursday 9 September - Senior Sport Fun Day (Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6)
• Monday 13 September - Junior School Sport Fun Day (Prep and Year 1)
• Tuesday 14 September - Middle School Sport Fun Day (Year 2 and Year 3)

If you require any further information, please email the P&C.

This week’s collaborative art project was to create a sign for our incredible Art Club. Miss Abby has been working hard on the art program, each week putting a focus on a different art style or technique, and this week was spray bottle painting. The children worked together to create a colourful sign for the art club, each child getting to add their splash of colour on. This activity was great for fine motor skill development, and everyone had so much fun! After a few colours had been added,  some of the children noticed that the colours were mixing together to create new colours. The children experimented with this, adding different colours together to see what they could make. Everyone was excited to see the finished product, and how it would look up on display!

2021 Year Book Sponsor.

Do you own or know of a local business that would be interested in advertising in our 2021 Year Book?

Year Book advertising opportunities are now available.

You can secure your business advertising in our 2021 Year Book for as little as $50!

Advertisers can choose (from the available class pages at the time of payment) which page or pages they would like their advertisement to appear on.

This sponsorship opportunity closes on Tuesday 5 October.

Advertising spots are limited so be quick to reserve your spot!

For more information, please email us at pandc@coomerariversss.eq.edu.au