Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

I would like to open this newsletter by both thanking and congratulating everyone on the calm and careful manner in which you are responding to the changes and challenges placed upon us with the coronavirus. This makes a big difference for school, particularly in a world that sometimes seems to be panicking. Well done!

I also want to take this opportunity to congratulate the school staff on their responsiveness to the changing requirements placed upon them in the past couple of weeks. There has been continual change to the way we operate and this brings added complexities to how we work. Your children have always been their first priority. I encourage families to email your teachers with a short thank you message. They truly have earned the acknowledgement.

The coronavirus and the subsequent restrictions have meant that our school calendar has nearly been emptied.  While we will always do our best to comply with the government requirements, we still want our children to enjoy the experiences at school.  While it is easy to cancel everything, we have taken a more thorough approach of considering each of the activities we do.  For instance, the national day of action against bullying and violence was cancelled but we continued with our free dress day and teachers discussed the importance of safe and respectful interaction.  Thank you to everyone who supported the event.  

During the week, the Department of Education made the decision that from the end of this week, all school trips, camps and excursions must be postponed or cancelled as a further step to implementing the advice on social distancing and reducing the risk in our schools and communities.

Unfortunately this means our Year 6 Camp to Emu Gully can no longer go ahead this term. Rather than cancel the school camp altogether, knowing this will be students final primary school camp, we attempted to postpone the camp until later in the year. Unfortunately Emu Gully is unable to provide an alternative date so we are now in the process of seeing if we can secure another camp destination at the same cost to families. If this fails, we will then reimburse families who have paid. We are doing all we can to ensure events that students talk about for years to come aren’t all taken away however, we are sure you can appreciate, our greatest concern is your children and our staff’s safety and well-being. Please stay patient while we work behind the scenes to see if we can work some magic.

It also means our Year 5 Eureka Excursion can no longer go ahead this term. Rather than have our students miss this great field trip we’ve been lucky to be able to postpone and have secured a booking in Term 4, Week 5.  New dates and information will come out closer to the date however please note that this means we are also able to extend the payment deadline to Monday 13 October 2020.

Queensland Health has also required the school dental van to close.  The hospitals aroiund Queensland require all of the gowns and masks they can access for assisting patients.

Science:     Year 5 Digital Learning this week saw 5W creating posters in their Science lessons. As part of the learning process, students were asked to design a poster to explain to others the different states of matter.  Students had the choice of which app they would choose. They also had to decide on how well their 'app of choice’ would serve them in this task.

Antonina chose to use Pic Collage to put her ideas into poster format.  Explain Everything was Paige’s app of choice and Lincoln decided Keynote would suit his needs.

       
Writing:     Well done to 3WH for the authentic writing purpose they have used this term.  It culminated with a massive day for them today.  This term they have been learning about narratives. They had an audience of Prep students and the purpose was to teach them a lesson with an engaging story. After a lot of work, they  published some amazing stories and shared them with their Prep buddies. And then they hosted a VIP book tour.  Parents and staff came out for the event to view the latest work of our authors. They collected tickled pink and green for growth feedback and parents had prompts to ask about their work. It was fantastic to have so many people appreciate and enjoy their hard work. 

        

Bullying.  No Way! day:   Congratulations to everyone for the sea of orange and activities that have flowed throughout the day as we united to take a stand against bullying.

      

Serving the needs of others:     6F has been learning about how to  develop empathy for others.  This week they discussed how residents of Magnolia Aged Care in Coomera might be feeling, being isolated from their loved ones at the moment and wrote letters to them.  The  students are highly engaged and are determined to produce their best work ever. Having an authentic purpose and audience has really tuned them in to writing.  We are very proud of the empathetic, compassionate young people they are becoming.

We celebrated our Student Excellence Award winners this week by inviting them down to the office for a photo on the Year 2 playground. Congratulations to this group of students who continue to show good character when it comes to their learning. 

Hot cross bun drive is open

Baker's Delight are offering families of our school a choice of delicious Hot Cross Buns.  

The price for a half dozen packet is $7.50 and $2.00 from every packet ordered will be donated to our P&C.

Available to purchase is your choice of:

• Traditional
• Choc Chip
• Apple and cinnamon
• Mocha

Orders are open now on Flexischools and will close at 4:00pm Wednesday 25 March. Orders will be delivered on Thursday 2 April.

Year 4 Drama

In drama this term students have been working on their confidence and presentation through drama games and a self introduction task that all students have presented during class. Last week students chose a skit (a short, humorous play) to learn and present in groups of 2, 3 or 4. Attached are some photos of them rehearsing and performing in our lessons this week. 

Click here to check out 'The Arts' blog for a sample of this week's performances.

Beginner Band

For a group of students that only started playing together a few short weeks ago, they are sounding amazing already!! It is sensational to see the students learning how to work and play together. So far, they have already mastered three exercises from their tutor book and soon will begin the first ‘big’ piece, Power Rock! This week students were given assessment tasks and they are due to be presented in lessons next week. If you have any questions about assessment, please email Mr Owens.

Instrumental Strings and Band photos

If you are wanting to order a group band or strings photo and haven’t received an order form, please see Mrs Little in the office for a special group order form. All group photo orders need to be placed by 27 March otherwise they will attract a late fee.

Changes due to Coronavirus

Coronavirus requirements have resulted in both instrumental and choir rehearsals being cancelled as it is not possible to keep the 1.5m recommended social distance margin.  Instrumental lessons will continue as students can be more easily spaced.

South East Region Launch Breakfast

International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It is all about unity, celebration, reflection, advocacy and action.

Through the partnership with Young Change Agents, South East Region is one of the launch regions for the federally-funded Academy for Enterprising Girls (AEG).

Over 200 girls across the South East have been fully funded to participate in this innovative entrepreneurship program. AEG challenges them to utilise their STEM knowledge and understanding while building foundation entrepreneurial skills and networks through access to the online learning platform and face-to-face workshops.

To celebrate the 'Collective Individualism' of all women and girls across the South East Region, Mrs Pinnington and five of our female students attended the breakfast launch at Event Cinemas this week. Hannah, Abbey, Ruby, Summer (from yr6) and Talia (yr5) represented our school on Monday. Hannah and Abbey also had the honour of being asked to speak to the audience about their experience in 2019 when they contributed to the co-design of the Academy for Enterprising Girls at Griffith University and Mrs Pinnington was asked to speak about the varied entrepreneurial opportunities being offered at Coomera Rivers.

Despite the Gold Coast Round 1 finals for The Fuse Cup being postponed, the team are still having fun playing and learning with each other.

It's definitely not "Game Over" yet!   

We are looking forward to the adventures that Term 2 will bring as we merge driving Mario around the track and kicking goals with FIFA 20!!  Sounds a little bit like Rocket League to me!

Thanks to Mrs Dare for her assistance each week.  Although no match for the team, she showed great sportsmanship.

Sport is cancelled

Effective as of the 17 March 2020 and until further notice all representative school sport is cancelled.  This also includes all school sport trials for District sport as well.  This is the safest strategy as we try to keep everyone healthy in the threat of the current pandemic.  

But before the cancellations, many of our students shone in their respective sports.  Congratulations the students who have already made representative sides this year:

• Sylas (Swimming)
• Trey (Hockey)
• Spencer (Hockey)
• Si'u (Rugby League)
• Noah (Rugby League)
• Vercoe (Rugby League)
• Kobe (Rugby League)
• Flynn (AFL)
• Ataahua and Mia were also invited to attend the 2nd round of Netball trials before they were cancelled. Well done!

    
Broadwater District Rugby League

On Monday, before the announcement, the district held their 2nd Rugby League trial for the 11 and 12 years boys.
Congratulations to the following students who were selected

• 11 Years: Noah and Si'u
• 12 Years: Koby and Vercoe

          
Interschool Sport

We have started gauging interest from students regarding Inter-school Sport but following the department update, the PE team are looking at contingency plans around sport opportunities for students.

Cross Country

Cross Country is currently being reviewed. As per Coronavirus updates, we are aiming to provide a format that limits the amount of spectators.

Cricket clinic with the legendary Ian Healy

On Wednesday, students at Coomera Rivers who play club cricket were invited to participate in a cricket session with one of Australia's greatest cricketers - Ian Healy! They worked on their fielding, bowling, batting and catching. It was a great experience to learn from one of the best, as well as learning how young athletes can improve their skills with minor adjustments. Thanks to the teachers and students who were involved.
     

Children are constantly taking in everything that happens around them, and the recent world medical pandemic is no exception. We’ve heard lots of questions this week about getting sick and how to stay healthy. We took the opportunity to teach our children the real importance of washing our hands, using hand sanitiser and ensuring spaces around us are clean.

We encourage our children to wash their hands regularly throughout their time at OSHC including before and after eating. This week we planned some activities to provide our children an understanding of why we ask them to wash their hands so often. What better way to teach the children then to show them living proof through a stomach-churning experiment involving mouldy bread.

We had a fantastic engaging conversations with the children about why we wash our hands. While having our discussion about germs being invisible we passed around a piece of plain white bread. We asked the children what they thought may happen to the bread over time. We heard lots of creative ideas such as “The bread will go black” & “It will go stinky”

Miss Maddi took some of our students to learn how to correctly wash their hands, ensuring they counted to 20 while they scrubbed. The children then touched a fresh slice of bread. We placed the slices of bread in separate bags to see what would happen and if there would be much difference between slices.

We also wiped slices of bread on the bathroom sink, on door handles, over the Lego table and the rubbish bins. The aim of this experiment is to show the children just how many germs can be on surfaces even through we can’t see them with our eyes.

As a service we are committed to teaching the children the importance of safe hygiene practices. We have emailed all families with details of how our service is managing the evolving situation, and encourage families to ask questions should they have any.

For just $20 you can buy three Ultimate Car Washes valued at $25 each. Total value $75!

Limited vouchers available.  Orders will open at 4:00pm Monday 9 March via Flexischools.  Hoppy’s Car Wash Pimpama is donating all proceeds from the sale of these vouchers to our P&C Association.

Terms and conditions apply:

1. Vouchers must be used in order - 1, 2 etc
2. Same vehicle must be used for all washes
3. Valid for date range April, May & June 2020 only. Strictly no extensions.
4. Large vehicle surcharges apply – from $2.00
5. Excess dirt / bug charges may apply – from $5 bugs, $10 dirt
6. Vouchers not exchangeable for cash
7. Can be used at Hoppy’s Pimpama only
8. Only one voucher booklet per vehicle registration

Incredible value available...

Buy now