From the Head of Junior School

Whether you spent the break at home, or decided to venture further away, I sincerely hope everyone was able to enjoy a restful period amongst family and friends. For students, time away from ‘school mode’ is important to refresh and reset for the term ahead. It's been delightful to hear students retell stories of day trip adventures, new hobbies discovered, pyjama days around the house and DIY projects with family over the break. Every student I’ve spoken with has had positive experiences to share from their holiday; well done everyone, sounds like a perfect break!

Just quickly revisiting the final few days from Term Two, I want to extend my congratulations, and thanks, to students and teachers for finishing the term with tremendous activity days. On Thursday and Friday we organised two half days of activities in House groups across the Junior School. Our Year Six cohort were leaders for each of the activities and mentored their Houses through the experiences. Students explored our school farm, made origami animals, constructed mountains from recycled materials, developed coding skills, found their rhythm with drumming and played ball games. It was lovely seeing students of all ages playing, learning and sharing a laugh together. It was a truly fitting finale to a great Semester. You can all be very proud of your efforts.

Fast-forward nearly three weeks and we’re already deep into our first week of Term Three. Students, and their teachers, enjoyed catching-up about holiday adventures on Tuesday before settling back into regular routines again. Although we do have three new initiatives commencing this Term:

New assembly time of 2.20pm to 2.50pm on Fridays
'Stretch & Challenge' Mathematics initiative on Wednesdays, Period Five
'Passions and Pursuits 'activities on Friday afternoons after lunch

The new assembly time has been designed to create another uninterrupted morning block on Fridays that can be devoted to literacy learning, continuing the progress being made through the Promoting Literacy Development (PLD) programme.

The ‘Stretch & Challenge’ initiative is in addition to a classroom teacher's normal Mathematics programme. It is a flexible grouping approach to cover key understandings in Mathematics. Held once a week (Wednesday 11.50am to 12.35pm, Period Five on our timetable), students are grouped in cohort clusters from the ECC, Years Three and Four, Years Five and Six. This initiative targets core mathematical concepts, and meets students at their level of understanding so they can be ‘stretched’ with content and activities that are challenging but achievable. Our students had their first session this week, and enjoyed the opportunity to work through activities on Number concepts. As the key understandings change, the flexible groups may also change to meet the understandings of students, then reach for that next step of challenge.

‘Passions and Pursuits’ offers a cross-cohort learning and community building experience on a Friday afternoon for Pre-Primary to Year Six, with activities that are not easily accessible within regular class structures. Students will be commencing the programme next week, with sign-ups for activities being sent home this Friday. Activities will be rotated and updated every four to five weeks so students will have the opportunity to try different types of activities over time. 'Passions and Pursuits' will be a fun way to end the week for students, whilst learning something new and perhaps finding an activity that becomes a life-long passion for them. Activities offered for the first four weeks include:

Cooking
Digital Media – making short films
Lego Engineering
Maker Space building projects
Dance
Theatre Sports – fun dramatic games

Finally, NAIDOC week has been a deeply moving experience for students across the school. Presentations at the whole school assembly on Tuesday engaged students in this years focus theme ‘Heal Country’. The powerful personal stories from students and awareness building initiatives for students to explore throughout the week have complemented the strong connections GSG has with Noongar land. We share our great thanks for the special environment we all enjoy for our place of learning, and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.

With warmest regards and best wishes for the term ahead,

Mr Ken Raven | Head of Junior School

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