Junior School 

From the Head of Junior School

In a school, someone is always having a birthday. My family has stumbled into the daily practice of checking daily notices while we eat breakfast to see if there’s someone we know who has a birthday that day, and there usually is.  Birthdays are a big deal in a Junior School. Students get very excited, understandably, whether its their special day or someone else’s, either way its cause for celebration. What I particularly enjoy about birthdays in a Junior School is the Random Act of Kindness element that these occasions offer. Students wish their peers the most genuine of ‘happy birthday’ sentiments either through song, or thoughtful drawing wishing them happy birthday. Sometimes a small treat brought from home is shared amongst classmates, and more broadly. The birthday celebration is good example of an overt act of kindness shown between students at school. This is wonderful of course, and it’s important for many reasons to recognise birthdays but the aspect I wanted to highlight most was the random act of kindness element and how we can recognise or celebrate moments, large or small. 

Our House Captains are leading the way in promoting a random act of kindness culture in our school. Last week they organised a virtual House Quiz, beaming themselves into every classroom via live stream video. At present, our Captains aren’t able to bring cohorts together in one space or move themselves between classes either, so they’re thinking creatively to maintain that connection and deliver the key messages they set out to build in the Junior School this year. Last Friday’s House quiz was about building community again through virtual groups, learning about our Houses and enjoying each others company as a whole Junior School again. This week small packages of kindness were delivered to each class, inspiring actions of kindness towards each other. 

The notion that we all can make a difference to someone else’s day is a powerful message. Often we don’t fully appreciate how much those small gestures of kindness matter to others, but they sure do!

Well done Captains! Great start to your leadership this term, and a wonderful message of kindness for all of us at this particular phase of the term at GSG.

This week I would like to highlight a unit of inquiry from Year Two. 

For their inquiry, Year Two have been exploring the central idea of ‘Plants and animals are unique to the places they belong to’.

Students have been integrating their English, Mathematics, Science, Art and Humanities curriculum into this inquiry, exploring native flora and fauna in our local region. The class had read a wide range of texts including One Potoroo (a local text set in Two Peoples Bay), Walking in Gagudju Country, Tuart Dwellers and Searching for Cicadas. Students use the context of these texts to draw connections to the inquiry central idea and acquire new language used for non-fiction and fiction writing and relate it directly to their own lives.

Students have been analysing the geography of the Wild Space as well as the geography linked to habitats in Australia and around the world. In Science, Year Twos have been exploring our Wild Space areas, searching for native flora samples to analyse. Gumnuts, flowers and leaves were found and used to make Art installations once they had been analysed for specific features in Science.

It’s an exciting inquiry that draws students into the local habitat we are so fortunate to be surrounded by in abundance, but also to consider the compare and contrast aspects of habitat as we look more broadly across our country and the world. It's such a wonderful experience to see the Year Two students zoom into the micro elements of our habitat then zoom out again to consider the bigger picture of the macro environment we all belong to. Such valuable lessons for appreciating the special features of our environment. These are aspects they will build upon in the years to come when they explore the concepts of sustainability more deeply in Years Four, Five and Six.

With warmest regards, 

Mr Ken Raven | Head of Junior School