Junior School

Winter is Here

The coldest part of the year has arrived but that hasn’t dampened our spirits in the Junior School. Our Year 7s are busy signing up for their end of term celebration which is the annual House Trivia. On Friday the 28th of June, students will be bused to the Manningham Function Centre at recess where they will enjoy a pizza lunch and a highly entertaining Trivia competition to celebrate the end of the term. Students will compete in their house groups and they can earn extra points by decorating their table in their house colours. At the end of the event, students will be returned to school in time for the earlier end-of-term  dismissal at 2.30pm.

Last week our Year 7s enjoyed a live performance of ‘Verbal Combat’ by Brainstorm Productions. This show addressed cyberbullying, digital reputation and the anti-social behaviours that can result from spending too much time online. Feedback suggested that students were quite engaged and learned some good strategies for positive decision making about their use of social media and digital technologies.

The Year 8s have also been busy this term. At the end of May they travelled to Evs in Croydon to take part in a day of Wellbeing activities with the focus on building healthy relationships. You can read about their experience in the Wellbeing section of this newsletter. During their Bounce lesson last week, Year 8s also participated in an Elevate session on time management. This is their second Study Skills workshop which is designed to teach students how to work consistently and complete larger tasks. The presenters offered strategies to help students break bigger tasks down into manageable amounts of work and showed them how to prioritise their work and use time effectively.

As we near the end of Semester One it is timely to remind students and parents that teachers will soon be finalising their assessments and writing mid-semester reports. It is really important that all Learning Tasks are up to date so that students have the best opportunity to fully demonstrate their learning and achieve their potential.

Please note that we have noticed a few issues creeping in with regards to uniform so just want to reiterate the following:

• Hoodies are not acceptable even with a parent note
• White tops can be worn under school uniform so long as they are not visible at all (this includes sleeves, collar and below the hemline).
• Socks must be plain white all through the year unless a student is wearing black tights, at which time they can wear black socks.

As always we are excited to acknowledge the achievements of some of our Junior School students both within the College and outside. We are so proud of our Year 7 students who competed in the Da Vinci Decathlon a few weeks ago and achieved some outstanding results. Their staff mentor, Annette Niven will provide a full report of those involved, but on behalf of the Junior School team – well done! We also want to recognise Aimon Dowling in 7J who has been selected for the Australian Little League Championships in June. We wish him all the very best.

Please remember that on the last day of term all RSC students will be dismissed at 2.30pm.

Kim Watson

Junior School Coordinator