Welcome to another fortnight, in which the 'great things that are always happening' at Ben Venue just, well... keep on happening! Last fortnight we held our K-2 and 3-6 cross country carnivals, a Stage 3 drama workshop with The Arts Unit, Stage 2 and 3 students enjoyed a visit from the Bell Shakespeare Company, and we held our trivia night in support of the Stage 3 Canberra excursion.

This fortnight, our Da Vinci Decathlon team travel to Sydney to test their intellectual mettle at the state competition, our fastest cross country runners compete at the district carnival, Year 6 students visit ASC for a day with secondary 'future teachers', our Stage 2 athletics program continues, our netballers compete in a gala day, and our three choirs (Stage 1, 2 and 3) compete at the Armidale Eisteddfod.

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Trivia night success

An absolutely massive thank you goes out to everyone who attended our trivia night on Friday and so generously supported our fundraising efforts to reduce the cost of the Stage 3 Canberra excursion to families.

Equally, a huge thankyou to the local businesses that so generously supported the event through the donation of many fantastic prizes. Special mention to the Great Hops Brewery for the free use of their venue and donation of 50% of the cost of all special meals sold on the night. Please check out the list of business below and support them when you can.

Much fun was had by all, and a total of $7064 was raised to reduce the cost of the students' trip to Canberra.

Thank you to Tom Piddington, who helped to generate a significant portion of this amount when auctioning off donations. Thankyou to our P&C, particularly Nicole Blackman for working with these local businesses to support the evening. Thank you also to Mr Osborn for his MC skills, ensuring there was never a dull moment throughout the evening.

Bell Shakespeare

The Bell Shakespeare Company visited Ben Venue last week, taking Stage 2 and 3 students on a voyage into the life and works of 'The Bard'. Students saw Shakespeare's characters, language and narratives come to life in The Wonderful World of Will - a performance from the Bell Shakespeare Company's The Players, who bring Shakespeare to schools across the nation. They learnt how Shakespeare used language and themes such as love and death in his plays and learnt how to use some of his techniques in their own writing.

To help cover the cost of this incursion, we were successful in securing a grant from the Bell Shakespeare's Sharing Shakespeare initiative which is an organisation who help bring in-school programs to rural schools.

Drama workshop

Stage 3 students who elected to participate in a drama workshop run by The Arts Unit enjoyed working with a specialist drama teacher last week. Ben Venue welcomed some students from Drummond Memorial PS who joined the activities, as students learned how to utilise space and developed techniques to convey emotion in drama performances.

Cross country

In Week 2, both the K-2 and 3-6 cross country carnivals saw our students put through their paces over 1, 2 or 3 kilometres. Both events were another showcase of our students' positive attitude, participation and support of each other. Thank you to Ms O'Hara for organising the 3-6 carnival, Mrs Mitchell for leading the K-2 carnival and to our student leaders, for their help and their encouragement of younger students as they ran.

See the full report and results of the 3-6 event in the Cross Country section of this newsletter.

Assembly

At 12:30 pm next Thursday 21 May, a K-6 assembly will be held in the hall to induct our Student Representative Council. Families are invited to attend. Students will also provide reports on recent events and achievements including the cross country, Da Vinci Decathlon, debating workshop, drama workshop, netball competition and fundraising.

Cam Pryce

Principal

Ben Venews

Kind, safe learners

Week 4 Term 2 · 11 May 2026

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