Primary School

ECC Mother’s Day Morning  

Mother’s Day in the ECC was a truly special occasion, filled with warmth, joy and a strong sense of connection. It was wonderful to welcome our mums and special friends into the classrooms, where they were celebrated and spoiled through a range of thoughtful, student-led activities. The pride on the children’s faces as they shared these moments, and the genuine appreciation shown by our guests, created a beautiful atmosphere throughout the building.  

We wish all mums and special guests a relaxing day on Sunday! 

Mokare Day 

It has been a busy week! We went all out for Mokare Day this year, raising important funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Enjoy some photos of our epic ‘dress as a decade’ or green outfits! 

National Boarding Week – Walk to School Day (Boots ‘n’ Hats or Farmer) 

In Week Four we celebrate National Boarding Week and we encourage everyone to walk to school with our boarding community on Wednesday 13 May. Due to the busyness of the calendar, Primary School students are invited to wear their boots or/and farm hat with their uniform or dress as a farmer. We give this choice as we understand we have been very busy with events and dress ups and like to give families options.Please bring a gold coin donation and all funds raised will go to The Darcy Effect. 

Year Six Anchor Service Learning Program 

Our Year Six students have begun work on their hours for the Anchor leadership service program. Today at briefing Isla, Stephanie, Juliet and Bonnie shared their plans for a lunchtime crochet club in the Library on Mondays and Taylah Gent introduced her initiative to raise much-needed supplies for the Woman’s Refuge Centre. Please see below the information Taylah shared with students on Monday. Families are encouraged to drop items off to Primary School Administration office or Year Six classrooms.  

Women’s Refuge, 

During May and June, our school will be supporting the Albany Women’s Shelter and local Soroptimists as they work together to assist women and children affected by family violence in the Albany regional area. This important initiative helps provide essential items that offer comfort dignity, and a sense of care to those who need it most. 

We are asking families to contribute by donating new items such as shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, toothbrush, toilet paper, tissues, deodorant, and lots of other sanitary products. We are also collecting practical everyday items including pyjamas (for girls and boys), schoolbags, pencil cases, stationery, hairbrushes, underwear, socks, lunch boxes, and drink bottles. 

Your generosity can make a real difference in someone’s life. By coming together as a school community, we can help create awareness of domestic violence and provide meaningful support to those experiencing difficult circumstances. Donations can be brought to school throughout May and June. 

Thank you for your kindness and support. 

– Taylah Gent 

Classroom News 

Please see the classroom news below. Some fantastic experiences are happening in our classrooms; we hope you enjoy reading about them.  

Djinda 

We have deep-dived into the world of colour; we are noticing the colours around us, sharing news including the colour of the object, mixing paints, playing colour sorting games and wearing our favourite colour socks this week in Djinda. We often dance in Djinda and this week is no exception; we are going to learn a colour dance!  

Kindergarten 

The Kindergarten students have been very busy learning the s, a, t, p, i, n sounds. This week we focused on the letter ‘i’. We made some fabulous ‘insects on igloos’. In Talk for Writing we continue to learn about the story of The Little Red Hen. We are getting so clever at retelling the story. This week it was so exciting to celebrate Mother’s Day and have our mothers or special friends come and participate in a morning of fun-filled activities. We wish all of our Kindergarten mums a very special Mother’s Day on Sunday.  

Pre-Primary  

It has been an exciting week in Pre-Primary! We loved celebrating Mother’s Day with our super special mums and followed this up with a day dressed in green or as a decade.  We have also been using our powers of observation to investigate how Djeran impacts our daily lives. Do you feel the mornings being cooler? Have you noticed that some trees have leaves that have changed colour and even dropped to the ground? We have! We have even used some of the dropped leaves in our artwork and play. 

Year One 

The hook for our Talk for Writing text The Gumleaf Thief was a bucket full of gum leaves. The next day the bucket was empty, except for a little crow! The crow (named Poe, as the story goes) told us that a wombat (named Nat) and a possum (named Blossom) had stolen the leaves. Our task is to search for Nat and Blossom to find the gumleaves! This caused much excitement; however, the highlight of the week was having the most important ladies in our lives come to join us in the classroom for a special Mother’s Day celebration. See the photos that show how much we love our mums and grandmas! 

Year Two 

This week we thoroughly enjoyed having our Mums in to celebrate the wonderful love they give to us each and every day. We did some fantastic portraits of each other and wrote some adjectives to describe our personalities. Boy, do we have a lot of talented artists in Year Two – students and parents! We have begun our Talk 4 Writing persuasive text and learnt this week about rhetorical questions and topic sentences and have enjoyed learning more about addition in our stretch and challenge groups. We look forward to a very busy week next week, as we venture out for our Magical Mystery History Tour excursion! 

Year Three  

In Year Three we have been working very hard on our times tables over the last few weeks. I am proud to say that all this hard work has paid off for our class, with most students receiving a personal best award for their ‘10-minute tables’ at the Primary School briefing this week. I am confident that by the end of May everyone will have a new personal best. In Science we have begun to dive deeper into classifying living, non-living and once living things. We have been learning about classifying and grouping animals specifically focusing on ‘vertebrate’ and ‘invertebrate’ this week.  

Year Four 

In learning about the lives of convicts, Year Four has searched through the logs of the First Fleet to track the personal histories of British criminals and uncover the reasons why they were sent to Australia in the first place. We quickly came to appreciate how blessed we are to live in our current era as we saw examples of the jobs that children at that time were forced to perform. After preparing our defences, we confronted the judge to see if we could have gotten ourselves a lighter sentence if we had been there. It turns out that judges were pretty mean back then. 

Year Five  

We were very well represented in the GSG orienteering team. So well in fact we were left with a modest 11 students for a STEM-based lesson on Friday morning. Cue the Avatar themed ‘cotton ball shooter’, a timeless classic. Students were tasked with innovating on a basic design using elastic as a principle of stored energy and a cotton ball to propel as far as possible. There were several interesting tweaks, from wetting the cotton wool, to doubling up the elastic bands. The competition also had a design component as students made a zarf, themed according to their avatar nation. The winner was Haydee Bowey with top scores in design and distance achieved.  

Year Six 

In Year Six this week, we have enjoyed exploring states of matter. Mrs Mackenzie brought in some items from her freezer and we had to predict which items we thought were frozen. We were all amazed to find out that bbq sauce did not freeze as it is a liquid. What a fun hands-on lesson to begin our Science unit this term. In HASS, we completed our biographies on famous First Nations soldiers – it was incredible to read about the bravery of so many who have not been recognised enough as war heroes.  

Orienteering Team

Our Primary School orienteering team recently competed in the Interschools and achieved some fantastic results against strong competition from schools across the region. All students demonstrated excellent determination, teamwork and navigation skills throughout the event. Orienteering provides students with the opportunity to develop a different set of skills, including problem-solving, map reading, decision-making and endurance. It is also a wonderful event because it allows many students who may not usually represent the school at other sporting carnivals the chance to compete, contribute and experience success as part of a team. 

Congratulations to our top place getters for Great Southern Grammar: 

• Mason Fourie – Year 5 Boys – 4th place  
• Carter Jones – Year 5 Girls – 13th place  
• Brock Nelson – Year 6 Boys – 4th place  
• Appin Rivers – Year 6 Girls – 4th place  

The team also performed exceptionally well in the overall school standings.

Combined Year Five and Year Six Results 

1. Little Grove – 50  
2. Great Southern Grammar – 154  
3. Flinders Park – 165  
4. Spencer Park – 246  
5. Yakamia – 376  
6. Mt Barker – 389  

7. Parklands – Incomplete 

    

Year Six Results 

1. Little Grove – 27  
2. Flinders Park – 47  
3. Great Southern Grammar – 58  
4. Spencer Park – 134  
5. Yakamia – 135  
6. Mt Barker – 232  

7. Parklands – Incomplete  

    

Year Five Results 

1. Little Grove – 23  
2. Great Southern Grammar – 96  
3. Spencer Park – 112  
4. Flinders Park – 118  
5. Mt Barker – 157  
6. Parklands – 222  

7. Yakamia – 241

    

Special congratulations to all students who represented the school with pride and enthusiasm. Their commitment and sportsmanship were outstanding, and we look forward to seeing the team continue to grow and succeed at future events. 

Art 

Do you draw using outlines or edges? Last week in art, the Year Five classes practised drawing an apple with edges. We used shading to create the illusion of form or in other words, we drew a 3D apple! This term we are learning about the surrealist artist Rene Magritte and the way he created dream-like paintings. He changed the size and scale of objects and put objects together that do not normally go together such as a train coming out of a fireplace!  In the next two weeks we will be designing our own dream-like painting for our surrealistic clock faces! 

Languages 

Last week, although students were learning different vocabulary words, each class worked on creating their own set of flashcards. It was a fun and engaging activity, and once the cards are finished, we plan to use them for a range of games such as Memory, Snap, Kim’s Game, a French version of Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza, and mimes. This hands‑on approach helps make vocabulary learning both enjoyable and meaningful. 

Ten-Minute Tables 

Every month, students in Years Three to Six complete 120 timestables sums. Our goal is for all students to confidently know their times tables and develop strong multiplicative thinking before they finish Year Six. Each month, students are recognised for improving on their previous score with a Personal Best Certificate, celebrating effort, perseverance and progress. Students who achieve a perfect score of 120 are proudly welcomed into the 120 Club and awarded a special certificate. 

Well done to all the students recognised today for their commitment to improving from March to April, and congratulations to those who earned their 120 Club Certificate. Your dedication to learning and growing in Mathematics is something to be very proud of! 

Primary School Briefing 

Congratulations to the following students who were awarded a certificate for showing the school value of Integrity 

• Year Three: Denvah Nelson 
• Year Four: Georgia Rutter and Charlee Scott 
• Year Five: Joel Castle and Poppy John 
• Year Six: Chloe Vesey and Mila Pizzata 

Brag Award: Well done to Year Five B’s Hannah Fergie for holding the longest plank in the Primary School with Dane Pyle coming in as a close second for Year Four A. 

Have a wonderful weekend.

Ms Leah Field | Head of Primary and

Mrs Hayley Ranger | Head of Early Childhood