Junior School News

From the Acting Head of Junior School

Robotics Incursion 

Robotics Mania has descended upon the Junior School, and our students are busy actively participating in developmental and interactive STEM/Robotics lessons. 

Years K to 2 Students are learning to design, build, create and code with Bee Bot, Botzee or Lego We Do Robots. They will create individual solutions to a variety of specially designed challenges that align with our curriculum.  

Years 3 to 6 students are learning to design, build, create and invent in each of their lessons. Students are learning to use code in Scratch on their iPads to create solutions to design challenges.

Years 5 to 6 students are designing, building, creating, and inventing in every lesson while coding in Scratch, Python and Mindstorms code using our Spike Prime and EV3 robots. They have been creating individual solutions to tricky challenges.

Do it For Dolly Day

On Friday, 9 May, our Junior School students participated in ‘Do It For Dolly Day’ to support Dolly’s  Dream, an Australian organisation that is dedicated to creating a kinder, safer world by addressing the impacts of bullying, anxiety, depression and youth suicide through education and direct support to young people and families. This special day is dedicated to fostering a kinder, safer world for our children.   At the Junior School, we honoured this special day by focussing on the importance of kindness. During the week all students from the Junior School wrote a kindness statement. These statements were then combined with statements written by the Secondary School and made into ‘kindness chain’ by the Year 9 and 10 students.

Our students enjoyed a sausage sizzle lunch and had lots of fun spraying their hair blue which helped raise money for Dolly’s Dream Organisation. Thank you for your support in helping us with this wonderful cause and a special thanks to Mrs Ciara Loughland for organising our Junior School activities.

Mothers' Day Gift Bazaar

Wishing all our Pittwater House mothers, grandmothers and other special guardians a very happy Mothers' Day. We hope you had a wonderful weekend.  Our Junior School students had the best time carefully selecting gifts for their beloved mothers at the PHPA Gift Bazaar. The deck was buzzing, and we thank the PHPA and all the volunteers for lovingly wrapping every gift and for generously volunteering your time to bring so much joy to our students and their mums. 

Performing Arts Rehearsals

The Creative Arts Evening is drawing closer, and our Junior School students are all involved in rehearsing musical and dance items in preparation for an evening that is bound to be a visual and auditory spectacular. Again, we thank parents for organising costumes and supporting the School to make this event such a success each year. Without giving too much away, please enjoy some photos of our students rehearsing their items.

P5 Science Project - Pixevity Album Year 5 Science

You never know what you are going to see when you look out a window, onto the Junior school playground. Year 5 were throwing parachutes off the deck so I asked these students what they were doing and here are their responses.

Lloyd – “ We designed a parachute, and we learned about air resistance and how different materials affect how slow the parachute falls. I enjoyed how we got to work together and collaborate with our partner to design something.”

Roman – “We made three parachutes to test which was the best design, and the one which could stay in the air the longest. We used different materials for each design to see which worked best. I enjoyed collaborating with my partner and comparing our designs with other groups.”

Timothy  – “P5J made parachutes to learn about air resistance. This lesson taught us to understand how shape and materials affect how things fall. I believe that this lesson was very fun as we got to collaborate with friends and build fun designs!”

Police Youth Liaison Visit

On Thursday, Police Youth Liaison Officers, Alana and Laura, gave a presentation to our Stage 3 students on how to be safe online. All Year 5 and 6 students participated in the discussion and learnt about how to best navigate the world of online gaming and social media. Alana and Laura explained the process by which students should navigate those trying to befriend them online, explained what not to post and what to watch out for when taking pictures and posting them to friends. There were many important messages delivered to our students but none more important than – as soon as you send anything to anyone online, you lose all control of that message or photo.

Friend-O-Leaders

We are thrilled to introduce our new Friend-O-Leaders this term.  Last year, our Junior School successfully launched a peer mentorship program, where our Year 5 students supported our younger students in their friendships during break times. 

Our Year 5 students were first introduced to the idea of becoming a Friend-o-Leaders and were asked to complete an application form. Following this, the Year 5 students participated in Friend-O-Leader training.  They now proudly identify themselves in the playground by wearing their Friendology lanyards. Year 5 students demonstrated the power of student agency by being heavily involved in the planning process; creating rosters, identifying parts of the school where they may be needed and devising reward systems. 

Our model is research-based and is an example of how peer mentoring results in positive outcomes for everyone involved. The Building Effective Peer Mentoring Programs in Schools, published by The Mentoring Resource Center and U.S. Department of Education, Identifies the positive impacts for mentees, including:

• Connectedness to school and peers
• Feelings of competency and self-efficacy
• Grades and academic achievement
• Prosocial behaviour and attitudes

For mentors, there have been reported improvements in:

• Connectedness to school
• Self-esteem
• Empathy and moral reasoning
• Intrapersonal communication and conflict resolution skills
• Relationships with parents

Since we have launched our Friend-o-Leader program, we have had younger students consistently reporting how helpful our Year 5 students are in supporting them and we’ve seen our Year 5 students demonstrate exceptional leadership skills in the way they work together to help our younger students.  Our Friend-o-Leader program is a win-win!

After School Care  

After School Care has been a huge success with one of our classrooms in the Discovery Hub transformed into a fun space for our P-6 students. Rachel Simons, our After School Care Coordinator has put together an exciting schedule for next week.

Please click on the following attachment to discover what exciting activities will be happening at After School Care next week: