Senior School

Welcome to Term Three! Can you believe we are now in the second half of the year already?! It's been a busy start with lots happening in the classroom and out of it as well! Thankfully, we have settled back into routine and have dived straight into our new units of work!

IN OUR LEARNING

Reading: We have started this term with a new focus text "Tomorrow, When the War Began" by John Marsden. So far we have started analysing some of the key details from the story, exploring themes, characters and author's choices and considered why these are important to the text.

Writing:  Narrative is our focus for the start of this term. Having covered narratives multiple times this year already, we have been looking at different ways to plan out our ideas, ways to develop these ideas and placing a specific focus on punctuation, spelling and the correct way to use dialogue.

Maths:  In Maths, we have been exploring factors, multiples, perimeter and area.

Humanities:  So far we have only just introduced the topic of Civics and Citizenship and what is these actually mean. Throughout the unit, we will be exploring Australian Democracy, how laws are made and the make up of government and parliament.

NAIDOC WEEK

We recognised NAIDOC Week in the first week of term. Some of our captains presented a special assembly to educate the younger students on the significance of this week. We also had some Year 6 students attend the Cultural Leader's Day at Wilson Botanic Garden and as a school, we created a combined art piece as part of the Cardinia Network's collaborative work. We created the 'O' for this year's NAIDOC theme 'Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud!

KOORIE/CULTURAL LEADERS CONFERENCE

In Week One, some of our Year 6 students attended Cardinia Network's Student Leadership Conference. Hear from Jamison, Laksh, Sophie and Charli in their reflection below:

It was a cold and wintery morning as we departed Officer Primary School to head to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Cranbourne. We met up with several schools from the Cardinia Network including Cardinia, Lang Lang, Koo Wee Rup, Nar Nar Goon, Pakenham Lakeside, John Henry and Pakenham Consolidated.

We began the session with Jaffa who is a Wurundjeri person. She welcomed us to Country and we learnt Bunurong words for land (Bik), sky (Warra Warra) and friends. She shared with us her knowledge of indigenous tools, hunting strategies and games. We learnt about how they respected the land and the native animals they shared their life with. With a wallaby as company, we played variations on cricket and aussie rules using a ball made from possum hides. We drank warm lemon myrtle tea and tried finger limes and Davidson’s plum, for a taste sensation! We threw womeras and learnt how to make and carry fire.

To end our day, we talked about Cultural Safety and what it looks, feels and sounds like in our schools. Cultural safety is when we can feel safe in our school environment and comfortable expressing our cultures and beliefs. We agreed that we feel encouraged and supported here at Officer Primary School.

CIVICS INCURSION

This week we participated in the Victorian Students' Parliamentary Program for their online student convention via Zoom. Students gained an insight into how parliament works by engaging in a mock bill "Should students be taught how to use Artificial Intelligence tools in the classroom?"

Students participated in a vote and listened to guest speakers. This will kick-start a lot of our learning and discussions for this term's Humanities focus, Civics & Citizenship

Well Done to Laksh, who provided an acknowledgement to country on behalf of OPS and to Jarryd, who presented a 2 minute speech stating our stance on the topic and reasoning for this!

DIVISION TEE-BALL

Last Friday our Tee-Ball team competed in the Division finals at Toomuc Reserve! Off the back of their fairytale run in the Lightning Prem last term, our team competed strongly all day finishing fourth! Well done on your fantastic efforts!