From the classrooms

Infants

There was great excitement throughout our Infants area at the beginning of last week with Healthy Harold visiting! All students loved meeting or seeing Harold again and enjoyed his cheeky nature. It was pretty impressive hearing a few stories of parents visiting the van when they were at school and how they too had a great time seeing Harold and the starry sky!

Students are now gearing up for the end of term. Some classes have started preparing for the festive season by making decorations and singing Christmas songs. The countdown sure is on! Please keep an eye out for notes for the many end-of-term activities we have planned. It’s always such a busy time of year and a fun one, too!

Ms Mem Brougham

Assistant principal Infants (relieving)

K/1 Class

This fortnight our students are to be congratulated for maintaining a great focus on their learning despite some unpredictable disruptions, including floods and power failures, resulting in lessons with other staff and changes to routines when it was unavoidable. There has been much talk about the storms, floods and earthquake that have been impacting us here in Boorowa as well as further afield. K/1 have been writing and drawing about these events.

K/1 students had the best time last Friday doing gymnastics with Ms Harpley and her team. The hall was equipped with lots of different gym equipment and the students all had a turn using different apparatuses. This will happen again this week. A big thanks to Ms Harpley and her team for making this possible!

K/1 are very excited to be welcoming our Kindy Start students for their first full day this Friday, and can’t wait to play with their younger friends and cousins in the playground. 

We have been knuckling down to complete some assessments in preparation for our end of year reports – these will go home to families towards the end of Week 10.  In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact the office.

Ms Mem Brougham - K/1 Class Teacher

Primary

It continues to be a busy time in our Primary classrooms! The sad news of our postponed Primary excursion was handled very well by students, who were a little flat to start with, but have bounced back better than ever. Due to a huge effort from our fantastic administration staff, the Primary excursion has been rescheduled. This has had an impact on other events also.

Please see the 'Diary Dates and Notices' page of this newsletter for an updated list of events.

We apologise for any changes to the schedule - but we had to prioritise getting the excursion sorted this year. As you can imagine, it was a difficult task.

Reports

All student reports are currently being written by the teachers.  It's important to celebrate the many improvements of all students this year at our school. While assessment, testing and results are all a part of school life, they are not everything that makes a child successful. We are very lucky that our students show growth academically and socially every day in various aspects of their schooling - the student reports will reflect this. A lot of time, effort and energy goes into creating these reports for every student. The teacher writes them - then I read every one - then Mr Jones reads every one also. They are important, so please have a good read when they are released later this term for the best information to support your child in 2023.

2023 Swimming Carnival

The Boorowa Central School Swimming Carnival will be held during the first week of school next year - Friday 3 February 2023. Please volunteer to help on the day if you are able. Notes will go out towards the end of term.

Book launch

On Tuesday 8 November, all Year 4-6 students attended a book launch at the Boorowa Recreation Club. The book being launched has been a long time coming and Ms Corcoran's 4/5 class from 2021 are now officially published in a book! The 4/5 class contributed many artworks and designs for the Tuppence the Orphan Turbine book, and the finished product is outstanding. 

Blayde was selected to read a long passage of the book to the large audience, and performed brilliantly.

CWP Renewables kindly donated 72 copies of the book for Boorowa Central School. They are available from the front office for $10 each - every dollar from each sale will go to our Boorowa P and C, which is then spent on resources to assist the learning of our kids here at school. Well done to all!

Jason Stuart

Assistant Principal Primary (Relieving)

2/3 Class

Year 2/3 have been very busy this term, we have been reading some dreamtime stories about how the turtle got its shell and we have been writing and following procedures. We all carefully listened to and followed verbal instructions to make our own pirate hats and then we decorated them. We have now started exploring and having fun with poetry. We have also been learning facts about different Australian animals. In STEM, we have been using the computers to help us build and program Lego models. We have made some delicious snacks during cooking sessions and in gardening we have been learning how to read seed packets to plant each type of seed correctly. Healthy Harold visited the school last week and talked to us about healthy relationships and how to keep our bodies healthy. We loved saying hi to Harold again. On Friday we were incredibly lucky to have Ms Harpley and her gym team come to school and run a fun gymnastics session for each class during sport. We had so much fun and we are looking forward to learning more skills this week. 

Ms Downey - Year 2/3 Teacher

4/5 Class

The 4/5 class have hit the ground running in Term 4. We have just completed a unit on descriptive writing and now we are focusing on persuasive letters. It was really disappointing that the was excursion postponed, but it was nice to see how mature and resilient the students could be, especially when we weren't sure if we were going to be able to go at all. We are looking forward to Week 10! 

In mathematics, we have been focusing on our mental computation fluency and multimodal word problems. The students are really starting to see the importance in mastering times tables. Gardening and cooking lessons continue to be a highlight in the 4/5 classroom each fortnight, thanks to Ms Golden. In our STEM lessons, we are constructing rollercoasters, developing problem solving skills, and improving our ability to work in groups. Our first gym lesson with Ms Harpley was in Week 5 and we thoroughly enjoyed it! We can’t wait to do it again in Week 6. It was great to see some of the students come out of their comfort zones during this lesson. We have finished our geography unit on natural disasters and had some great class discussions about the prevention and procures in regard to flooding and other disasters. The term continues to go at a staggering pace, it's crazy to think that the current 4/5 has only 5 more weeks together. 

Mr Matthew Rowley – Year 4/5 Class Teacher

5/6 Class

The 5/6 class has been a hub of activity the past few weeks. We have had a strong focus on completing end of year assessments in reading, writing, mathematics, science, history and PDHPE. The students have been worked hard, that's for sure, but the results are very pleasing to see. As a teacher, seeing improvement in students is the reason we do our job. Each day we see students improve socially and mature in their personalities - but it's also very satisfying to see a child that has worked so hard achieve the progress they deserve in their learning. Well done to all of the 5/6 students on fantastic improvements this year.

We had our yearly visit from Healthy Harold last week where we discussed some tricky topics of drugs, alcohol, decision-making and general health. It's always great to see Harold, and I had a good yarn with him about Boorowa Central School and he says he can't wait to come back next year and see all the students again. Harold is an incredible resource that our school benefits from each year - and he certainly leaves an impression. With the world the way it is today, it's essential that our young students understand the importance of good decision-making. We will continue to focus on making positive decisions for the remainder of the year.

We have had a University of Wollongong teaching student in our class for Weeks 5-7 this term. Taylah Cutting is in her second year of study and she has been a welcome addition into the classroom. She has a bright future ahead of her in the public education system and we certainly hope she chooses to come and teach in Boorowa when she graduates in a couple of years.

We've also had a Year 10 Work Experience student Mollie in our classes this week. Mollie has been a great help and we hope she pursues a career in education also - as she shows great skills in supporting our students through their school day.

Mr Jason Stuart - Year 5/6 Teacher

Gymnastics Day