From the Head of Junior School

One of the many aspects of schools I find fascinating is the array and diversity of happenings that occur across a term in any given part of the school. The experiences for students and the community are broad and immensely full, but in that are truly wonderful learnings and moments that connect us all, often to mark milestone occasions that are incredibly significant in the life of our students and their family.

I would like to offer my sincere thanks to families, colleagues and students for their support and contributions to Term Three with all the occasions and happenings I mention below, and all the ones I haven’t noted also (it is difficult to capture everything we do in a term), we value them all.

Students commenced the coldest and wettest term of the year with bright smiles and energy, as always, which brings colour to any day. One of the earlier events we undertook in the term was the Interschool Cross Country team trip to Bunbury for the South West Primary School Championships. This was a great experience for our squad of 28 runners from Years Three to Six, to test themselves against a larger field of runners (every race had 80 to 100 runners) from over 16 participating Independent Primary schools. This event was the culmination of months of training for the students, and their individual performances reflected this with every student finishing in the top half of the field, and many placing in the top 20, 10 and 5.

Shortly after, we celebrated Science Day across the Junior School (Pre-Primary to Year Six) with this years theme being the phenomenon of ‘flight’. Students thoughtfully prepared investigations that detailed how their flying contraption worked and brought them into school on display. We enjoyed presentations from Mr Scott Neil - Learning Engagement Officer at the Museum of the Great Southern. He talked about the history of flight, science behind flight, the mechanics of how birds use their wings to fly and thrilled the audience with wonderful demonstrations of flight with models. Students then worked in their class groups to prepare flight experiments which included making paper straw rockets, rotocopters, film canister rockets, O wing gliders, mini butterfly kites and parachutes to name a few. The whole day, and week really, was a celebration of Science with experiments and investigations. Our students really enjoyed the hands on elements, and have a much deeper understanding now for the principles of flight in many contexts from the animal kingdom to human made engineering.

Around mid-term, Year Five travelled to Pemberton for their cohort camp. This was a three night, four day adventure into the outdoors with most activities making full use of the beautiful environment in that region. Students explored the Yeagerup dunes (well worth a trip if you haven’t seen them before), navigated the twists and turns a mountain bike circuit beside our campsite, worked as a team canoeing and building rafts at Big Brook Dam, focused their aim at archery and managed all the personal development aspects of being on camp like managing their own belongings, setting up / packing up for meals and generally supporting each other through the inevitable challenges that being away from home for four days brings. It was a wonderfully enjoyable camp, and a great building block of independence and challenge stretching for our students which has prepared them well for the next stage of their development as they prepare to become leaders of our Junior School next year.

A much-loved event each year is Book Week, with this year's theme from the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) – Dreaming with eyes open…stepping into your own story. Students from Pre-Kindergarten to Year Six celebrated their love of reading throughout the week and thoroughly enjoyed dressing-up on the Friday either as their favourite book character, someone they aspire to be like when they grow up, or just enjoy coming to school in their pajamas to honour the ‘dreaming’ theme. Throughout the week, classes were reading together, sharing stories and their dreams. Dream jars were designed outside every classroom for students to share their dreams, which was wonderful reading as you moved from Pre-Kindergarten through to Year Six.

Into the back half of Term Three, we recognised and celebrated languages from across the world for Languages Week. Some classes plotted on a map where different languages originate from and are predominantly spoken today, others have learned new phrases and enjoyed using translator apps to speak a different language. Pre-Primary really immersed themselves in different cultures by inviting guests from many families to share their culture through food, activities and traditional dress. It was a wonderfully fun experience for the students and a great way to celebrate the diversity of culture we have in our community.

Father’s Day is a significant occasion on our calendar that we celebrate each year, but it is a special milestone moment for our ECC students as they enjoy welcoming fathers and father figures into their classrooms to share the morning together. Students take great delight in showing Dads around the classroom, talking about their learning and playing with the activities together. These moments are long-lived memories for both children and their fathers. For Year Two students and their fathers this is a particular milestone moment as its their last ‘Fathers Day’ of sharing their classroom with their Dads. This is a particularly special moment, the ECC has strong bonds with families where the closeness of home and school are very important to students.

More recently now we’ve enjoyed celebrating the Arts through Red Moort Exhibition and Kingfisher concert. Our students have contributed pieces of artwork throughout the year to the exhibition and rehearsed through choirs and instrumental groups to share distinct occasions that showcase our range of creative and artistic abilities across the school. The Arts is truly valued at Great Southern Grammar, and the recent events highlighted that so beautifully.

I’ve shared some of our cross-school happenings from Term Three, but amongst these events are individual classes learning and sharing their own wonderful occasions, albeit on smaller scale but non less valued by our community. For example Year Five organised a marketplace as part of their economics inquiry, raising over $500 which we will be delighted to share more information around early next term to show how this money will be used to support a local charity, our Year Fives are representing our community very proudly.

Horizons this term has offered incredible opportunities to students to explore circus skills, tello drone flying, performing arts plays, artistic creations and Lego engineering. It is so wonderful watching student engaging in such diverse range of interests in our co-curricular programme, we intend to continue this further in Term Four and into 2023.

Lastly, for the term ahead, after a well-deserved break, Term Four is a slightly shorter term of eight weeks, but no less full of activity and learning for students. Year Six will be departing for their camp to Rottnest Island in the second week of term, and Year Three will be holding their overnight camp at school a few weeks later. We will enjoy a Junior School BBQ and Wild Space walk for our whole community in the third week of term. Year Two will hold their first ‘Year Two Celebration’ event, recognising their milestone transition from Early Childhood into Year Three. The in-term swimming lesson programme will be held in the final two weeks of term, and the ECC beach fun day. Then finally, our culminating end-of-year presentation assembly and Christmas Concert to round out a fabulous year. Of course these are just Junior School events, we also support and celebrate whole school occasions like the Year Twelve valedictory early in Term Four, and Christmas Chapel, these are wonderful occasions where students and families share in the journey our students take from Pre-Kindergarten to Year Twelve.

As always, my sincere thanks again for your support this term. Your inclusion in all of what we do is valued immensely and is a significant part of why our occasions are so successful and enjoyable for everyone. Best wishes for the break period ahead, and I look forward to sharing an exciting term ahead for us all.

Warms regards, and appreciation,

Mr Ken Raven | Head of Junior School

Alumni News

Claire Higgins (Baudin, 2021)