Primary School

Athletics has been the theme of Week Three in the Primary School. Lunchtime 800m races and triple jump started the week with the main events taking place today. Congratulations to Mokare House for taking out the House Shield for 2023. It was a wonderful day of sport, individual efforts and camaraderie, and I look forward to sharing more detailed results with you next week.

Guard of Honour

We completed last week with the annual guard of honour for our Year Twelve Leavers. It was lovely to see our biggest students high fiving our littlest (Djindas) as they made their way through the School for the last time as students.

Kindy Readers

Thank you Mrs Hannah Craig (Kindergarten Teacher) for opening your doors to our older students to practise their reading fluency. Students from Year One, Two and Five have been visiting our Kindergarten students to practise their home reading books and sharing in their love of picture books. A wonderful initiative with a mutual benefit for all students.

Produce Stand

Mrs Caroline Cameron (Education Assistant) has put together a great initiative to share homegrown produce. Harry and Jackson are avid visitors of the stall and can highly recommend the carrots this week. Please feel free to add your own produce to the stall outside the ECC building.

Curriculum Spotlight – Critical Thinking/Inquiry Learning

Last week I spoke about the definitive research about direct explicit instruction. The findings are conclusive that this is the best practice in delivering a curriculum to students for long term retention. However, all of the best practices have their limitations. Many bodies of research including Harvard’s Project Zero have analysed students’ life readiness and pointed out a deficit in critical thinking skills. Pearson Education highlights the importance of learning to think critically and summarises it perfectly with four reasons:

Learners with better critical thinking are more prepared for the workforce.
Critical thinking skills can predict academic success in university.
Critical thinking has been identified as a crucial skill for university graduates and employers.
Greater levels of critical thinking are associated with improved quality of life.
At GSG we embed critical thinking into our curriculum and pedagogy through visible thinking routines, like “What makes you say that?” and through our inquiry learning model. This blend of explicit direct instruction alongside an inquiry learning model prepares students with both general and academic capabilities. More on inquiry learning next week.

School Values and ECC Stars of the Week

Our students are showing commitment to a vast range of activities. Well done to the following students who received recognition for this value:

Henry Turner, Faolan Williams, Aurora Leslie, Ava Murnane, Harriet Hyder, Blythe Marmion, Isla Kiddle and Samantha Cooper.

Well done to this week’s ECC Stars of the Week: Freya Hueppauff, Aurora Leslie and Sascha Sitnikoski.

Our focus for the next fortnight is compassion.

Japanese

Year Three had some Year Eight students join us for Nihongo to teach them songs about food that they had created. These songs were based on the Japanese nursery rhyme 'Obento Bako' [Lunchbox]. They then helped the Year Three students to make food for their Obento Bako out of plasticine.

Students in Year Four have been learning about family. They completed a family tree art project in Nihongo from newspaper and painted leaves and wrote about how many people are in their family and who they are. These are on display outside the Year Four classroom.