Primary School

Celebrating Our Students’ Efforts in NAPLAN 

NAPLAN has been a key focus over the past few weeks and we would like to congratulate our Year Three and Year Five students for the positive way they approached the assessments. These tests provide a snapshot of student learning in literacy and numeracy, and it was wonderful to see our students demonstrate persistence, focus and a willingness to do their best. 

We are particularly proud of the calm and confident manner in which students engaged with both the online format and the range of question types. Their preparation and resilience were evident throughout the testing period. 

We also acknowledge the efforts of our teachers, who worked hard to support and prepare students, ensuring they felt comfortable and ready. 

Most importantly, we celebrate the effort each student put in. Regardless of the outcome, their commitment to learning and personal growth is what truly matters. Well done to all involved! 

ECC Easter Hat Parade  

Get ready for one of the most egg-straordinary, heart-bursting events on the ECC calendar: the Easter Hat Parade! 🎩🐣 

Join us on Wednesday 1 April in the Gym at 8.45am as our students strut their stuff in what can only be described as a delightful explosion of feathers, fluff, chocolate-inspired creativity, and possibly a few hats that defy both gravity and explanation.

For our new families, this is your official heads-up (pun absolutely intended!): students are invited to create a marvellous piece of Easter-themed headwear at home. Think bunnies, chicks, eggs, gardens, the more imaginative, the better! 

Parents are not only welcome but strongly encouraged to attend, you won’t want to miss the proud smiles, enthusiastic waves, and the occasional hat malfunction. 

Warning: side effects may include excessive smiling, spontaneous laughter and a strong urge to make your own hat for next year. 

Classroom News 

Please see the classroom news below. Some fantastic experiences are happening in our classrooms; we hope you enjoy reading about them. 

Kindergarten 

The Kindergarten classes are having so much fun at school. The students have learnt many new things and now know the expected rules and routines of being at ‘big school’. Learning how to line up, sit on the mat, take turns, share, and putting up our hand to ask questions are just some of our new skills. Going to specialist classes are a highlight of our day. Especially when we get to visit the Library and take home stories to read or play chasey games in Physical Education. We love making new friends and enjoying our days together. Kindy is just so much fun! 

Pre-Primary  

This week in Pre-Primary, we have been busy completing our On-Entry assessments. We are also learning through play, conversations and purposeful tasks, about what makes each of us special and unique. The students enthusiastically engaged in a variety of activities exploring this concept, including planting seeds in different environments and identifying what plants need to grow. We linked this learning to how we, as individuals, also need different things to thrive. The children also created playdough brains and learned about the parts of the brain, including the Pre-Frontal Cortex (Professor Wise), the Hippocampus (Hippo), and the Amygdala (Guard Dog), discussing how they work together and their important roles. 

Last week, we were also lucky enough to have a very special visitor, Coco the Calf, visit Pre-Primary! This exciting experience sparked lots of curiosity, thoughtful discussion and wonderful questions such as: 

• “Where does Coco sleep?” 
• “How much milk does she drink?” 
• “Why did the mum not want the baby cow?” 

These questions led to rich conversations about farms, animals, caring for living things and how animals grow. It was a fantastic opportunity to build oral language skills, encourage inquiry and connect learning to real-life experiences. 

Year Two 

The Year Two classes have had another wonderfully productive week! We completed our Hot Task procedural text, How to Trap a Heffalump, and later in the week wrote a Cold Task narrative based on a beach scene. It was fantastic to see the students’ creativity shine through when deciding on the character to best suit this picture prompt. In Design Technologies, we finalised our Dragon Trap plans, making sure our designs included neatly detailed drawings with clear labels, as well as a full list of the materials and utensils needed. We then ventured down to the Wild Space to collect the natural materials needed to build our traps. We are excited to begin the construction process over the next few weeks! 

Year Three 

The classroom became a bit messier this week as we created our own soil profiles for our Science assessment. We enjoyed drawing and labelling our scientific diagrams, showing the various layers that were found in our created soil sample. Ms Field has been an amazing support for our class as we have undertaken our NAPLAN testing. Having our Head of Primary in our classroom each morning was very reassuring, but the highlight of our week was Mr Irving, the Principal, teaching our Christian Studies class! He was very kind and entertaining and helped us learn about the miracles of Jesus. What an interesting week we have had! 

Year Four 

Our studies of forces have progressed nicely, with many classroom objects snapped and destroyed in the process. Fear not, parents; although we had many students offer their nice wooden rulers up for karate chopping, we were able to use an old, spare one from years gone by. Our latest experiments have helped us to understand the force of resistance in gases and liquids. Now we understand the science of bellyflops and why we have to do that floppy, side-kicking run when we are running into the ocean. With all of this scientific knowledge in mind, we can combine that with our work in HASS and Technologies to develop our Forces Arcade! 

Year Five  

What do Greek yoghurt, charades and imperative verbs all have in common? They all formed part of the Year Five splendid smoothie-making session, of course. We have been looking at procedural texts as we learn about the structure of recipes. Alas, it simply isn’t enough to highlight and rewrite. No, when you have a drama teacher and a chef as your guides you must elaborately act out your cooking verbs in a game of Year Five charades to much laughter. Then, of course, you must create your delectable smoothies in a frantic Friday afternoon blur of splattered berries akin to a finale of My Kitchen Rules. The results were, well … tasty. 

Year Six 

In Year Six this week we finished off our investigation on earthquakes and tested them. A small group also headed off to Bunbury for the da Vinci Decathlon with Mrs Sandy and Ms Youens which was a lot of fun – more to follow next week about how they got on. In Humanities, we have continued to explore Federation and whether or not the individual colonies were for or against federating. We are going to start our inquiry timelines next week. 

Upcoming Events 

Week Seven 

• Harmony Week 
• Friday 20 March, no before-school supervision as staff are attending the compulsory staff photo. 
• Friday 20 March, school photos. Presentation Uniform for Year Six. Please see the Bulletin for further details. 

• Friday 20 March, House Activities in the afternoon, Year One to Six, with a Harmony Day theme. House shirts, please. (Year Six students need Presentation Uniform also for the Year Six photo from 12.15pm to 12.30pm.) 

   

Week Eight 

• Monday 23 March, Interschool Swimming, selected Years Four to Six students. 
• Thursday 26 March, Baudin Day, wear pink for a gold coin donation and bring some cash for the cake stall at recess. 
• Thursday 26 March, Primary School, Parent-Teacher Interviews (PTIs). 
• Friday 27 March, Tabloid House Sports, House shirts for Year Three to Six.  

Week Nine 

• Wednesday 1 April, ECC Easter Hat Parade, 8.45am to 9.30am in the gym. All welcome. 
• Thursday 2 April, Pre-Primary to Year Twelve, Easter Service, 9.00am to 9.45am, in the gym. All welcome. 
• Thursday 2 April, Whole-School Cross Country, 9.45am to 2.00pm. All welcome. 

Have a wonderful weekend.

Ms Leah Field | Head of Primary and

Mrs Hayley Ranger | Head of Early Childhood