From the Head of the Junior School

Parents (and students) might not realise that teachers are right now in the midst of finalizing assessments and writing reports. Our staff always hope that the semester reports are a helpful snapshot of where learning has occurred, and where students should focus their learning next. We know they have their limitations though – which is why the parent-teacher interviews, showcase and student-led conferences are important ways to check in. School reports will come out in the very last week of term.

Teachers are talking about how very far the children have come this year. Some have made enormous leaps in their reading and writing, with others making great progress in their Maths skills. Some children take smaller strides in their learning than others’. That’s ok. Learning is a personal journey and moving forward towards the future is always positive. I’m particularly proud of our students who may need support, and have to work really conscientiously to overcome challenges. The steps they take are momentous, especially as they sometimes have to work doubly hard to get there.

In the downhill glide towards the end of year, we have much to celebrate. The Early Years teams on both campuses are working hard on the Nativity (I’m praying extra special blessings on those staff this Christmas!) and the Performing Arts class are enthusiastically rehearsing for their Christmas play. We’ll be celebrating the HUGE milestone of finishing Primary School with Year 6 – always an occasion of great joy with a few tears (from parents, not the kids!). On Presentation Day we’ll celebrate everyone – with music, awards, speeches and farewells. I look forward to seeing you all as we finish off another great year of learning and growth.

Kind regards

Rachael Newton

Head of Junior School

National Winning Mathematical Investigation

This year, I entered the Investigating with Mathematics Competition run by the NSW Mathematics Association, better known as MANSW, with an ambitious idea, to build a highly detailed, architecturally accurate LEGO model of Blue Mountains Grammar Primary School with the aim the aim of figuring out whether the whole school could run on solar energy.

Firstly, I thought, what if I made the school out of LEGO? This seemed like a good idea, since I had a lot of it and I could measure the surface area of the model, and scale the measurements back up to real size to ensure accurate results. So I started collecting the pieces, and built the school. Below is the scale model I created. Believe it or not, this model took roughly 100 hours to build, and it was hard.

With the surface area of the whole junior school roof in my hand, I would then, somehow, find out if we could cover the whole school in solar power, and therefore figure out if the school could run on a solar energy source alone. Once I had the measurements and the model, I visited a world leader in solar energy, Professor Rob Taylor at UNSW. He told me all about the perfect angle of roof for solar panels, and also showed me a software that tells you how much energy a square metre of solar panels on any building in the world produces in a year. With this software, I then calculated the average yearly power usage. And it turned out that in a year, we could generate over 15 times the energy we need! That's over 2,000,000 kWh.

This project gave me the opportunity to solve problems that our world faces, to investigate and use my mathematical knowledge to make a real difference to our world. It gave me an insight into what I may want to do in the future. I thoroughly enjoyed working through this inquiry project and am so proud that I placed first not only in NSW but also in the National Competition.

Hume Vivian

Stage 2 Student

Basketball Report - Week 4

Our Boys' 5/6 Stars had 8 players at our game this week. This meant that we had good opportunities to rest before going all out on the court. We had some great opportunities to score and Michael Lynch, Nixon Van Swieten and Mason Barnett all scored points. Unfortunately our opposition was much quicker at getting the ball to their end to score. The boys worked really hard and I could see from their red and sweaty faces that they gave it their all and at the end of the day, that is all we can do.

The Under 10s Avengers worked on protecting the ball, cross overs and power passes in their Springwood Scorchers training session this week. With two teams being able to take the court for their half court games, I was grateful that they have reversible basketball tops so when they played each other, it was easy to distinguish between the two teams. All of the players are really great defenders and their accuracy at shooting is improving. When I coached them this week, they managed to score 10 points in a row while doing a shooting drill. I don't think in all the time I have been coaching has any team ever scored 10 points in a row.

Mrs Lori Gerrard

MIC Junior School Basketball