Junior School

Lights, Camera, Action! Congratulations to all our Junior School students for their stellar performances in Madagascar Jr. It was an absolute delight to see them take to the stage with such confidence. The smiles on their faces brought joy to my heart and made me feel blessed to be a part of such a wonderful College. 

I would like to thank Mr Jeffrey Clarke for the many hours of hard work and dedication he put into choreographing, producing and directing the show. His passion and love for the Performing Arts were evident in what was delivered on stage both evenings. As you can appreciate, evenings like this require work from a dedicated team. Thank you to Mrs Roslyn Skurrie for her diligent work in creating beautiful costumes for our performers. Thank you to Mrs Merryn Burt for sourcing and organising props and managing the backstage crew. Thank you to Mrs Jacqui Kelly for the work she did in painting the sets and the faces of students in make-up on the nights. I would also like to thank those involved with lighting, sound and technical advice, Mrs Faye Anderson for ticketing and managing Front of House along with our ushers from Middle School. Thank you to our Maintenance team, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes, and to our parking attendants organised by Mr Trevor Whittle. Finally, I would like to thank all our Junior School teachers and Learning Support Assistants who rallied together to do whatever was needed to be done to support this production. It is an absolute pleasure to work with such an amazing and dedicated team of educators. 

NAPLAN Results

Recently, NAPLAN results were distributed to all students in Years 3 and 5. Whilst these results represent your child's performance in a one-off test, teachers use many forms of data collected over time to inform their teaching and learning. Please do not hesitate to contact your child's class teacher if you have questions or wish to discuss the report further. 

ROAR Awards

This term, we introduced a new recognition award for Junior School students. The ROAR Award is presented to students who show Respect, Obedience, Acceptance of others and Resilience. These students have worked hard to uphold our Student Code of Respect and Godly standards. This award will be presented to one student from each class twice per term. The first recipients of this award were invited to morning tea in the staff room with Mrs Liddle and Mrs Kirby-Beach. We had such a lovely time, talking about respect and reflecting on why these students were recognised by their peers. Hot chocolate, marshmallows, fruit and biscuits were on the menu, and it was clear that these students were proud of their efforts. Congratulations to the following students.

With great delight, we announced the new technology program for 2023. This program will give Junior School students greater access to learning through technology. As announced, Prep students will have access to iPads, students in Years 1-3 will have class sets of Surface Laptops SEs, while students in Years 4-6 will have a personal Surface Go 3. The College invites parents to attend an information session on Thursday 20 October, where the program will be explained, and questions will be answered. Further information about the evening will be given at the beginning of Term 4.

As students return from a well-earned break in Term 4, they may wear Summer or Winter uniforms during the one-week transition period. Please ensure girls' Summer dresses are at the correct length, with the hem to the bottom of the knee. It would be appreciated if parents could also use the holiday break to check hair length, earrings worn by girls and socks. Students are also required to wear their hats in Term 4. Please refer to pages 12-13 of the 2022 Student Diary for details of our Student Uniform Standards. 

Junior School Volunteer Briefing Session 

If you would like to be a volunteer in your child's class in Term 4, it is a requirement that you attend a Parent Volunteer Information Session. One of the mandatory requirements of the College Child Safe Policy is for all volunteers to participate in an information session and complete the documentation provided. Please note, that if you attended a briefing in 2020 or 2021, your documentation remains current, and you do not need to attend this information session. The date for the Term 4 Parent Volunteer Information Session is Thursday 6 October at 8.00am. Please RSVP to Faye Anderson at JSAdmin@oxley.vic.edu.au

We pray that our staff, students and families have a safe and relaxing holiday. We look forward to welcoming all students back to school for Term 4 on Monday 3 October.

Amy Liddle

Head of Junior School

What Did You Do at School Today?

Prep

Who made the highest tower and the strongest bridge? We explored the concept of construction, which is linked to our Term 3 Integrated Studies Unit, Bridge and Beyond. During the incursion, Building and Construction – Design and Technology Materials, we experimented with different materials to construct towers, bridges, and catapults. We were challenged to try various methods of construction as we brought our visions to life!

Year 1

Term 3 has certainly been full of performance opportunities! Being explorers and jungle greenery in Madagascar Jr. was so much fun. We LOVED being on stage, singing and dancing to Wild and Free, but especially enjoyed grooving to the finale song, I like to move it move it. Our performing didn’t end there, as we put on a shadow puppet show for our friends at school. We have certainly grown in both confidence and resilience throughout these experiences. Mrs Bradshaw and Miss Backholer are SO proud of us.

Year 2

We have been learning how to play the game of soccer. We have discovered that playing soccer involves more than individual brilliance, and that teamwork is essential. There has been a buzz around as we prepared for and performed in Madagascar Jr. Lights, camera, action – the students have been building their shadow puppet theatre, making puppets, and performing in front of our peers.

Year 3

We have had a fantastic Term 3. It has been amazing to learn and experience so many new things.

Our highlights include: 

1.         Excursion to Polly Woodside 

2.         Creating a balloon-powered car in Integrated Studies 

3.         Being lemurs in the Junior School Production 

4.         Running the Father’s Day stall

5.         Watching the dress rehearsal for The Little Mermaid

6.         Year 3 – 6 Swimming 

7.         Hands-on Science incursion 

8.         Book Week and meeting Oliver Phommavanh

9.         Watching the downball competition between teachers and Year 6

10.       Dressing up for International Week 

We are so excited to see what the final term has in store for us!

Year 4

What an amazing end to Term 3! We want to thank student leaders, Mariah Rickard and Lachlan Edwards, for writing this article. Well done on capturing a beautiful reflection of the final few weeks of term. Miss Berry and Miss Newton are praying for a safe, restful, and peaceful holiday for all our families! 

During the Madagascar Jr. musical, there was lots of laughter and exciting moments. The Year 6 leads were amazing, and it was a huge hit! In Year 4, we played the lemurs for King Julian, and had lots of fun. We had to put make-up on every night for the play and we all came to the musical, singing, dancing and enjoyed some amazing moments! The exciting production went over two nights in a row! We all watched the amazing and creative musical on the TV screen. 

In Integrated Studies (IS) we have been working on a balloon-powered car, with the goal of making it move as far as we could! Everyone paired with a partner and set off working. As partners we had to decide who brought in the materials. Everyone made their own fully customised balloon-powered car. Some moved, but some were a huge flop (including mine!) but it showed us what was wrong and what we needed to work on. 

In Christian Studies we had to decide which important person we would write about. We could choose between Esther, Jonah, Nehemiah or Daniel because they were servants of God. We had to write a summary about who we chose, a character profile, and on good copy paper we had to write a story about the message and how we could include it in our life. Everyone did their own interesting project! 

By Lachlan

This term in writing we are learning about Poems. We have been completing multiple poems and then choosing which one we like best to publish. It’s been a great experience trying to add metaphors, similes, and great adjectives to make our poems interesting. To publish, we’ve been writing them on a piece of good copy paper and then adding pretty drawings to make them stand out. After we finish publishing our poems, 4N and 4B is making our own anthology poem book! 

After we finished making our balloon-powered car, Mr Ashmore introduced our next task. It was very exciting! We had to choose a sport and find forces in that sport. First, we had to do an introduction on what it is. The second task was to insert a picture and make arrows where different forces were. Then, it was time to name the three different forces involved in that sport (I did calisthenics). We had to do at least three forces. It was a great project and really had our brains thinking! 

By Mariah

Year 5

Our teachers are so proud of the efforts we have put in to finish this term. Our performance as animals in the Central Park Zoo and our choir members as steaks were, in our completely biased opinion, the highlight of the show! The buzz as we performed in front of a live audience for the first time since 2019, was truly special. In between production rehearsals, we have been writing some jaw-dropping poetry, competing in district athletics, and coding with Scratch to present our learning from Integrated Studies this term. Through it all, we have done everything to the best of our ability, and now look to our final term in Year 5.

Year 6

We have had a crack-a-lackin’ time moving and grooving our way towards the end of term. It was incredibly special to perform Madagascar Jr. for our school community and we are so proud of the way every person involved strived to do their personal best. While our audience was laughing along to our performance, our teachers were astounded by the way we seamlessly moved backstage between scenes and encouraged one another as we came off stage. It was clear that our preparation paid off and now we can relax, be cool and chill out on our holidays! 

On Friday 9 September, a small group of students participated in Maths Games Day, where they competed against 50 other teams from Victoria. It was so enjoyable to interact with students from other schools and collaborate to solve a series of complex problems. We are pleased to announce that one of our teams placed third overall! With so much to celebrate from Term 3, we anticipate all that Term 4 has to bring as our last three months of Junior School.