From the classrooms

Stage 5 Textiles Technology

Students are engaged in a patchwork stuffed toy unit. This unit has been designed to improve students visual communication through the use of mood boards. More importantly it provides an excellent opportunity for students to build their ability to add embellishment techniques to projects. 

As well as sewing their patchwork toy students have learnt how to produce chenilling, shrink sheeting , soluweb fabric pizza, pleating, free motion embroidery and hand embroidery. I am so proud of every student in the class and the growth they have shown over the last few weeks. 

Ms Catherine Golden - Textiles Teacher

Maths Amazing Race

As part of the Numeracy Day festivities of Education Week. Students participated in an amazing race where they had to navigate their way around the school solving mathematics riddles, problems and challenges. The students had to get around the 10 challenges in the fastest time possible. The event really tested their ability to work as a team and use the skills they had to offer. Some of the challenges for example were measuring exactly 1 litre of water using only a 3 litre bottle or knocking over Finska batons to leave the correct sum of 24.

The race was a great success with the Argentina team taking home the Gold and England, Australia and France taking the minor places. Thanks to the Year 12 students and teachers whom assisted with the event.

Andrew Corcoran l Head Teacher AMPS

Primary

The Primary Department has had a mammoth few weeks. Education Week was a resounding success, with all children experiencing many different educational opportunities and challenges throughout the week. We had speeches, creative writing, spelling bees, mathematics challenges, Aboriginal cultural workshops, Aboriginal artworks, interactive assemblies and to top it all off, a strong connection with Book Week and some fabulous dressing up! A big thank you to all of the staff who went above and beyond to make Education Week such a huge success. We can't wait for next year.

We have a few things coming up:

• Year 3/4 Trent Barrett Shield Football Thursday 11 August 2022 in Harden
• PSSA District Athletics Friday 12 August 2022 in Cowra
• Commitment to participate notes for the Year 3-6 excursion have gone out. It's 2 – 4 November 2022 and we need to know as soon as possible which children will be attending so we can formalise bookings and staffing. Please contact me if needed.

The 5/6 Class has begun a unit for English on Roald Dahl's Matilda, which is a brilliant book of revenge and friendship. We are exploring the characters, descriptive language and the relationships between different families and children in the book. In mathematics, we have completed a unit of work on area and perimeter, and we will begin patterns and algebra this week. In science, we have welcomed Mrs Peta Proudford into our class on Thursdays to teach science and humanities - and we are exploring 'forces'. Big things always happening in the 5/6 classroom.

A special thank-you must go to Dean Franklin and the Franklin family for their incredible recent donation of two guitars for our Music Faculty. These guitars are particularly special as they cater to the left-handed musicians of our school, and we did not have any left-handed guitars. A big thank-you goes out to Dean and his family for such a thoughtful donation, and we will treasure these instruments for many years to come.

We had a great Parent/Teacher interview week and if any parents would like to chat, please contact the school or myself via email.

Jason Stuart

Assistant Principal Primary (relieving)

Year 5/6 Teacher

Infants

Our Infants staff enjoyed meeting with many parents and carers last week during our Parent-Teacher Interview schedule. It was a great chance to catch up with parents, discuss student progress and goals and address any concerns. At the same time, it was fantastic to see parents in and around our school, and kids hanging around in the K-6 area, giving the school the community feel it has had to miss over the last couple of years. Any parents/carers who were unable to meet last week are still always welcome to contact class teachers through the school office at any time.

Infants’ students are all now busily rehearsing their SMArt Drama night performances. Look out for a note going home shortly with more details as well as outlining costume/clothing requirements. We are all so looking forward to this big event being back on!

Ms Mem Brougham 

Assistant Principal Infants (relieving)

Kindergarten/1 Class

We have welcomed two new students to our class this term and we are so proud of the way they have quickly settled into our class and school. A big thank you to all K/1 students for helping them to do this so smoothly!

A highlight of last week was getting back into the Innovation Centre and creating some animal masks out of various materials. The challenge was to create a mask of a favourite animal with enough features so that the staff could work out which animal they were! If staff couldn’t tell, the students had to modify or add to their mask to make it more identifiable. Check out some of the impressive results – and see if you can figure out the animals!

Ms Mem Brougham - K/1 Teacher

Year 2/3

Year 2/3 thoroughly enjoyed all of the Education Week activities, we even had a class quiz and a chocolate challenge in our classroom that was lots of fun. Last week we got back into our regular routine and began working on understanding multiplication and brushing up on our quick recall of number facts in mathematics. We have been working on using adjectives to describe characters in our stories, as a result, we have had some magical words appearing in our writing. In science we are investigating how pushes and pulls are used in arcade games and we are starting to design and make our own games that require pushes and pulls to work. Even though it was raining during our gardening lesson, it was far from a wash out, we played a game of 'what is it? and where does it grow?' with Mrs Golden. Students had to look at a picture of a fruit or vegetable and write down the name of it and where it grows. It was lots of fun; we then had a game of fruit and vegetable bingo to finish off the session. 

During sport we all had a great time learning how to play Air Hockey in the hall, we also completed our version of a triathlon and played a few rounds of dodgeball.

Lots of learning and fun happening in the 2/3 classroom this term.

Miss Natalie Downey

Year 2/3 Teacher

Stage 4 Technology Mandatory 

Year 7 technology mandatory have continued to work through their engineering unit on dragsters.  We have learnt about vehicles, energy sources, renewable and non- renewable energies. As the term continues the class will study gearing, leverage and laws of motion to develop an understanding of their impact on their dragster design. At present students are prototyping possible dragster designs which are being turned into balloon racers. The class as a whole has been so engaged in this topic and created some amazing prototypes. 

Ms Catherine Golden - Technology Teacher

Library

A very big thank you to all the families and community members who visited the Book Fair during Education Week.  It was great to see the library buzzing with students, parents and grandparents again after the last years of COVID.  Everyone enjoyed being at school to celebrate Book Week.  With all the wonderful support from the Fair we were fortunate to have received some fantastic rewards which we will be able to use to purchase new resources for the library and the school throughout the coming year.  We could not do this without you.  We look forward to doing it all again next year!

Mrs Cusack - Book Fair Coordinator