Newsletter 2022 Term 2 Week 4
From the Principal's desk...
As I write this edition, I am hoping that each of you are safe and not being too severely impacted by yet another deluge. Thankfully, the school facilities have weathered the recent heavy rains well, with little damage or ingress of water. Please ensure you remain alert for any messages from the Bureau of Meteorology, Emergency Services or Gympie Regional Council regarding regarding flash flooding and remember to stay off roads - 'If it's flooded, forget it.'
Recently, quite a few students competed in District Sport selection trials and represented Amamoor State School with pride. Congratulations to each of you for your efforts. A special mention must be made to both Francesca Hayes and Leila Gurnett for being selected to compete at the regional level in Football (soccer) and Cross Country respectively. Good luck girls!
The annual Naplan testing period commenced this week, interrupted by both state-wide internet outages and inclement weather. So far, our Year 3 and Year 5 students have completed their tests in Writing, Reading and Language Conventions (Spelling and Grammar). Next week will see our students finish with Numeracy (Mathematics) tests. Well done to all of our students for performing so well.
I have been informed that the online access portal for Prep Vision Screening will be out of action due to urgent system maintenance this weekend. Any parents wishing to register for this important service can either wait until Monday afternoon or contact the Primary School Nurse Health Readiness Program on 1800 687 372 to work through a solution with you.
Next Tuesday, our school will again host the 'RawArt' programme. This is a fantastic opportunity for students to experience a variety of artistic mediums and is run by qualified Art Teachers from Brisbane. Thank you to the P&C for supporting us with this opportunity for our students.
Also on Tuesday, the Life Education van will be visiting our school. This annual visit will provide an opportunity for our students to learn about making healthy choices. Generally, Life Ed visits are conducted within the visiting 'bus,' however, due to Covid-19 impacts and the need to physically distance, lessons this year will be done in the classroom.
As I'm sure you'll all be aware, the Federal Election will be held on Saturday, 21 May. Amamoor State School will be holding a Polling Booth, located in the Multi-Purpose Room (Playgroup). The Booth will be open from 8am - 6pm.
This year, we continue to improve our teachings around indigenous perspectives within our curriculum. In Week 10, we have organised a visit from a Kabi Kabi cultural leader, to provide a rich learning experience for our students. We have also begun planning a yarning circle (Kiba), to be established within the school grounds later in the year. Thank you to Mrs Hughes and Mrs Meredith for you ongoing work in this area.
As the Visual Arts specialist class is being held every Friday this term with Miss Broome, we have decided to hold our weekly Parades on a Monday morning for the rest of the term. Parades will be held from 9:00 - 9:30am in the Undercover Area. All welcome.
With reporting season rapidly approaching, please ensure that your child/children are arriving at school on time, every day, ready for learning. Remember that all of our students continue to participate in the Daily Reading or Daily Spelling programmes and their Home Reading Logs are checked daily. Thank you for your ongoing support with this.
I hope you enjoy yet another long weekend!
Kind regards,
Tony Benzie
Prep/1 News
In Prep/1 we have been investigating 2D shapes in Maths, while in English, we have been learning about characters in narratives.
2/3 Class News
Computers and programming
The Year 3’s are continuing their journey with Mr Boyd on Thursday afternoons, and investigating the programming language used in Scratch Jnr. Mr Boyd has reported that everyone is doing well and is very focused on their tasks.
Meanwhile, the Year 2’s have been working on their computer skills. They have been learning to:
- Log on to the school network using their user name and password
- Create a document in Word
- Change text size, colour and font
- Insert shapes and pictures
- Copy and paste Copy and paste Copy and paste
- Add special effects using Word Art
We will continue to add skills each week, and use these to type up stories, create Power Point presentations and save and retrieve to our USB sticks.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer fermentum sagittis felis eu ullamcorper. Integer lobortis et leo ac molestie. Nunc malesuada tellus eu est commodo semper. Sed tempus placerat dapibus. Curabitur rhoncus convallis nisi, non ultrices mi sodales quis. Aliquam consectetur lectus at rhoncus iaculis.
4/5/6 Classroom
The Year 6 cohort are extending their understanding of the features of 3D objects and learning how to name, build and create nets for a variety of 3D shapes. Here are some of the Year 6 students creating physical representations of cubes, rectangular prisms, triangular prisms and square based pyramids, before describing their features including number and types of faces, edges, vertices and apex.
Visual Arts
The P/1 Class learned how we can read the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger and surprise in other people. We drew our own happy, sad, angry and surprised faces focusing on how facial expressions show emotion. The students looked at William Robinson’s artwork ‘Self-Portrait with Goose Feathers’ and talked about the feelings in the work – they were very insightful and thought the figure in the rain might be sad, lonely or have lost someone or something. They then used guided drawing to create their own rainy-day picture inspired by the artwork. Here they are colouring in their art using sharpies and crayons. Next week we will add rain drops using a wax resist technique and blue, green and purple watercolour washes.
The 2/3 Class continued looking at tiny worlds by zooming in on one of nature’s incredible structures – snowflakes. They learned how to fold and paper cut a variety of designs, and explored how a design is mirrored and multiplied when unfolded. The students then used felt tip pen shading and dipped their finished art work in water to create blended colour washes. You can see them focusing on creating their snowflakes in the photos. These snowflakes were later mounted and made a unique cover for their art portfolios.
The 4/5/6 Class explored the idea of animal totemism in artwork and how the artistic choices they make of animals and elements of art such as colour and line can be used to symbolically represent individuals and cultural groups. They chose their own animal based on its qualities, and created a 3D sculpture of the animal using the tinfoil armature technique from last week. The students then covered their sculpture in paper tape and used an acrylic base coat and paint pens to add colour and pattern to their art. You can see them in the process of building their sculptures below, as well as the finished animals that ranged from Shetland ponies, to fish, to rabbits and even an octopus.
Chappy's Corner...
Hi Everyone,
I hope you have all been able to stay nice and dry during this unexpected wet weather. Today we had Corps Officer Stuart Grice from the Salvation Army come out to our school to collect the money we raised last term for the Flood victims. He said that the money we raised will go towards supporting people who are still struggling after the floods. Again, I want to say thank you to our amazing community for the way in which we came together to raise the funds for flood victims.
In other news, on the 28th of May, as I mentioned in the last newsletter, we are holding a Trivia Night at the Mary Valley Wesleyan Methodist Church to raise much needed funds for the continuation of Chaplaincy in our Mary Valley Schools. The flyer for this event is below, and also around the school. Please see me on Mondays and Wednesdays if you have any questions about this event, and feel free to share it to your friends and families outside of our school community.
I hope you have a safe and good week, and I look forward to seeing you around the school.
Chappy Caitlin
Student Council update...
As it’s getting cold please remember student jumpers. School jumpers must be navy blue and have student names inside. Student leaders will be checking for names on jumpers and that students are wearing correct school uniform.
Most weeks the student council will be selling ice blocks for $1 on Tuesdays and Thursdays out the front of the school at 3pm. The money raised will be going towards the Year 6 end of year excursion. We are also going to be having a Free Dress Day for the State of Origin on the 8th of June. The last free dress day we ran raised $129.50 for flood victims and that money was given to the Salvation Army for them to hand out.
This term Ella and Savanah will be hosting a structured game for students at second break on Tuesdays and Thursdays. All students are welcome to participate in age appropriate games.
Please remember to pack something healthy in children’s lunchboxes for both snacks and lunch as the Student Council encourages all students to eat healthy foods first.
Mini Sports
News from the Kitchen/Garden programme...
This week we investigated some new types of fruits including papaya (red paw paw), honey dew melon, pineapples and kiwi fruits. We then used these fruits to make some yummy kebabs and shared them afterwards.
We also checked on our paw paw tree and compared how fast it’s fruit was growing and compared these to the ones we just ate.
