Week 10, Term 3 Update

 Good afternoon...

We made it to Week 10, I feel like it was Week 5 about 7 minutes ago and suddenly we are getting ready to wrap up another term. Time sure does fly!

I would like firstly to congratulate Stellan, Marley and Ari (Year 6) on receiving their First Eucharist on Saturday night, it was a beautiful mass with Fr Israel and the boys did themselves and their families proud. 

Thank you to those Year 4 families that came along to support the boys, you are greatly appreciated!

Excursion - We also had an absolutely awesome time at our excursion last week!. Whilst we were there, we had the opportunity to spend time observing the local flora and fauna on our bushwalk to Barret Street Weir. This gave us a great chance to visualise what the landscape looked like before settlement was established in Margaret River. 

On the walk we also had our eyes peeled for any chewed honky nuts! We then used an identification sheet to help us work out which type of cockatoo or parrot had chewed on that particular nut. We had no idea that there were so many different shaped beaks in the cockatoo world!

We learnt about the story of Wooditj and Milyan as well, which provided an excellent prompt for our Art activity in which we needed to use our imagination to visualise what it would have looked like 40 000 years or more ago. The students were asked to create a piece of Art that shares this story.

We also got our detective brains on and used the clues of the area to find answers to some very challenging questions in our scavenger hunt which helped us to learn a lot more about the river and the surrounding area. 

With Mr Ryan’s expertise, we were guided to the main types of tree found in the park and we spent time making observations about the bark, leaf shape and height as well as working out how many students wide the trunks were!

It was a wonderful excursion and the students were absolutely amazing, super engaged with our learning and were excellent ambassadors for our school. 

I would like to thank Beck Torr, Leah Reilly, Justin Ryan, Bianca Todd, Laura Colombo-Smart and Jordy Hall for coming along with us. It was a fantastic day for the Year 4’s!

I have placed the photos that I took and were sent to me on Teams if you ask your child to show you where they are if you'd like to see a couple more.

There are a few things happening this week so I will keep the reminders simple...

• Science Presentations - Start Monday (tomorrow) and will run all week.
• Book Week Dress Up Day - Wednesday 22nd September
• Footy Colours Day - Friday 24th September

Science Presentations - these will be happening each day according to the schedule that has been placed on One Note and Teams. Please check in with your child to make sure they have completed their presentation and are practicing regularly so they feel comfortable.

Students will need to Share (an option in the File tab of Power Point) their presentations with me prior to their turn rather than email, I will help them to do this if they are unsure.

We will record their presentations and we will then place them into See Saw for you to enjoy - this will form part of their Speaking and Listening grade as well. 

If your child is absent on the day they are due to present, we will move them to the next day. Alternatively, if any students wish to move forward in the line up and get it done, I am more than happy to accommodate, schedule allowing!

Book Week - You either love it or hate it...We will be asking the students to come to school On Wednesday 22nd September in their costume. We will start the morning off with our parade and then will spend the day working and learning about a specific book - stay tuned!

The theme for this year is Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds! I look forward to seeing what Mark can whip up for me this year!!

Uthando Dolls - Please note that due to our Book Week schedule, we will not be having our session this week. We will resume working on our dolls next term.

Footy Colours Day - Your child is to come to school dressed in their footy colours of choice on Friday 24th September! We ask that they bring a gold coin donation as all monies raised will go to Vinnies. 

Please don't go out and hit the merch stand...close to colours are absolutely fine! Any Dunsborough Footy Club attire is perfect!!

If you can make sure they are wearing closed in shoes for the day and are comfortably dressed, we will be having a session with Jack Eades from the Believe Academy at 11am and the students need to be able to run and chase the round ball!

Homework - I understand that many of the students are really struggling with the wind up of winter sports and potentially moving into the next.

I am finding it very difficult to get homework consistently from nearly half the class. The grid is very simple to complete and the only additional section is for them to work on their Science. 

If I can please ask for your support for the final week to ensure that all homework is completed neatly and brought in on Friday. 

I explained the schedule a couple of weeks ago. Moving into Term 4 the expectation around homework being completed will be raised significantly.

Thank You! - As always, I could not do what I do without your support!

Thank you all very much for all your support and care, I am so proud of the progress made by our beautiful kids and I am looking forward to our final term...not so happy about handing them off to a new teacher for 2022 but I will have to adjust!

I hope that you enjoy the coming holidays, for those of you travelling...please stay safe!

Have a great weekend,

Caitlin