Congratulations to our amazing Wakakirri team of students, teachers, and parents. Your skills in dance, drama, public speaking, art, hair, make-up, stage-handing and so much more were essential in getting us there. This year, we earned awards for participation, public speaking, the spirit of Wakakirri, and the social media competition for our week – what a buzz!
Extended cut: includes video of our performance and speakers:
Highlights: photos only
It is a privilege to announce the appointment of Lurlene Mitchell to the position of Relieving Principal, Belmore South Public School beginning in 2015. Lurlene has been the Assistant Principal at Ashbury Public School for some years.
Lurlene is a well-regarded strategic leader who comes to the position with a strong understanding of primary curriculum. She has a whole school focus on student wellbeing and a commitment to equity. Lurlene has a deep understanding of the impact of leadership on student learning and outcomes. She is passionate about learning, particularly the area of mathematics.
Lurlene will be an asset to Belmore South Public School and the wider community. She is keen to continue proudly promoting our school, and is very excited to be part of such an innovative learning environment.
Please congratulate Lurlene and wish her well as Relieving Principal of Belmore South Public School in 2015.
Teachers at Belmore South are so proud of the way that our Art Expo leapt into the 21st Century. Every piece of artwork had interactive components (QR Codes).
On Monday, Miss Cooke went to the Sydney Entertainment Centre to help set up Belmore South and Amery’s exhibit. It was a very long day but it was worth it. It looked amazing! If that’s not cool enough, we also have a video that will be played on the big screens during the performances on Friday and Saturday night. Check it out below!
The video entered into the “World’s Biggest Classroom”:
Belmore-South-Art-Expo-2013-24uw7hz from Mrs Klose on Vimeo.
Learning Frontiers is an exciting new initiative which aims to define and lead the development of professional practices to increase student engagement in learning. The purpose of this survey is to find out more about the extent to which young people are engaged in learning. We are inviting teachers, students, parents and members of the community to complete this survey. For more information please email: learningfrontiers@aitsl.edu.au
Stage 3 are looking at colonisation from an Indigenous perspective this term. We are beginning our unit on Invasion by first immersing ourselves in traditional Aboriginal culture.
With Miss Fanggidae, we are looking at sacred sites and how important land is to Aboriginal culture, specifically Uluru and Kata Tjuta in the Northern Territory.
With Miss Hargraves, we are looking at the Dreaming (Tjurpa), and publishing our own dreamtime story, which will be shared with kindergarten.
With Miss Hackney, we are looking at traditional foods or bush tucker, and cooking some kangaroo to taste
This term in reading groups, we have been learning about the Stolen Generations. At first we thought it sounded a bit like adoption.
But… we did some activities to develop empathy [putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes to feel what they feel]. We pretended we were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids who were forcibly taken from our families, then we wrote a letter to our parents telling them how we felt and what they had missed out on.
We also read The Island by Armin Greder about a man who is isolated and treated badly when he arrives on an island. We brainstormed emotive language from the story and created still images outside to illustrate the different words and how they could relate the the Stolen Generations. Here are some of our still images:
 “…let the man have scraps” |
 “…they seized the man” |
 “…the people stared at him” |
 “…they showed him where they could sleep on some straw” |
When we fully understood the Stolen Generations, we wrote our own apology to the Stolen Generations just like Kevin Rudd did in January 2008. These apologies will be on display in the hall for Reconciliation Week.
Congratulations to Hussein who took up the challenge to “Be Brave and Shave” for The Leukaemia Foundation. He bravely went under the clippers in front of the whole school at assembly raising a significant sum in donations. If you would like to, you can still donate here. He has since been seen sporting a lovely warm beanie to protect his new ‘do from the cooler weather! Well done!
Before
During
After
This week is both sad and exciting for Kindergarten. Miss Wilson is preparing for a fabulous adventure that will take her away until Term 4 so we wish her ‘bon voyage’, and we welcome Miss Kim, who is very excited to be teaching K-Swan for Terms 2 and 3. To mark both occasions, Kindergarten enjoyed a beautiful afternoon tea with delicious foods bought in by families to share, and lots of fun toys and games to play together. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend!
Today the whole school had a special assembly to celebrate Harmony Day. We sat on the blue mats and chairs outside. We watched a wonderful performance by the Amber Gemstone Team.
Some special guests arrived with some extra-special birds. We moved closer to the birds so we could all see them. One of the men brought a dove around for us all to touch. The dove was very quiet and calm.
Our leaders opened the bird cage and the doves flew off into the sky. Everyone clapped. The doves flew away back to their home. We were really happy and excited.
We decorated doves in our classroom this week. We put colourful tissue paper on the doves, they look beautiful.
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By K Swan