Friday 7th February 2020

Welcome Mrs Maciver!

We are thrilled to welcome

Mrs Carol Maciver to our

teaching team this year, as

she takes on the Year 3/4

class on a Friday (Mrs Shore’s

day off). Mrs Maciver did

some prac teaching here a

few years back and spent last

year teaching at Young Public

and St Mary’s. She comes

with a wealth of world

experience and some fluent

Spanish to boot! Mrs

Maciver will be assisting with

Scripture and Kitchen Garden, and teaching Science, History and Geography to the lucky

middle grades.

A Massive Thank You To Rolf!

This week we said goodbye (at least at school) to our wonderful General

Assistant Rolf Rotzler. Rolf has been with us for a few years now, taking care

of maintenance and gardening, and boy is that a busy job! With so much

work of his own and family members to take care of and assist, Rolf just could

not fit us into his busy schedule any longer. He has been a wealth of

knowledge and a hard worker and we will miss him around the place on a Monday.

Dick Galvin has taken on the role of General Assistant, having been a part time employee

doing some other maintenance tasks over the years. We see that Gina already has a huge list

for him and we are sure that he is going to be a great addition to our school team.

Swimming Lessons

The kids have been sensational

this week, really giving it their all

at swimming lessons in Boorowa.

Mrs Shore organized some great

activities and drills for all of the

different skill levels and the

teachers were pleased with the

progress that the students all

made.

Some of our tiniest students blew

us away with their confidence

and skill in the water, keeping

Mrs Mitchell well and truly on her

toes!

Mrs Richens pushed the top

students hard to build their

stamina and we were thrilled to

have some willing parent

volunteers along to give advice

and support. Thank you! Mrs

Shore worked on stroke correction and diving skills and we

are confident that all of the students are going to give it

their all at the Swimming Carnival on Tuesday.

On that note, Kindergarten and Year One students will

attend school as per normal on Tuesday. Year Two and

above will meet us at the Young Swimming Pool by 8.50am

for the start of the carnival at 9.00am. Please

remember to bring sunscreen, a towel, a hat, water

bottle and food. Parents are invited to wear red to

support the team.

At this stage we are still having swimming lessons

on Monday afternoon as planned, but that will be

dependent on the weather. I am sure that we will

all trade swimming lessons for some much needed

rain if need be.

Lower Division Report

With three days of swimming lessons and a full five day school week, we suspect that there

will be a lot of exhausted Lower Division students this week!

Lower Division started their first formal literacy lessons this week, learning their first Jolly

Phonics sounds and tricky words. Each day we have been focusing on a new sound and word

and practicing both in so many different ways, including singing, actions, tracing, writing,

worksheets, drawing and of course chatting.

Students also received their homework this week. If you have any questions or queries about

your student’s homework, please don’t hesitate to ask Miss Whitechurch to clarify. Homework

for Lower Division will be sent home on Monday and is to be returned Friday please.

Last Friday, K-2 completed their first KLA unit day. We focused on Earth’s natural resources in

Science where we searched the school for Earth’s treasures. We then returned to the

classroom to sort and classify our findings. We had some great conversations about which

objects should go into which categories. Is bark a part of the “Earth, soil and rocks” category or

the “living things” category? We decided although bark is not alive, it comes from a tree,

which is a living thing. Same with a feather. Students also realised that it was quite difficult to

collect air and wind. “We don’t need to collect air because it is all around us, it is already on

the paper!”

We also started our Geography unit which will focus on the places people live. We talked

about our own homes and compared them with other types of homes, identifying the

similarities and differences. How is your home similar and different to a house boat, a caravan,

a castle, a high-rise building?

Middle Division Report

What an exhausting week at school! Mrs Shore has been busily organising swimming lessons

and is so proud of the achievements that all the student have made this week, not just those

in middle division. I think there might be some rather tired people at Murringo this weekend –

teachers and students alike! Looking forward to some good swims at the swimming carnival on

Tuesday. GO MURRINGO!

In class we have been working towards completing spelling assessments after completing our

maths assessments last week in record time. We have looked at some of the questions that we

might encounter in NAPLAN later this year or next year for our Year 2 students.

Also I must apologise, homework will start NEXT WEEK and Class Dojo letters will also come

home with it, not this week as I said in last weeks newsletter.

Mrs MacIver also worked with the students last Friday which they loved and all had their first

Kitchen Garden experience and everyone tried the pita chips, some students moving a long

way out of their comfort zone to do this!

***************** Reach for the stars, Middle Division. ***********

Upper Division Report

Phew, we managed to fit a lot in this week! The students in Upper Division have been plowing

through their pre-assessments that we are kicking the year off with. It is very important that

we don’t waste time teaching students what they already know, and pre-testing is the only

way to find that out! They have almost completed their Essential Assessment maths tests,

which show us where they are starting at this year on all strands of Mathematics. We will do

some of these tests again halfway through the year before school reports, and the whole lot

again at the end of the year, to see what growth the students have achieved.

Students have also spent a lot of time spelling, so that we can find a list of 100 words for every

student to work on for the term. These need to be words that they don’t already know how to

spell and some of these kids are making that VERY DIFFICULT because of their awesome

spelling skills. Some students now have their list and can move on next week but some

students still have some more testing to do.

Last week we started our Science unit on the Solar System, learning about how it began and

exploring the concept of ‘conservation of angular momentum’ to explain the phenomena.

There were lots of great questions being asked and the students really enjoyed their

experiment, trying to make a ‘tornado in a bottle’.

We also started our History unit on Australian Federation and were blown away by the

number of changes that happened to the map of Australia between 1788 and 1989 (the year

of the last change). Did you know that at one point we had a ‘Central Australia’ or that there

are actually three territories – Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory and Jervis Bay?

Our Geography unit is all about bushfires, so we spent time reflecting on what happened in

Australia over summer, how it made us feel and how people responded.

Kitchen Garden Program

Year 3 and 4 had a great time in the Kitchen and Garden last week,

with a return to our program. They made some Herb Pita Crisps and

some Tzatziki and it was delicious. Thanks to the gardeners and Mrs

Mitchell, who sweated it out in that horrendous heat to get some work

done in our poor vege garden.

Well done to Declan and Harry

who tried the food, despite having

some reservations.

Madagascar

If anybody is interested in joining the cast of Madagascar

Jnr, in the Young Regional School of Music production this

term, please see Mrs Neville or give YRSM a call. It is a lot

of fun and the show is going to be Crack ‘a’ Lackin!

Mental Adventurer

Well done to our

‘Mental Adventurers’

this week. These kids

have shown grit and determination to take on some

challenges that took them out of their comfort zone, which

was noticed by their teachers and was awarded with a White Card today on assembly.

Malayah has really stretched herself to focus so well on her assessments this week in Upper

Division. Declan and Brock have both been identified as really stretching themselves and

being willing to make mistakes in Middle Division and Cooper really overcame some fears in

the pool. Great job guys!

Scripture

Thank you to Cristina for returning as our Scripture Teacher

for Years 3 to 4 again this year. We really appreciate your

efforts each week!

In this newsletter I would like to send my ‘shout

out’ to Mrs Mitchell. She has been with us for

many years at Murringo (after I ‘stole’ her from Early Intervention) and has made herself

indispensable during this time. Mrs Mitchell has seamlessly moved between the teacher

and the teacher’s aide role so many times her head must spin. This year is no different,

with our very talented teacher taking on both roles again and being incredibly flexible

with her timetable to accommodate the school needs. We love you Mrs Mitchell!

Around The

School Today …

Term One Calendar

We have included the dates that we know about at this stage. When there are new dates added, they will be

in red. Please mark these dates on your calendar or put this calendar in a prominent spot at home, so that

you can keep up to date with what is going on.

Week Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun

3 10 Feb Swimming

Lessons

11 Feb Swimming

Carnival

12 Feb Happy B’Day

Anari!

13 Feb Swim. Prac Playgroup

14 Feb 15 Feb Happy

B’Day

Charlie L!

16 Feb

4 17 Feb 18 Feb MCA Meet. Staff Meet.

19 Feb 20 Feb Happy

B’Day Lexie!

21 Feb Swim Carn.

Back Up

22 Feb 23 Feb

5 24 Feb 25 Feb 26 Feb Happy B’Day

Tyler!

27 Feb Playgroup

28 Feb District

Swimming

29 Feb 1 Mar

6 2 Mar Aurora Cam.

3 Mar Staff Meet.

Aurora Cam.

4 Mar Director Visit Aurora Cam.

5 Mar Aurora Cam.

6 Mar Aurora Cam.

7 Mar 8 Mar Happy

B’Day Nat!

7 9 Mar 10 Mar 11 Mar Region Swim Happy B’Day

Bailey!

12 Mar Playgroup

13 Mar 14 Mar Happy

B’Day Gus!

15 Mar

8 16 Mar 17 Mar Staff Meet.

18 Mar

19 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar 22 Mar

9 23 Mar 24 Mar 25 Mar

26 Mar Happy

B’Day Lilly!

27 Mar 28 Mar 29 Mar

10 30 Mar 31 Mar Staff Meet.

1 Apr

2 Apr Happy

B’Day Peter!

3 Apr 4 Apr Happy

B’Day Heidi

H!

5 Apr

11 6 Apr Happy B’Day

Izequil!

7 Apr Athletics Carnival

8 Apr 9 Apr Playgroup

Easter Assembly

10 Apr School

Holidays Good Friday

11 Apr Happy

Holidays

12 Apr Happy

Holidays