Murringo Public School

Newsletter Term 4 Week 5

Principal: Mrs Kaelene Neville

Senior Administration Manager: Mrs Gina Galvin

Address: 91 Murringo Gap Rd Murringo

School’s email: murringo-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Principal’s email: kaelene.neville@det.nsw.edu.au Telephone: (02) 6384 6351

Fax: (02) 6384 6322

Friday 11th November 2016

A Week of Mixed Emotions

We have ridden a roller-coaster of emotions this week, all of which have brought about thoughtful

discussions with the students and a view into the real world. All of these you will read about in the

newsletter.

On Monday, we welcomed special visitors to the Upper Division classroom, as the students began

presenting their research projects about an Asian country. Jacob and Shania brought in family friends

from Pakistan and Taiwan, to discuss life in their country as part of their presentations. It was fabulous to

hear first hand about life in another place.

Tuesday brought School Photo Day, with all of the excitement of posing like celebrities. Excitement was

also building for the upcoming Primary Camp to Canberra, with students bursting with questions.

On Thursday, the older students reacted strongly to the election of Donald Trump in America, some with

wonder and some with fear. We will address this later in the newsletter too. We also welcomed a very

special visitor—Julia Dean, from the United Nations headquarters in Canberra. Julia was astounded with

the knowledge of our students and they were thrilled to talk to her and take part in the activities.

Today we have marked Remembrance Day—a chance for all Australians to reflect on the important work

that our ex-servicemen and women have done to make our world a safe place to be. Today we also

farewelled one of our prac teachers—Mrs Maciver—who has spent the last three weeks teaching in the

Upper Division class. She has done a wonderful job and we wish that she could stay longer.

Tennyson & Sofala representing

the Young Scout Group

Jacob,

observing one

minute’s

silence with his

eyes closed,

thinking about

how lucky he

is.

So Many People Make Up Our School!

We would like to take this opportunity to publicly

thank all of the wonderful people who volunteer or

go above and beyond for our school and our

students. We have recently had Chris Gardener

start doing regular volunteer work for the school

and she is making an amazing difference. Chris

spent a few weeks completely tidying, reorganising

and cleaning our teaching kitchen. It is so easy to

see where everything is and it has helped

immeasurably with our cooking lessons. Once that

was completed, she has turned her organised hand

to our Library. Chris has done a wonderful job

sorting out books, labelling new books and placing them in their categories. She has even re-arranged the

furniture a little, and it looks fantastic! Thanks so much Chris!

We have lots of other wonderful volunteers too. From the mums who come in and listen to the children

read and then stay to help with cooking, to our scripture teacher Cristina Hammer. Our gorgeous

grannies—Mary Fogg, who listens to the children read each week, Maureen Virgo who cooks up a storm

for every function and helps out in the Lower Division room every Friday, Kathryn Unwin who still does

our school banking for us—five years after her own grand-daughter left the school! A big thanks to

Glenda and George Stewart, who come down on weekends to help maintain the vege garden and drop in

every Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon to help upkeep the art room.

Thank you to the wonderful parents who always step up when we need to cook for a catering jo,

including this morning’s TAFE Breakfast. We put on a wonderful spread—as always! Thanks to Mr Keigly

and Gina for being there at 6.30am to prepare and serve the breakfast.

We also have our wonderful cleaner, Annmaree Dawes, who gives so much of her own time for our

students. Annmaree has set up our worm farms and keeps them maintained. She is also our source of

knowledge about the Lower Division birds and gives us a hand there. Recently, Annmaree brought in a

couple of special items to show the children. She is a keen collector of antiques and thought that the

children might like to see her working gramophone and old record player. Annmaree showed both of the

classes the wonderful machines and answered questions about how they worked, playing some classic

records on each one. Thank you!

Farewell Mrs Maciver

We would like to wish Mrs Maciver all the very best with the

rest of her studies and we think that she is going to be a

wonderful teacher. Mrs Maciver has taught units of work on

Asia, Indonesia in particular, Soccer and Mapping/Position.

A fine job!

Murringo Markets Madness!

We had such a fabulous day last Sunday at the Murringo

Village Fair. A huge shout out to all of the families who took

on a stall and stayed for the whole day. The kids did a great job dealing with customers and handling

money. They had a bit of fun along the way and we raised some fabulous funds for our P&C. The

Scholastic Book Fair (thanks Gina for staying in the hall all day with that one) also made a lot of money,

so it was a very successful day all round.

Reminder About Nuts

Just a quick reminder that we

are a nut-free school. We do

have a student attending with

a severe nut allergy and we

need to be very mindful.

We request that students do

not bring in raw or cooked

nuts, peanut butter or

Nutella—just in case!

Students are also not to bring

RAW egg to school—but

cooked egg is fine.

Thank you for your

consideration in this matter.

Advance Notice—2017

2017 will be the last year of our current

school plan and we will need to start

thinking about the future directions that

we would like our school to take. As part

of that planning process, we have decided

to send our entire teaching staff to the EduTECH conference in 2017.

This is the largest education conference in the Southern

Hemisphere. We will be taking a strategic look at the future of

education, global trends and developments, the Australian

curriculum and how to lead a 21st century school. There will

also be lots of practical advice about how technology can be

used to improve teaching and learning.

The topics to be covered at the conference will be:

Global Trends

21st Century Learning

STEM, coding & robotics

Pedagogy

Curriculum

Technology To Improve Teaching and Learning

Makers’ Movement

Neuroscience & Mindfulness

Learning spaces

Data & Analytics

Professional Development

BYOD

Special Needs

Resilience and Creativity

Entrepreneurship

Gamification

This conference will be held on Thursday 8th and Friday 9th of June 2017.

Every year, our school is required to have 5 staff development days. It is up to the school to decide when

those days will be held. Traditionally, they are held on the first day of Terms 1, 2 and 3 and the last two

days of Term 4. Schools may change this, however. As it is important that all staff attend this conference,

we would like to make these two days Staff Development Days.

What This Means For You:

Staff Development Days (Pupil Free Days) for 2017 will be:

Friday 27th January (Term 1)

Thursday 8th & Friday 9th of June (Term 2)

Monday 18th & Tuesday 19th of December (Term 4)

The really good news …

Our conference is on a Thursday/Friday,

so you can plan a long weekend.

The really, really, really good news …

The Monday straight afterwards is a

public holiday, so the kids will have

a 5 day weekend!

Our Place In The World

Upper Division have been very busy this week with their unit of work, currently focused on Asia. The stu-

dents all presented their research projects about an Asian country, with great effort and thought.

There were some great posters and digital presentations, using Google Slides, Prezi and Powerpoint. We

also had some traditional food to sample from Japan, Taiwan and Jordan, all of which were delicious!

Thank you Tennyson, Shania and Luke. Sofala learnt how to say, “Hello, my name is Sofala.”, “This is my

speech about Qatar.” and “Thank you for listening to my speech. Goodbye” all in Arabic! Tennyson also

brought in his bonsai tree to show and Jacob and Shania even brought family friends from Pakistan and

Taiwan to talk to us about life in their country. We were very impressed with everybody’s efforts.

The countries studied and presented were:

Syria (Adrian)

North Korea (Archie and Peter)

Japan (Tennyson)

Malaysia (Charlotte)

Vietnam (Abbie)

Sri Lanka (Christopher)

Myanmar (Lily)

China (Mark and Toby)

Jordan (Luke)

Taiwan (Shania)

Qatar (Sofala)

Pakistan (Jacob)

United Nations Visit

The amazing times continued in Upper Division

this week, when we were visited by Julia Dean,

from the United Nations office in Canberra. Julie

came out to talk to the students about the role of

the United Nations in the world and the Global

Goals that we have been studying in class. Julia

was so impressed with our students’ knowledge of

issues around the world and efforts that are

already in place to address them. Julie

commented on the fact that many of the

student responses were of high school or higher

standard and she had never seen such young children so socially aware.

After a lengthy and lively discussion, Julia asked the students if they would like to take part in some

journalism. She previously worked for the ABC and had a lot of insight to share on interviewing

techniques and camera work. The students interviewed each other using professional microphones (one

of which was last used to interview the Secretary General of the United Nations!) and video equipment,

complete with lapel microphone. Julie is going to edit together the recordings and send us a copy of the

results. She is then planning on putting this footage up on the official United Nations website!!! How

amazing!

The students had a quick look at an amazing website called freerice.com

On this website, students can take part in quizzes on any subject, any

level—Maths, Spelling, Art, Science … For every answer that they get

right, 10 grains of rice are donated to the

World Food Programme to end hunger (Goal

2!) The site can be accessed from home as

well as at school. Get on and give it a go!

Canberra Camp

Please find below the itinerary for camp next week. It should be a solid week of learning and fun! The bus

will be LEAVING Young Railway Station at 8.30am. Please be a little early to load bags and have hugs.

We will arrive back at Young Railway Station on Friday at approximately 5.00pm.

MONDAY

Meet our local member

Parliamentary Education Office

Tour of Parliament House

Tour of Government House

TUESDAY Electoral Education Centre Questacon Australian Institute of Sport

WEDNESDAY

Bus Tour of Embassies

National Capital Exhibition

National Gallery

National Library

Anzac Parade Walking Tour

THURSDAY National Museum

Royal Australian Mint

National Zoo & Aquarium

FRIDAY

Australian War Memorial

Parliamentary Rose Gardens

Museum of Australian Democracy

A Special Visitor

This week we were lucky enough to have a special visitor at our school. Hayden

is Mrs Richens’ son and he spent Thursday morning and Friday with us. Hayden

fitted in beautifully and made good friends with Tom, in particular, almost

instantly. It was lovely having you visit us Hayden.

Cooking Up A Storm

Mrs Maciver taught the Kitchen Garden lesson today and in keeping with their

studies on Indonesia this week, the students cooked Nasi Goreng—an Indone-

sian variation on fried rice.

It was absolutely delicious and the kids gobbled it up in no time. Thank you to

our wonderful parent volunteers who are always on hand to make sure things

run smoothly. We couldn’t do it without you!

Christmas Hamper Raffle

We would like to run a raffle again at this year’s Presentation Night, as well as selling tickets beforehand.

This year we thought that we would try something a bit different though—A Christmas Food Hamper.

If each family could donate some non-perishable

goods that would be great for Christmas, we could

have a fabulous hamper to raffle off.

We would like to ask each family to bring in their

donations by the end of November, so that we can

put the hamper together and advertise our ticket

sales online as well.

There will be a box in the office for donations and

tickets will start to be sold in a couple of weeks.

School Photos—Gorgeous As Always!

Our annual School Photo Day has been and gone and we thank

everybody for making it run smoothly. Our wonderful

photographers, Gina and Paul, have done it again, and there

are some beautiful photos coming your way at the end of term.

If you haven’t yet ordered your Yearbook and School Photos,

please drop the note into the office, so that we can work on

ordering details.

Talking To Kids About The American Election

This week has been historic in American politics, and people all around the world have been emotionally

affected by it. Our children, here at school, are no different. For many of our children, it has been a

stressful and frightening time. We have had many of our students in tears about the result and some very

fearful about what it means for them.

We thought that this might be a good time to reflect on how to talk to our children about this event.

These tips have been collected from various child psychologists and experts over the past two days:

Know Your Child

Every parent knows their child best, knows how anxious they might be. Think about what your child

might have heard at school, on TV or online. Consider what they are developmentally able to process.

Offer Reassurance

We are the people our kids look to, to know that they’re safe and secure, so we need to be that

reassuring voice. It is important that our kids understand that while we may be impacted by this, as a

closely related country, what happens in the United States is different to here.

Take The High Road

Don’t model anger and hatred back. Take the higher road. Try to explain to your kids that there are many

perspectives in the political landscape. Go back to the idea that different people have different ideas

about how to run the country. That is part of being in a democracy.

Show Them Things That They Can Do

Parents can use the conversation as an opportunity to show children that there are things that they can

do, if they disagree with the status quo. Let them find ways to find their voice. They might want to write

letters, blog or post their thoughts online.

My message to our students would be this:

You are all clever, thoughtful children. You know about right and wrong and can tell the difference within

your own hearts. You know that everybody deserves and equal chance, and that some people need a

little extra assistance at times. You know that it doesn’t matter what colour our skin is, we are all equal.

You know that climate change is real and that science has proved it to be so. You know that women and

girls are about so much more than how they look and that they deserve an equal chance of success. You

know that people are entitled to have vastly different policies

and ideas about how to run a country. You also know that

nobody is entitled to spread hate, fear and untruths.

I know that you believe in a brighter future for our world. I

know that you will strive to make your world as sustainable and

fair as you can. I know that you believe all children deserve to

lead peaceful, happy lives. I know that you will stand up for

what you believe to be right. There are ways for you to do so.

Hold tight to your vision of the world … it is coming!

Some of what you have seen from Donald Trump has been

offensive, ignorant and hurtful. Sometimes a person is put into

our lives to show us how NOT to be.

“The sun will rise in the morning.” President Barack Obama

Week Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

6 14th Nov

Primary

Camp

15th Nov

Primary

Camp

16th Nov

Primary

Camp

17th Nov

Primary

Camp

18th Nov

Primary

Camp

19th Nov

20th Nov

7 21st Nov

Assessment

Week

P&C Meeting

22nd Nov

Assessment

Week

23rd Nov

Assessment

Week

24th Nov

Assessment

Week

25th Nov

Assessment

Week

Gardening

26th Nov

Young Colour

Run

27th Nov

8 28th Nov

Swimming

Lessons

29th Nov

Swimming

Lessons

Hennessy

Transition

Day (Adrian)

30th Nov

Swimming

Lessons

Presentation

Night Play

Rehearsal

1st Dec

Swimming

Lessons

2nd Dec

Swimming

Lessons

Presentation

Night Play

Rehearsal

3rd Dec

4th Dec

9 5th Dec

Yr 5/6 Dinner

6th Dec

Presentation

Night

Presentation

Night Play

Rehearsal

7th Dec

TAFE

Catering Job

8th Dec

9th Dec

Year 6 Fun

Day

10th Dec 11th Dec

10 12th Dec

Orientation

Week

Bushfire

Brigade Visit

13th Dec

Orientation

Week

14th Dec

Orientation

Week

15th Dec

Orientation

Week

16th Dec

Last day of

term

Scripture

Party

Sausage

Sizzle Lunch

Santa

17th Dec 18th Dec

As always, we will let you know of dates as soon as we are aware of them. Any new events since the

previous week’s newsletter, will be highlighted in red. If you are not sure if your child is involved in an

event, please give us a call and we will let you know.

Please Remember & Note!

Next year, we will not have a Staff Development Day (Pupil Free Day) at the

start of Term 2 or Term 3. Staff and students will all start on the Monday.

We will, however, have Staff Development Days on Thursday 8th and Friday

9th of June—when our staff head to Sydney for the EduTech Conference. This

will mean a 5 day long weekend during Term 2. Plan ahead ...