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Murringo Public School
Newsletter Term 2 Week 7
Principal: Mrs Kaelene Neville
Senior Administration Manager: Mrs Gina Galvin
Address: 91 Murringo Gap Rd Murringo
School’s email: [email protected]
Principal’s email: [email protected] Telephone:
(02) 6384 6351
Fax: (02) 6384 6322
Monday 6th June 2016
Monday Upper Division Spelling Bee This school based spelling
bee with determine our two representatives from each division—Year
3/4 and Year 5/6.
Mrs Dean’s Planning Day Mrs Dean will be working at our school
today with Mrs Wheatley, who is the second teacher at Monteagle.
Together they are working on planning integrated units for Lower
Division classes.
HOOPS Choir Rehearsal 1.30-3.00
P&C Meeting—7.30pm at the school
Tuesday Debating Day @ Murringo Today we will have debaters at
our school, from our small school partners and Murrumburrah Public
School. Both of our Small School Teams will debate the two teams
from Murrumburrah, about topics related to The Media. Upper
Division will be the audience for both of these debates. Parents or
community members are most welcome to attend. Team 1 (Abbie) will
debate from 11.30-12.15 and Team 2 (Tennyson and Charlotte) will
debate from 1.15-2.00. Wednesday Linkages—Young High
School—Tennyson
Staff Meeting—3.30pm
Thursday Friday Kitchen Garden Program—Gardening
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Getting Our Yoga On!
Students will continue to use their yoga as fitness and
brain
break activities. Lower Division will continue doing Yoga
for
Sport, whilst Upper Division will be moving on to Touch
Footy.
This week’s pose is the every popular Snake pose.
Choral Camp Applications
Any students in Year 5 or 6 who would like to apply for
choral
camp are reminded to return their notes as soon as possible,
as all entries must be submitted by the 10th of June.
Book Club Due
Please be sure to return any book club order forms to the
office if you would like to purchase a book or activity pack
for
your child.
Spelling Bee
Congratulations to all of the students who took part in the
Upper Division Spelling Bee today. There was a lot of
practice
that went in at home for the participants, and they should
ALL
be very proud of themselves.
We did have to choose some winners, however, and we are
pleased to announce that our Regional Representatives for
2016
are:
Year 3/4— Peter Corkery and Sofala Neville
Year 5/6— Tennyson Neville & Adrian Waru
Touch Footy Trials
Congratulations to Shania and Charlotte, who tried out for
the
Riverina Touch Football Team last week. Whilst they didn’t
make
it through this year, they were very strong contenders and
we
hope that they will try out again next year. You never know, if
you don’t have a go.
Cooking
Another fabulous week of cooking in our Kitchen Garden Program
last week. Archie, Adrian, Mark and
Toby whipped up some fabulous pizzas on their own dough. Abbie,
Charlotte, Lily, Shania and Sofala
presented a gorgeous salad with spicy croutons and a delicious
dressing. Tennyson, Christopher, Peter
and Jacob whipped up the Beetroot and Chocolate Muffins, and
didn’t they have fun making a mess!
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Education for THIS century …
Last week Mrs Neville travelled to Wombat
to share with other small school principals
apps, websites and online tools that are
being used effectively in our classrooms.
It is very important that teachers stay up to
date with the latest technologies, and how
they can be used to enhance the learning
experience for all of our students.
Education has fundamentally changed, with
our students needing a whole new range of
skills to cope in today’s world. The 3 R’s are
still very important, but so are the new 6 C’s.
We will highlight one of these each week in
the newsletter and let you know what we are
doing to develop these skills in our students.
In both classes, students are being given real
world problems to solve during Maths lessons.
They have to use all of their mathematical
knowledge, and any resources to find a solution.
Students have to use High Order Thinking Skills,
such as ‘Evaluate’ and ‘Create’, in order to
complete the projects that they have in class,
such as the Prime Minister project in Upper
Division and the ‘Pet Project’ that is happening in
Lower Division. These projects have real applica-
tions in our students’ worlds (an assembly presen-
tation, an upload to YouTube, actual letters being
written to the Principal, P&C and parents).
For a few years now, both of our classrooms have
been involved in Interdiscplinary Learning. We
have themed units of work that involve English,
Science, Health, History, Geography, Music, Art,
Drama and Dance syllabuses, all within the one
topic. This term, that is Advance Australia Fair in
Upper Division and ‘I am Me, You are You’ in
Lower Division. The real world isn’t split into
timeslots when you use English and then an hour
later you do Science. Classrooms shouldn’t be set
up that way either.
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Importance of Reading
Lower Division have been work-
ing hard to bring in their home
readers every night, with blue
cards walking out the door each
day. It is INCREDIBLY important
that ALL of our students read
EVERY SINGLE NIGHT, but this is
especially true for those still
working their way through the
early reading levels.
Students who have are now
‘Independent Readers’ also
must read every night, or their
results in every other area of
schooling will suffer. The re-
search is very strong and has
proved over and over, that a
minimum of 20 minutes reading every night is the difference
between academic success or not.
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Preferential Voting Lesson
Last week, as part of their unit Advance Australia Fair, the
Upper Division stu-
dents learnt about how the preferential voting system works in
Australia, in
both the House of Representatives and in the Senate.
We had all students and staff voting in our House of
Representatives Ballot—
to see who should be the new leader of the school. Nobody wins
the House
of Representatives seat until they have over 50% of the vote, so
the students
had to work out what that would have to be with our 26 ballot
papers. We
would have a winner when somebody had 14 votes. Nobody achieved
that
golden mark until about the 4th round of preferences were
counted, and our
eventual winner was ….
After the celebrations took place with the students, it was time
to count our
Senate Ballots. The Senate ballot paper is always much bigger
and trickier
than the House of Reps, and this was no exception. Everybody had
a choice
to vote above or below the line, but in keeping with the new
Senate Voting
rules. Above the line you needed to put at least 1-6 and below
the line, at
least 1-12. Many students numbered all of the boxes below the
line.
We had an interesting array of parties to choose from, and we
were voting in 4 senators in total.. Once
voting was completed, we determined how many votes a senator
needed to score to be elected—The
Quota. There is an easy mathematical formulate for this. We had
to work out the total number of formal
votes (26) and then divide that by the number of senators to be
voted in, plus one (5). You then have to
add another one to that result (6). As soon as a candidate
reached 6 votes they were automatically into
our senate and any subsequent votes were redistributed on
preferences.
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Once we knew the quota, we then counted how many 1’s each
candidate had for the primary vote. We
then started to eliminate candidates with the lowest votes and
redistribute the votes based on voter
preferences.
It took a while before any candidates made it to the quota, with
lots of others knocked out and votes
redistributed, but our first through was Bart Simpson. He was
closely followed by Mickey Mouse. It took
many more candidates being knocked and preferences given before
Woody made it through into the
third Senate seat. It came down to two more candidates, with
Katniss Everdeen eventually knocked out
and The Hulk making it through into the fourth spot. So, we
elected a toy, mouse, monster
and naughty boy to
the Senate and a
gorgeous young
woman to the
House of
Representatives.
A great result!
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Week Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
Sunday
7 6th June
P&C Meeting
7.30pm
Upper
Division
Spelling Bee
Mrs Dean at
Training Day
HOOPS Choir
Rehearsal
7th June
Debating
Team @
Murringo
8th June
Young High
Linkages
Program
Staff Meeting
9th June 10th June
Gardening
11th June 12th June
8 13th June
Queen’s
Birthday
Holiday
14th June
MCA Meeting
7.00pm
Tennyson at
Boys Vocal
Workshop
15th June
Young High
Linkages
Program
Tennyson at
Boys Vocal
Workshop
16th June
Tennyson at
Boys Vocal
Workshop
Regional X
Country @
Gundagai
17th June
Cooking
Debating at
Murringo
18th June 19th June
9 20th June
Assessment
Week
21st June
Assessment
Week
22nd June
Young High
Linkages
Program
Assessment
Week
Staff Meeting
23rd June
Assessment
Week
Debating
Team @
Young Public
24th June
Gardening
25th June 26th June
10 27th June
YSS Concert
Practice @
Murringo
28th June
29th June
Young High
Linkages
Program
3D Printing
Lesson for
Whole School
30th June
Debating
Team @
Wombat
1st July
Crazy Hair
Day
Assembly
Cooking
Challenge
for UD
2nd July
HOLIDAYS
Federal
Election
P&C BBQ
and Cake
Stall
3rd July
HOLIDAYS
We endeavour to fill you in on upcoming dates as soon as we know
about them. There are always new
events that pop up or are confirmed throughout the term. Any new
dates from last week’s calendar are
written in red, to indicate that they are new.
Cooking Challenge
Students in Upper Division are invited to take part in this
term’s Cooking
Challenge.
The recipe will be the Beetroot and Chocolate Muffins that we
have had as a
rotation in class. Our students, however, will make a bar
cake—using the
same recipe.
These cakes will then be sold at the P&C stall at the
election.
Students will bring home the recipe and a permission note next
Friday. If they
wish to participate it must be brought back to school (so that
we know how
many ingredients we need to buy), and it MUST be practised at
home, so that
the students are avble to cook it completely by themselves on
the day.
