Principal’s Message

2 3 7 B o t a n y R o a d

W a t e r l o o N S W 2 0 1 7 P h : 0 2 9 3 1 9 1 7 5 9

Issue 7

Term 3 2016

Dear parents, carers and valued community

members,

What a delight it is to welcome the warmer weather and extended periods of sunlight into our days. This increased energy has certainly been met with a lot of activities, achievements and learning opportunities across the full spectrum of our students’ lives.

I would like to congratulate Luka for successfully transitioning back to his home school full time. I would also like to commend Charlie, Joshua, Michael, Maria, & Tarhnay for each earning an extra day’s transition to their referring school. In fact, Tarhnay has been doing so well with her individual goals this year she was the recipient of this year’s Deadly Kids Doing Well Award!

Congratulations are also in order for two passionate and committed teachers within our school, Fernando and James, who have worked here for on full-time temporary contracts for 4 and 6 years respectively. As a result of a local panel decision, involving members from our Aboriginal Education & Consultative Group, Tribal Warrior Association and own teaching staff, the school was able to offer them permanent positions as classroom teachers. This will create more stability for our students and allow Fernando & James’ accumulated expertise of working in this school and community to positively impact all those for years to come.

This term we have been trialling our partnership with NSW Health and Allied Health services which offers free health care to our students and families including paediatrician, nurse, occupational therapist, speech pathologist, psychologist and psychiatrist. All these services will be accessed for students and their families here at Green Square School, with each student’s teacher working closely with our health team to make sure we are using the best strategies in class to support their academic, social and emotional learning. This project will have its official opening early in term 1 2017, so stay tuned for an invitation to our opening ceremony!

I hope you enjoy this term’s newsletter with all of the wonderful activities, achievements and learning opportunities showcased within.

Thank you so much to parents, carers and community members for your ongoing involvement in our student’s personalised learning journey. Have a safe and restorative spring break. First day for students in term 4 is Monday 10 October.

Yours sincerely,

Patrick Faucher Principal

It has been a busy and fruitful Term 3 for Green Square School. I would like to officially congratulate Fernando Navarro and Jimmy Thornton on their successful engagement as full time teachers. They have been important figures at this school for many years and are

deserving of their new position.

Green Square School was very fortunate to have Joel Redman from University of Newcastle, undertaking his final internship of a Bachelor of Education – Primary. He has been a valuable asset to the learning and behaviour program for Blue Class, building positive rapport with students and creating many successful learning

opportunities.

Many amazing programs have been experienced by our students this term. Bruno, our dog therapy, continue to promote positive interaction and wellbeing amongst staff

and students. Jeremy and Kat are running an outstanding Music program, with many students developing skills to play drums, guitar and keyboard. Considering many of our students have no prior skills in

playing these instruments, this is an outstanding result.

Students have experienced excursions to a variety of settings such Taronga Zoo, Coogee Beach, Centennial Park and other places in our local community. We aim to incorporate many opportunities for school excursion in

the coming term.

I would also like to welcome Uncle Bert, from Tribal Warrior. He is mentoring students in literacy and positive learning every Thursday. This is an exciting and valuable opportunity for our students to have such an

inspirational figure to look up to.

Enjoy your holidays and see you all next term,

Telly & Fernando

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In Term 3, at 2 o’clock we have been going out to sport to play basketball. Sometimes we verse others classes and every Friday we go to Allsports. We go in a bus after lunch. When we get there, we play basketball, soccer or hockey.

Green Class is also doing Music. We are learning to play a song. The song is called “Seven Nation Army”. I use the electric guitar and Jacob F plays the base guitar, Jake plays the electric guitar and Jimmy plays the drums.

Sometimes if Green Class finishes all their work, we have free time. We play UNO, Cool Maths Games or Monopoly.

Every week we do cooking. Last week we made muffins with strawberry jam.

By Joshua

So far Green Class has been doing lots of music. We have learnt 2 songs. The first one was 7 Nation Army, Jimmy was on drums, Jacob was on bass, Jake was read electric guitarist, Josh

was the rhythm second guitarist and Luka sang. For the second song, we learnt Everlong. Everybody was on the same instruments. It was great learning an instrument with Kat and

Jimmy. I hope we continue this next term.

Jacob

We have been working on companion planting this semester which required the students to complete some problem solving and research tasks such as determining which plants are best suited to grow together and why? The students also had to determine which plants will grow best for this time of year leading into the spring and then summer seasons. They achieved this and more. They not only worked out which plants grow best together but also which plants would repel snails and flies which can be destructive. As you can see in the picture, we are at the beginning stages in all our beds but the plants chosen all serve a purpose therefore we should hopefully see the fruits of our labour during term 4.

Jimmy

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We’ve done a lot this term in Red Class. One activity that has been very popular is blowing balloons and

bubbles as part of our occupational therapy games. Sarah bought some plastic bubbles from Singapore and

Jacob enjoyed blowing big bubbles.

We’ve also been learning about the planets in our solar system and

their different characteristics.

Red Class has also enjoyed cooking this term. Some of the things on the menu have been chocolate brownies,

lasagne, spinach and ricotta triangles, beef and vegetable stir fry. We are really enjoying cooking every week.

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A 1989 Honda motorcycle CBR250 Fireblade motorcycle was donated to Green Square School to offer students an opportunity to develop knowledge, understanding, skills, values and attitudes in the area of automotive whilst engaging in a ‘hands-on’ motorcycle repair and restore project. The students will have to work to a budget. If funds are exhausted, students will have to brain storm ideas to earn money to complete the project. The completed project might be sold at auction and all money raised will finance the next

automotive project.

Jacob, Michael and Daniel from Red Class have started to remove fairings, front and rear foot peg assemblies, exhaust and rear brake system. All these

parts are labelled and stored in containers safely.

The Baby Blade project will help students to develop an understanding of

related work environments and Workplace Health and Safety matters, while

developing a range of skills that will equip them for future leisure and lifestyle

activities, potential vocational pathways or future learning in the automotive

field.

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I have been at Green Square School for about a year now.

While here, I have completed a lot of assessments for my

home school and participated in a variety of programs

including, music, cooking, horticulture and OT. I am working

towards transitioning back to my home school and at the

beginning of next term I am going to three days a week.

Gold class has seen some changes this term with a new

teacher, new students and some students moving on or to

different classes. We have focused on the Olympics in Rio

and recently on poetry.

- Eminem

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“My painting represents the rainbow serpent. My culture is the Kamilaroi Tribe. The rainbow serpent in my painting is gliding

across the land to find any open spaces to put nature there and let it grow. The rainbow serpent glides over the whole of

Australia to find any open land to build nature. That is what my painting means to me.”

William

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Thanks for a fantastic Term 3!

We are happy to report that over the duration of Term 3 Blue Class extensively explored the 3 different topics of Local Communities, The Beach and Animals and Nature. Through these topics we covered various aspects of literacy, numeracy, art, music, social studies as well as science and each topic began with a fantastic excursion.

Some notable mentions of work from this term include the fantastic photography and artworks covered in the Local Communities and Beach excursions, some of which was chosen for display within the halls of the school and our classroom.

Congratulations to Tarhnay for setting her expectations high and successfully transitioning three days to her home school and winning a Deadly Kids Doing Well award for excellent attendance and outstanding effort across all areas of learning.

This term saw Juwarn successfully transition to his home school with a great rate of attendance and a sustained effort in a variety of subjects especially in numeracy, PDHPE, school sports and the Tribal Warriors excursions.

A big thanks to Deon for his participation in physical activity and numeracy lessons and music throughout the term. Deon enjoyed a stellar day out at Coogee Beach on our excursion and led the class when collecting beach artefacts for further artworks.

In science this term we explored irreversible changes through experiments such as making lava lamps without electricity, creating Elephant’s Toothpaste and designing balloon rockets.

A special thank you goes out to Jeremy and Kat the Green Square School music tutors for getting us all started on new tunes and hopefully we can bring our talents together in Term 4 for a school performance. A last mention and thank you is extended to Joel our university internship student who has been with Blue Class for the majority of term 3,

Looking forward to a great term 4 and finishing the year on a positive note.

Telly, Lucie and Joel.

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The students of green class should be very proud of their achievements this term with music. They have been actively learning songs with the support of our great music tutors Kat and Jeremy which resulted in a performance which the whole school attended. It takes a lot of courage to perform in front of other people, well done to Luka and Jake. It was definitely a highlight of my teaching career and I hope the students can build on this

experience next term to have more performances.

- Jimbo

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Green Square had the pleasure of having L-Fresh the Lion, a Sydney based rapper, come

in for a workshop helping students with lyric writing. Some students performed with

L-Fresh during a combined session with our regular music teacher Kat. It was inspiring to

see a famous artist who grew up in Cambelltown area come into the classroom and work

with our talented students. L-Fresh is working closely with the Red Room Company who

is presently running a Poetry competition where the student is to make up a poem about

a favourite object. Many students have submitted poetry to this competition and

hopefully more will before it closes.

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