Dundurrabin Public School Newsletter Term 1, Week 7 2023 - Gazette
Principal's Message
Welcome to Week 7- How are we already past the halfway mark?
It was a pleasure meeting with families for 3-way interviews last week. Thank you for speaking with us about how the school year has started, assisting with goal setting and a focus on attendance. We value positive home-school relationships to support our students to be productive learners.
Teacher Professional Learning
Our teachers along with teachers from Hernani, Dorrigo, and Orama Public Schools recently joined together for professional learning with the focus of ‘Close Reading’.
This was part of the Collaborative Support, Unique Settings (CSUS) project supported by Mel Sydenham (Literacy and Numeracy Implementation Coach) and Mel Morris (Principal School Leadership). The team worked collaboratively with teachers, principals and assistant principals to further develop our practice around reading. Close Reading is an approach to teach comprehension. Students read a text multiple times followed by annotations, questioning and discussion. We're excited to be implementing this approach at DPS.
Leah Keough
Fortnightly Awards
Term 1 - Week 7
K - 2 Class:
Charlie McGuire for challenging himself in reading and mathematics.
3-4 Class
Bailey McGuire for persistence in tricky maths tasks.
5-6 Class
Lucy Tyler for demonstrating a growth mindset.
Swimming Success
An outstanding effort from Lucy and Quill at the District Swimming Carnival last Monday. Both competed in the 50m Freestyle and 50m Breaststroke events, demonstrating great enthusiasm and skill. Congratulations to Quill for progressing to the Mid North Coast Carnival held at Coffs Harbour yesterday where he placed 7th in the 50m Freestyle event.
Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden News
Week 5
This week we planted pakchoi seedlings, one Italian parsley seedling and lots of curly parsley as a border to our apple trees. We also weeded and trimmed some of our herb gardens as well as providing supports to our snake beans. We harvested capsicums, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggs, silverbeet, carrots, parsnips and several herbs. In the kitchen we cooked a taco flavoured mexican soup, cornbread, vegetable platter, and a mexican style salsa verde, with quick vanilla cookies and cream icecreams for Week 6.
Cooking Award: Jaxon Bennett for excellent focus!
Week 6
Instead of gardening this week, we all participated in Clean Up Schools Day. We harvested eggs, cucumbers, lettuce, beans, carrots, silverbeet and a variety of tomatoes. In the kitchen we cooked lunch with a 'no power' theme. We cooked sandwich roll ups, vegetable sushi rolls, weetbix balls, and we enjoyed the icecreams from last week. They were delicious!
Cooking Award: Charlie McGuire for incredible sushi making!
In the Classroom
This week's learning snapshot comes from Mrs Sangster and the K-2 class.
Our youngest learners have made a fabulous start to their learning this year. Charlie, Jack, Kai, Amber and Nash have welcomed Carter and Tom to their class and have been very helpful and supportive in getting Kindergarten used to our classroom routines.
In English we have been learning all about Great White Sharks. Did you know that their teeth are the same size as a triangular corn chip and they have hundreds of them? To help us learn the digraph 'sh' in spelling, we even have a big blow up shark hanging from our ceiling!
We have been exploring the world of coding in Science and Technology through Coding Express trains with coloured coding plates which instruct the train to do different things, as well as coding Blue Bots to move around maps to target specific locations.
In our weekly Second Step lessons we have been learning the Skills for Learning which include listening, focusing attention, self talk and being assertive. We are trying very hard to apply these skills in each of our lessons throughout the day.
Clean Up Schools Day
On Friday we participated in Schools Clean Up Day. We cleaned up in the school grounds as well as out the front of the school. A lot of rubbish collected and sorted by a very busy army of students!
