After the rain cancelled our Wellbeing Day in Term 1, Year 6 were very excited to be heading out to Wentworth Falls for the bushwalk. Although the majority of students enjoyed it, unfortunately (for the teachers) the rain did begin, as we were halfway down the walk. Due to this, our day was cut short as we had to head back to school. A special thanks to Mr Wallace, Mrs Blight, Mrs Perigo and Mrs Gela who helped us throughout the day.

I loved the fantastic, amazing views from the sides of the waterfall. The smell of nature filled the air. The hundreds of steps and the narrow paths were exciting. Every step felt like a wonderful journey. – Grace

The sky was dark when we got there, but we decided to go on with the bushwalk. My friends and I chose to do the hardest walk. As we descended the steep stone steps, the rain started to dampen the rocks and trees around us. We got all the way down to the bottom (Phew!) and we looked up, a misty stream of rain showered us. The rain had activated the waterfall. We stood there in the moment, taking in the sight that we were witnessing. Then, we all realised that we had to climb the steep stone steps once again. We got back up to the top exhausted. It was raining harder and everyone was getting back on the bus, leaving for school. - Caleb

Year 10 have been very busy this term with their Service Learning, where they researched challenging issues, such as: homelessness, domestic violence, mental health, Aboriginal reconciliation, autism and lung disease. In teams they fundraised for their causes with stalls, selling food and products they had made. They created Blackout Poetry and documentaries, which were displayed on the last day.  We saw great passion emerging for the issues and hundreds of dollars being raised for each cause.

One group, looking at mental health in elderly people, collaborated with Year 2 students who wrote about and illustrated their favourite memories. These will now be shared with the residents of a nursing home in Springwood.  (photos Y10_DOCO)

This week they also participated in a wonderful program called Business Week, with Mrs Hogan and our HSIE teachers . They formed six teams, each team creating a product, then financing and marketing the product. It was great to meet the CEOs, and hear about the roles of each team member, and then to see their displays. They had to pitch their products to a Dragon’s Den, equivalent to a Shark Tank! What a wonderful end to a creative and innovative term where Year 10 were given the opportunity to shine in so many areas.

Our Years 5 and 6 students entered the annual Prue Car MP Londonderry Christmas Card competition for 2020. One of our Year 6 students, Tyler Shaw, has been announced as the winner for 2020. Her card design will be used by Prue Car this Christmas.

Well done, Tyler and all the students who entered.

Kylie Bronson
Year 6 Teacher

With the challenges of 2020, Visual Arts Elective classes had to come up with a creative way to exhibit their amazing artworks. Usually we would be invited to ‘Art With Punch’ to experience the HSC Major Works, and there would be an expo at school for Year 9 and 10 Wearable Art Projects. This year we are all able to visit these exhibits through eBooks created by Mrs Siorokos. The links below are for sensational viewing from the comfort of your home.

Enjoy!

CLICK HERE FOR YEAR 9 Wearable Art Projects

Congratulations Year 10 Science Students!

Every year since 2016, PCS Year 10 students have sat the Science VALID exam. Most Year 10 students in the state sit for this examination and it covers science material from Years 9 and 10. Last year we obtained 66 Level 6 (the highest level) results. This year, Year 10 obtained 88 Level 6 results!

• 20 Level 6 results for Knowledge and Understanding

• 23 Level 6 results for Extended Responses

Coco Purcell in Year 4 recently competed at the 2020 CSSA Primary Tennis Gala Day, an event that was originally cancelled and then put back on after restrictions were lifted.

Coco had a great day at this event where she played eight matches in her Year 3/4 Girls draw, which she won all matches very comfortably.

Coco won against a student from Oran Park Anglican College winning 6-2, and in the finals, she played against a student from Mamre Anglican School and won 6-0. 

‘Consider your child’s screen use in the context of their overall health and wellbeing. For example, is online time getting in the way of their sleep and exercise? Is it impacting on their face-to-face connections with family and friends? The answers to these questions will guide you and help strike the right balance of online and offline activities for your child’ - E safety Commissioner

Parent and carers, there is no magic figure. The right amount of screen time can depend on a range of factors like your child’s age and maturity, the kind of content they are consuming, their learning needs and your family routine. 

It can be easy to focus only on the clock, but the quality and nature of what they are doing online, and your involvement, are just as important.

ClickView is running a competition called ‘Aussie Student Inventions That Changed the World’. This competition allows students to present their invention to an expert panel of judges, for the chance to win some amazing prizes. It is free to enter.

These kinds of initiatives really excite me and I’m sure that within the PCS community there are a number of students who have amazing ideas that could possible change the world.

If you are interested in activating your God given creativity, I encourage you to explore this opportunity.

Year 3 have been enjoying a journey around Australia’s neighbouring countries in Geography. We have explored what it would be like to live a day in the life of a child in the Philippines, Japan, New Zealand and even Papua New Guinea! Students have chosen the country they were most interested in to research and write a letter to a child in Australia, imagining they were living in their chosen country.

In Literacy, Year 3 have been exploring stories about Australia. Over the past two weeks we have been learning ‘My Country’ by Dorothea Mackellar and are about to choose our own poems to recite in class. We are looking forward to completing our narrative writing and try our hand at writing our own poetry in the remainder of this term.

Art has been so fun, where we have been inspired by Van Gogh, painted the Harbour Bridge, and created dioramas around our beautiful Australian landscape. Students have produced a variety of scenes such as beaches, deserts and bushland.

During Week 5, Year 9 Science students had the opportunity to perform a dissection of a lamb's brain. They made a cross-section cut down the centre of the brain to identify different structures and lobes of the brain.

The students drew some incredibly detailed pictures of these regions and then did a research task to link what they learnt about the structures and their function to an MRI scan of various neural diseases.

Tim Smith, Science Prac Teacher                                

Denise Bailey, Head of Science

We have been advised that there have been a number of people who have recently been dropping off and collecting their children from the Bus Bay Area (at the end of Simeon Road), or parking near the Uniform Shop and having students walk in there to be picked up.

This has been an area of concern in the past and it is imperative that parents/guardians not park anywhere near the bus bay, as you may not only endanger the students trying to cross, but obstruct the buses as well as they try to turn.

Thank you for your support in doing the right thing.

Year 8 students Ben Daley, Rory Jenner and Sheridan Brady entered an Australia-wide competition to win a chance to grow wattle seeds that will be flown to space and back. The students needed to create a 90 second video explaining why our school should be selected.

The seeds will be part of the payload on the SpaceX mission in December 2020. The students will receive seeds from the space mission and compare seeds that remained on earth.

The project will take at least a year and it is envisaged that the wattle trees will then be planted and a map be made of all the ‘space wattle trees’ around Australia.

F1 in Schools NSW State Final is currently being run virtually due to COVID-19. The REA (Reengineering Australia) have approached Penrith Christian School and Team AXION (Junior Professional) to participate in a one and half hour movie about this amazing STEM competition. The AXION team, Ella Stoodley, Vaughan Todd and Emmanuel Ndlovu (missing Jordan Whiley and Jake King) recorded last week in a studio setup by the REA. The film crew will visit the School this week to obtain some location shots of the team.

AXION’s goal is to make the Australian National Final in Melbourne next year so they can then have a chance at the World Finals in Singapore in 2021.

The link shows the final preparations underway for the virtual competition https://youtu.be/YPpzB2AyXgg

Students across the whole School are invited to wear their favourite pair of crazy socks and bring a gold coin donation for families in need on Thursday 12 November. All money raised will be donated to the WestCare 1000 Safe Sleeps Program.

What would our lives be without light?

This term in Science, Year 5 have been exploring the properties of light and how it enables us to see.

This week we covered two main concepts. 

It has been an exciting beginning to Term 4 with Year 1 enjoying warmer weather, looking forward to new and engaging topics, and preparing for end of year events.

In English, they are exploring and comparing digital and printed story books, writing entertaining and adventurous narratives, and presenting interesting speeches.

In Mathematics, they have learnt to make groups, share objects and solve problems in Multiplication and Division, as well as explore and design three dimensional solids.

With Christmas soon approaching, it brings us great joy to extend an invitation to Middle and Senior School students and families to partner with WestCare in their annual Christmas Appeal.

Please CLICK HERE for further information on how you can partner with Westcare this season.

Kind regards

Book Day activities for Year 3 through to Year 8 this year included the opportunity for the students to have a go at 'Found Poetry'.

Found Poetry uses a page of text from any source, from which a poem is created by taking words and phrases and reframing them to impart a new meaning. Found Poetry allows anyone to discover and create meaningful poetry. A significant part of a piece of Found Poetry is the artwork that is also created as part of the work. Sometimes this is done through the blocking out of the unused words, or by the author integrating images and/or patterns to their page to create a visually and literary piece of art.

I had the pleasure of visiting a number of classes throughout Book Day and was thrilled to see the engagement of the students and the amazing poems that they were able to produce. Clink on the links below for a sample of the amazing creations on Book Day. Enjoy.

The Kindy children have been waiting a long time to show just how much they have grown up over this year.

We had our first Storytime for the children entering Kindergarten in 2021 last Tuesday and the current Kindy children were so excited to finally be the ‘Big Kids’. They showed the children just how important it is to listen to learn as they heard one of Ms Allen’s favourite stories being read -Guess The Baby.

Following instructions has been a huge part of the Kindergarten program this year and a fun way we have done this is through movement activities. Next year’s Kindergarten children particularly enjoyed joining in with these activities which included ‘Move and Freeze’ and ‘The Bean Game’. It was wonderful to see the progress in the Kindy children’s fundamental movement skills including hopping, jumping, skipping, balancing, throwing and catching.

This semester Year 8 are studying History in HSIE and in Term 3 the student focus was the Western and Islamic World, including the role of the church in Medieval Europe, the Roman Empire and the Crusades. This is a deeply interesting topic, which continues to have implications throughout the world today.

We embarked on a new and exciting approach to learning, where students were challenged to think more deeply about the motivations of people of the past as they sought to uncover why an individual would commit an atrocity for an ideology? Lessons were delivered in a range of ways, including structured lessons, blended learning, individual research and small groups.  Mr Ollis took a very active role in each of the Year 8 History classes, working with a selected group of students two periods per week to further extend them. All of Year 8 were invited to self-nominate for inclusion into this BOOST aspect of the program, where students were engaged alongside their peers, with the aim achieving deeper understanding of the focus topics. Students were asked to connect the concepts from each lesson to the driving question and were challenged to reflect upon their learning and express how they as individuals may be changed as a result.

At the end of Term 3, we held a showcase event where the created works of students were displayed and presented. Students overwhelmingly reported greater engagement and satisfaction with their learning during this unit, but excitingly, we also saw a significant increase in both the sophistication of student thinking and assessment results, with a 15% improvement in results across all three classes.