Parents are always welcome to join us for Chapel. Chapel happens each week (usually on a Friday) and each week a Junior School class runs Chapel. This involves leading the worship time, presenting a talk (sometimes including a drama or song), and praying. Awards are handed out, including class and reading awards.
For Junior School Chapel times and host details for Term 4, 2017, please CLICK HERE
Isaac Bartlett (Year 4) travelled to Adelaide during the holidays to compete in the Australian National Irish dancing competition. He came away winning for the third consecutive year. He trains four times a week with the Penrith Gaels Maher School of dance and is now planning on competing at the World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, to be held in March next year. Congratulations Isaac!
Over the past school holidays, Penrith Christian School Year 6 student, Isaac Cavanagh, had the opportunity to represent Australia while attending the Jan Caloun International Ice Hockey Camp in Usti, Czech Republic. Isaac was invited by selectors to join 14 other students from NSW, ACT and QLD to attend the sixteen-day ice hockey camp.
While in the Czech Republic, Isaac was billeted by a host family, learnt to speak basic Czech and trained with fellow ice hockey players from Usti. Isaac said, ‘It was awesome to learn from professional goalies and I learnt some great new skills. It was hard being at the rink every morning at 5.30 am and training all day, on and off ice, until dinner’. The team also attended a local game as the special guests of the Usti A Ten team being invited onto the ice during intermission and welcomed by the Usti community.
Isaac plays Goalie for the Flyers Ice Hockey Club, based in Penrith, for the Atoms team and will move up to Pee Wee’s next year where he aims to continue to improve and represent Australia again in the future.
St Marys Rugby League Club sent two Penrith school students to retrace Diggers’ steps on the Kokoda Trail. One of those students was PCS Year 11 student, Callum Meney.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE
Callum has also provided us with his report and thoughts about his Kokoda trip:
Congratulations to our Senior Girls Softball team winning the Nepean Zone Grand Final 10-4.
Coming into the Grand Final our girls were under pressure right from the opening innings against a strong Richard Johnson team that was trying their best to stop our clean undefeated record for two years.
With a pivotal member of our team unable to play the Grand Final, the girls worked hard in attack and defence to come away with a convincing win. Congratulations to all team members: Kerryn Morley, Stephenie Watts, Anna Mason, Jemma Pope, Ripeka Wiringi , Adelaide Telfer, Amelia Dobson, Marli Shahin, Ella Edwards, Emma Frith and Jordan Smith.
In Term 3, students were selected from Year 2 to Year 8 to take part in the ICAS English Program. This includes an assessment of reading and language skills in a range of contexts.
Congratulations to all students who invested time and effort into the competition.
The following students achieved outstanding results:
The annual PCS CanTeen Bandanna Day will be held on Friday 27 October. Middle and Senior School students will be able to purchase and wear their Bandanna on the day. Bandanna’s will be $5 each and can be purchased from outside the iCentre before school, recess and lunch.
About CanTeen and National Bandanna Day
CanTeen helps young people aged 12-25 cope with a close family member’s cancer or their own.
National Bandanna Day is CanTeen’s annual fundraising and awareness campaign and this year aims to raise $1.3 million. Funds raised help provide counselling services, a 24/7 online community, camps and youth-specific resources as well as specialist medical treatment and support for young cancer patients.
We are pleased to introduce our new School Captains for 2018.
Our Female Captain is Sarah Pena, and our Male Captain is Callum Meney. Our Female Vice-Captain is Emily Dal Santo and our Male Vice-Captain is Zephaniah Tevita. We look forward to a great year ahead with these fantastic young leaders!
These students had their captain badges presented to them by the outgoing Leaders: Daniel Kraus, Emily van Esch, Sean McClement and Kwani Tevita at the Year 12 Graduation.
There are many things students can do to develop their own critical thinking skills. Critical thinking is your ability to think clearly and rationally, reflecting and developing your thoughts. Sometimes we can get a bit lazy with our thinking and we only consider things at a superficial level. Here are some things you can do to enhance your critical thinking.
CLARIFY YOUR THOUGHTS: The best way to clarify your thoughts is to try and explain your thinking to someone else. Even if you are talking to an imaginary person, you will find that explaining your thinking out loud helps you to see the flaws in your argument.
QUESTION ASSUMPTIONS: Don’t take your thoughts for granted, every now and then think about why you believe a certain thought or how you know things to be true. Get in the habit of pausing and looking at what you are thinking and questioning what thoughts underlie your assumptions. Don’t just conform and accept a view because it is the popular one, instead pause and reflect on the arguments for and against that viewpoint and the strengths of each argument.
LOOK FOR OTHER PERSPECTIVES: When you are presenting an argument, imagine yourself in a debate and think about what the opposing side might say. What would someone with a completely opposite view to you believe? Can you understand why they might think that way? Can you see some validity in their viewpoint?
An important requirement of the School Opal Card is the need for students to Tap On and Tap Off when they travel to and from school.
Opal data gathered by tapping on and off is used to determine demand for bus services. If students don’t Tap On and Tap Off, services may be cancelled due to the lack of recorded patronage.
With this in mind, we remind students that tapping on and off at the beginning and end of each trip is one of the conditions of using a School Opal Card. This in turn helps us ensure we are able to provide the appropriate level of service to PCS students.
As you may be aware, we have been lobbying Busways for a direct bus to Cranebrook, to include Jordan Springs, for the past 12 months. Our requests have been declined by Transport for NSW due to the lack of students residing in these suburbs having an OPAL Card.
This is a final reminder that Busways will very soon be conducting a review of student numbers. It is critical that we have ALL students residing in Cranebrook and Jordan Springs apply for a free student OPAL Card.
Please go to transportnsw.info/school-students to complete an application.
As part of our Missions Fundraising commitments for 2017, Junior School participated in ‘Coins for Missions’ this term. All classes from Kindergarten to Year 4 were encouraged to do jobs at home in order to earn silver or gold coins for Missions.
Today we revealed our grand total raised: $2,563.15 - our target was $2,000, so this was an amazing effort by Junior School families and staff!
Our top fundraising classes were:
Many members of our school community know our gorgeous Kindy student Evie (sister to Alicia and grandaughter of Mrs Jagger, Head of Senior School).
Evie was two years old when she was diagnosed with advanced neuroblastoma, meaning cancerous nerve cells had spread throughout her body and into her bones. For the past four years, Evie, has been taking powerful drugs and undergoing neurosurgery and chemotherapy to beat the cancer.
Last week, Evie (along with her mum Sarah and sister Alicia) appeared on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald (CLICK HERE to read the full article). They are helping the Kids Cancer Project to raise awareness during Childhood Cancer Awareness month, in an effort to raise $350,000, which is enough to support three researchers dedicated to finding a cure for childhood cancers.
You can show your support by buying a gold ribbon or making a donation at: thekidscancerproject.org.au
