Dear families, students and staff

It was a joy to see our wonderful Junior Choir join with so many other choirs at the Perth Arena last Friday at the One Big Voice music festival. After weeks of rehearsals and hard work it all came together in amazing fashion on a fantastic occasion where positive, motivating and joyful songs were sung by all children in celebration of the human spirit.  I suspect that the incredible “Rain” song will remain in the memories of all those who heard it for a long time!

Well done and thank you to Mrs V for all her hard work in preparing our Junior Choir of this special opportunity and to Foulk Sensei who helped accompany and supervise on the day. Thanks also to all parents for enabling your children to take part and for being there on the day to enjoy their performance. Special thanks and congratulations to all the students who sang. You made our day! Now, I can’t wait to hear the Senior Choir perform as part of the WA Massed Choir at the Concert Hall on Saturday September 15.

Little Big Shots

Congratulations to our very own Daniel Chua who will be a special guest on Channel Seven’s Little Big Shots on Sunday night. Daniel has a very special talent involving his encyclopaedic knowledge of geography including his ability to know  every country in the world, where it is located on the globe and their flag.  Well done Daniel! We are so proud of you and will all be watching as you show Shane Jacobsen just how clever you are. Go Daniel!

Science Competition Winners

Congratulations to all girls and boys who took part in our recent Science Week competition. It was terrific to see the huge number of students taking part. It seems to grow every year and we love the fact that you work in teams and get your parents and other family members involved. As it is a competition, I want to congratulate all the prize winners who were announced at our assembly last week but I also want to encourage everyone who took part to do so again next year as well as those who have yet to have a go. The Science competition is easy and fun so we would love to see everyone involved.

A special thanks to our Science Committee who spent ages planning the competition and arranged for the prizes to be available. They do an incredible job with “all things Science” in our school.

NAIDOC

Our school has been celebrating National Aboriginal and Islander Day Of Celebration (NAIDOC) this week with a mixture of classroom, whole school and staff education sessions run across the week. As you walk into the school you will have seen the spectacular collective artworks of many students that form one long Waagyl, sometimes known as the Rainbow Serpent, who came down from the north of WA during the Dreaming to reside in its new home of the Swan River. Teachers have been studying many aspects of Aboriginal culture with their classes.  Mr Maurice Palmer also came into our school during the week to talk to classes about Aboriginal culture and to help our students learn to play the didgeridoo. Not too successfully though!

At Aubin Grove we are proud of the many cultures that co-exist in our school, both from overseas and our own indigenous culture, and we are always seeking ways to learn more about them so we can enrich the learning experiences for our students. This doesn’t just apply to our students but to our teachers also. On Tuesday, our staff met with Dr Richard Walley who presented a challenging and thought-provoking two hour session on matters to do with an Aboriginal perspective. Our staff loved the opportunity to meet with such an eminent educator and elder of the Noongar people and we will seek to arrange more sessions in the future. Through sessions such as this our teachers feel better equipped to teach aspects of the Australian Curriculum that involve our Aboriginal heritage to their students.

SMS Messaging for Absences

Last week I wrote to you all explaining that our school would commence this program on Monday of this week. This program involves you receiving an SMS whenever your child is absent from school, unless we have been advised of the absence prior to the day. Unfortunately, our introduction has coincided with a system wide breakdown of the program, meaning that all schools, including ours, who use the program are unable to do so until further notice. I apologise for this but hope you understand that this is outside our control. We will advise you once the breakdown is fixed and alert you to when the program will commence.

Year 3-6 Faction Carnival

Congratulations to all girls and boys who took part in the recent Faction Athletics Carnival for Years 3-6. We had a fantastic two days of jumps, throws, races and team games with hardly a cloud in sight! Well done to everyone who took part. The competition was intense but the sporting spirit was awesome! We saw some outstanding performances and cheered on everyone who took part. Well done to Gold Faction for narrowly winning the Champions Shield for 2018 and well done to all girls and boys who won Champion and Runner-up Champion medals.

Of course, special thanks again goes to Mr Fritchley, ably supported by Mr Hillson, for his brilliant job in preparing everyone, organising the events and then running the day to his usual top notch standard. It is his work that makes sure we all have such a positive experience on the day.

Next up we have the Junior Faction Carnival for Years K-2 on Wednesday, October 17 when it will be over to Mr Hillson the lead the way. I know it will be another fabulous day. See you all there!

 Parenting Seminars

Recently our School Nurse, Karen Penny, and School Psychologist, Gwen Appleyard, ran a parenting seminar that was attended by 21 mums and dads. Karen and Gwen did a terrific job and the seminar was very positively received by those present. As a result, the parents in attendance asked that further sessions on selected topics be held on a regular basis. The first of those sessions, entitled “Raising Confident, Competent Children” will be held at the school on Tuesday November 6 (9:00am-10:30am). The seminars are all free. If you are interested in attending, keep an eye out for the flyer and register your interest as places are limited. If you would like a space reserved for this session, just contact the school and request that a space be reserved for you, and a friend!

New South Wales Farmers Drought Appeal

Thank you to those who have already donated to the above appeal by dropping some money into an envelope marked NSW Farmers Drought Appeal into the school postal slot at the rear of the school office building. The staff are raising funds via a “Staff Bingo” afternoon after school today and several students are conducting a paper plane flying competition soon with entry fees going to the appeal. We are indebted to students, Lia and Zoe Johnson for their heartfelt appeal for us to be involved in this quest and hope that everyone can find a way to contribute some amount, no matter the size, to help out these fellow Australians during such a terrible time.

You would appreciate that our school can’t support every appeal but we always try to do what we can, when we can, as our students have such big hearts and we want to help them develop their social conscience and belief that we can all do something to help those less fortunate than ourselves. Thank you.

And…don’t forget to watch Daniel on Little Big Shots on Sunday night!

Frank Pansini

PRINCIPAL