24 April 2020

Newsletter Articles

Important dates

Monday 27th April – School Council meeting

Monday 4th May – May Day Public Holiday

Monday 8th June – Queen’s birthday Public Holiday

From the Principal

Dear families

Welcome back to Term 2!

It has obviously been an unsettled time. Many families have experienced significant changes and challenges in their lives and their expectations for the future. Against this backdrop we are so grateful that there is no community transmission of the coronavirus in the Northern Territory and that it has now been more than two weeks since our last new case. We obviously must remain vigilant to prevent the spread of any new cases.

It has been so good to see students returning to school this week. The place feels like a school again and learning in class has picked up from the learning at home that students were doing at the end of last term.

The health advice from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee is that schools are safe to attend. Some families have made a choice to continue their young person learning from home, as they have assessed the risks and the vulnerabilities that their family face. We would encourage those families to consult with their doctor to fully understand the risks and whether it is necessary to keep their young people home. While we fully appreciate and support the efforts of our families to maintain learning at home, learning is a collaborative and social process and students learn best at school.

We have two staff available to support students who are learning from home. This week they have been trying to get in touch with students via email and phone. If possible, please support your young person to get on to their ntschools email address. We have made a video on how you can do this – take a look at it here. Students can also call in to the school for assistance and office staff will either transfer you to the staff assisting or get them to call you back.

At the school we continue a number of measures to increase the safety of members of our school community. These include:

• Focusing on good hygiene, with students washing their hands at the beginning and end of each break and before entering the canteen.
• Turning water bubblers off – students need a water bottle at school which they can refill at the taps.
• Increasing the frequency of our cleaning, with high touch surfaces and toilets being cleaned twice a day or more.
• Cancelling whole school and cross school events and big gatherings to reduce mixing.
• Encouraging students to increase the distance between themselves and others, including where possible having one student per desk in classes.

Over the last few weeks we have been relying on text messages to communicate with our families, often providing a web link to a letter with key information. We will continue to do this. If you have not been receiving our text messages or can’t open the links they contain, please contact the school so that we can ensure that you remain informed about key developments and the school’s response.

Warm regards
Paul van Holsteyn
Principal

School news and updates

AMAZING ENGLISH with the Year 7s

Last term the Year 7s studied simple narratives; they learnt all about how descriptive language makes a story engaging and exciting. For their final assessment, the students wrote short stories designed to pack a punch! Here are a couple of examples from budding authors Asher Lennie and Elektra Carroll-Kells from 7.7. Enjoy!

Little Brothers, by Asher Lennie

I was suddenly wide awake. It was Sunday and I was supposed to have a sleep in, but I was awoken by a sound like a frog trying to strangle itself. I jumped awkwardly off my bed and ran down the stairs in my jocks. I felt like superman ready to save the day. As I walked down the corridor, the sound came louder and louder. I knew where the sound was coming from, the toilet, and I think I knew who it was…

My brother; my two year old, chubby, cheeky, little brother, his huge blue eyes staring up at me. “Argonne!” I said in an exasperated tone. He stared up at me quizzically. “Did you try to flush your nappy down the toilet again?” That meant something to him. A huge grin spread across his face. He slipped past me and ran up the stairs as fast as his tiny body would carry him. “Ah”, I sighed. I would have to clean it up for him. I grabbed the plunger and a pair of tongs, I also thought a peg would help, and went to work.

It smelt horrible. The nappy seemed to be filled with rotten eggs and blue cheese so I put the peg on my nose. It helped a little bit, so I started plunging. It made a sort of chocking, clucking, sucking sound until all of a sudden ‘THUNK!’ as something hit the plunger. I yanked the plunger off the toilet and gaped, gawped and googled at the depressing sight before me.

“Argonne!” It was mum this time “Why did you put your big brothers new shoes in the toilet?”

A short excerpt from Elektra’s Narrative, by Elektra Carroll-Kells

A gush of wind whipped past her head like throwing knives. Fast and furious, almost invisible arrows were aimed and fired her way as she sprinted across the clearing of the forest. She was full of nothing but fear for her life.

She had violated many of the kingdom’s rules. Or, as she called them, oaths. She had been banished from the kingdom and sentenced to death for her rebellion. Without hesitation, they condemned her to an arrow through her head.

But she had escaped and ran for her life.

Aphelia’s eyebrows narrowed and her eyes widened. Scanning the area frantically, she looked for any means of an exit. She was soon limping. Legs about to give out from underneath her. The aching of her legs was agonizing. She wanted to get out of the soldiers line of view quickly so she could find somewhere to rest. But no, she couldn’t. She was determined to survive this. She wouldn’t give in now.

“Give up you dammed soldiers!” Aphelia yelled back to them furiously. “Give up!”

Aphelia looked back once. As she looked she went crashing over something and tumbled down the side of a hill like a barrel.

Twigs and rocks protruded into her sides at all angles and her head went smashing into rocks. She held her head tightly in between the protection of her arms, trying to shield herself from any critical damage she could take.

The ground began to rumble, a gentle shake in the earth bellow. Huge wings shielded a creature in the sky. Making it even more impossible for Aphelia to see what it was.

Aphelia grabbed the next tree she saw and pulled herself up onto her feet and stared at the giant figure in the sky. The creature began to move towards Aphelia, emerging out of the safety of its wings.

A few photos of Term 2 so far from students in Year 7, 8 and 9 getting back into normal schooling.

Girls Academy News

International Women’s Day

Centralian Middle School and Centralian Senior School hosted a joint International Women’s Day event on the 11th of March 2020. CMS selected 20 Girls Academy participants and invited them to a photography session out at Simpson Gap. The photography session not only celebrated the young women in our academies, it also helped us talk about this year’s theme of “An equal world is an enabled world”.

We still offer a lunch once a week on a Wednesday, one week we have wraps (Wrap Wednesday) and the alternate week we have a cooked meal (Wicked Feed). We recently had a Kangaroo Stir Fry (Harmony Day), Chicken Coconut Curry and Chicken Wraps. We invite all CMS staff to share in a meal with our Girls Academy young women.

Care Packages delivered to 50 Girls Academy Participants at the end of Term 1

Emma Stubbs (Program Manager), Emma Lake (Development Officer), Denise Casey (CMS Home Liaison Officer) and Sarah Sarmiento (CMS School Counsellor) jumped in the new Girls Academy Bus on the last two days of school of Term 1 and delivered 50 much needed and welcomed care packages to Girls Academy participants.

Girls Academy Homework Centre

CMS Girls Academy will now be offering a homework centre in the Girls Academy Room every Thursday from 3:00 pm until 4:30 pm with home drop off support for those who need it. If your Girls Academy young person needs support with schoolwork outside of school hours, please feel free to send them along. A light afternoon snack will be provided.

We continue to connect and support our young women in our program and open to chat with and support families during these uncertain times, please feel free to call and speak to one of our awesome staff here at CMS Girls Academy.

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