Centralian Middle School
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56 Milner Road
Alice Springs NT 0870
Subscribe: https://www.cms.nt.edu.au/subscribe

Email: Centralian.middle@education.nt.gov.au
Phone: 08 8955 2333
Fax: 

13 September 2022

Newsletter Articles

Important dates

Monday 12 September to Friday 16 September – VET Week for Year 9
Thursday 15 September @ 5pm – AGM Meeting
Monday 19 September to Wednesday 21 September – Year 9 Camp Ooramina
Thursday 27 October @ 5.30pm – Principals Tour
Thursday 27 October – Alice Can Dance – Araluen Arts Centre
Thursday 22 September – Public Holiday - National Day of Mourning for Her Majesty The Queen.
Friday 23 September – Last day of Term 3
Monday 10 October – First Day of Term 4

From the Assistant Principal

Hello, Werte!

Welcome to Centralian Middle School’s last newsletter for this term.

I cannot believe we are already in Week 9 of Term 3! We do not recognise how time flies when we are so busy enjoying the many wonderful things happening at school. Next week on 23rd September, we end an eventful term with many success stories.

Students across the school have been busy on their assignments after going through their units of study. I have been privileged to read some of the assignments and am impressed with our students' critical thinking and creativity. For example, our students entered the Alice Springs Baking competition and demonstrated great skill, taking first and second place in the Pie Baking students’ category. Thank you to the Centralian Middle School staff for your excellent work and for challenging the students to venture out of their comfort zone.

This term, we have hosted Year 6 students from schools across town. They came for transition visits, exposing them to the many opportunities provided here at CMS.

Week 7 we had school tours for our prospective families. This was a successful and exciting event where families learned more about Centralian Middle School and the many opportunities offered. There are more school tours planned for Term 4. If you want to be part of the tours, do not hesitate to contact the school, and book your time.

Our Year 7 students are telling the Centralian Middle School story. As part of Centralian Middle Schools’ effort to help guide the 2023 Year 7 cohort to make an informed decisions about their enrolment, Year 7 students head off to their former schools for further discussions to talk to the Year 6 students about their learning experience and the many activities they get to participate in here at CMS.

Alice Can Dance rehearsals have started. Mr. Gill and Ms. Kim are working with an enthusiastic group of students eager to display their dancing skills. Watch this space for more news.

It is an eventful time for our Year 9 students. This week, these students are at Charles Darwin University doing Vocational Education Training (VET). This is one of the exciting things many students look forward to, as they get to experience and have a go at trades such as Business and Retail studies, Cooking, Plumbing, Music and more. Year 9 students will cap off Term 4 with a 3-day, 2-night camp at Ooraminna.

What a way to finish off the term!

Our two academies (Clontarf and STARS) continue to provide a rich experience for our students. These academies have organised several exciting sporting and learning experiences with other schools. Camps have been extremely popular with our students and have created lasting positive school experiences.

Through our Schoolwide Positive Behaviour Framework, Centralian Middle School has continued to promote the school values of Respect, Responsibility and Fairness. It takes a community to raise a child. We continue to work with our families to encourage these values. I am extending my profound gratitude to our community for their support in shaping the leaders we want to see in future. Centralian Middle School will continue to place importance on and model these values. If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with me or the principal at 89552333.

As we head off to a well-deserved break, I look forward to building on the many achievements so far in 2022. Rest, recharge and come back refreshed. Let us finish the year off strong together and better than ever.

Best wishes,

Wellington Pasi
Assistant Principal

Mr Wellington Pasi

School news and updates

Principal Tours

Come along and join our principal, Mr Simon Rowlands, for an overview and tour of Centralian Middle School.

Year 7

Questacon

CMS was visited by Questacon from Canberra, who ran an engineering workshop with our students. Students built aerodynamic machines and tested them in wind tunnels to learn about the process of improving new designs. A fantastic time was had by all.

7.1 Students

Our 7.1 students have been working really hard this term. Here is a few photos of them enjoying their Cooking and Maths class.

Year 7 Humanities

Year 7’s have been learning about mummification. Last Friday they were able to mummify each other. Here’s a few photos of the event!

Year 8

Home Economics

Year 8 students made puff pastry and meat pies while the year 9 also made the puff pastry and meat pies and French Chocolate Silk Pies.

All pies were entered in the Harvey Norman Great Central Australian Home-baked Pie Competition with both Tadiwa and Lindsay from 8.4 winning the Junior Divisions.

Mark Olive, Black Olive, speaking with our year 8 students about his early life and career in cooking and the television industry.

Year 8’s cooking Neenish Tart Slice and Beef Sliders with Slaw on a soft Potato Bun.

Year 9

Science

Students have been reacting chemicals and rearranging the atoms in them to form new products. Specifically, we've been looking at combustion (heating chemicals so they mix with oxygen) as a type of chemical reaction.

Students discovered that salts made with different metals combusted with different coloured flames - they burned matchsticks soaked in the different salts and were tasked to find which 2 were the same. Students' favourites were the red flame (strontium chloride) and green flame (copper sulfate).

We compared complete combustion (when there's plenty oxygen available) and incomplete combustion (when something's getting in the way of the oxygen). To explore this, students used 2 pieces of paper. One was torn into strips so oxygen could reach all around the paper, the other paper was scrunched up tight (stopping oxygen getting into the centre). The result? The open paper burnt hotter, faster, and cleaner (less smoke). We made connections with these observations to efficient car engines, building a good campfire and smog in big cities.

We saw how colour changes can be used to indicate if a chemical is an acid or a base, and how strong they are. Students used universal indicator to

  • identify and record the acidic / basic strength of household materials
  • neutralise an acid and a base perfectly to create a neutral solution

Next term we begin our physics, understanding how sound and light waves behave.

Year 9 VET Week at CDU

This week, Year 9 students are getting stuck into hands-on learning at Charles Darwin University.

VET Conservation & Land Management

These last few weeks we have been finishing our "Maintain the Workplace" unit, with the group learning to use maintenance checklists, read site maps and work safely on projects. Shout out to Doug and Mark at Simpsons Gap Ranger Station (Tjoritja / West MacDonnell National Park), for taking the group through the station's daily duties and reporting on their completed checklist.

Our next unit is "Recognise and Report Plants or Animals". We have begun visiting some sites around Alice Springs to learn about the plants and animals that live here, and how to recognise them. Students will have to conduct 4 surveys as part of their assessment on this unit. We have visited Olive Pink Botanic Gardens, Yeperenye / Emily and Jessie Gaps Nature Park and Standley Chasm. Another shout out to Standley Chasm, in particular David and Jacquin McCormack for their guided walk on how plants are used in local culture.

Hoop house update: our structure now has its shade cloth in place and 2 of the garden beds have been assembled and moved into position.

VET Hospitality

Students in the hospitality program have started their Sandwich and Coffee unit’s. The pictures are of the hospitality class setting up a little pop up stall in the staff room and making coffee’s and last week’s sandwich which was a Club Sandwich for staff.

Stars Foundation

Stars were excited to celebrate Women’s Health Week! Our Year 7s continued their focus on active lifestyles with Steve from G Training in their last session for the term. The sessions were not easy, but still we have seen the girl’s interest in exercise grow and are proud of their commitment to each contact time.

Our Year 8s began Week 6 with our much-loved MasterChef sessions, cooking dumplings from scratch! The girls chose all their fillings and served it to us with all sorts of accessories and sauces to impress the judges. Then to kick-start Women’s Health Week they had a Zoom session with Rhian and Clara from Swisse Nutrition about the importance of Wellbeing and Healthy Lifestyles! The girls were very involved in the presentation, and we would like to thank Katie Thompson from BluEarth for teeing up this opportunity for us.

Our Year 9s had a relaxed Week 6, using this time to farewell Program Coordinator, Staci Trindle, as she began her Maternity Leave. They did extremely well in preparing a morning tea on her last day and creating a farewell video alongside mentor Krydence Schwalger so she had a small piece of us whilst she’s on leave!

We were excited to join Miss Park’s CT class to have a 3X3 basketball competition and close out Women’s Health Week. Each winner received a new basketball, and all our Stars girls were gifted Women’s Health Week bags with some of the Stars staff’s favourite, quick and easy recipes!

Additionally in Week 8, our Year 9 girls had the best time having their Year 9 graduation photos taken by the talented, Brooke Bathern of Desert Darlin Photography (sneak peaks below!).

We hope all our girls enjoyed celebrating and learning more about how they should value and prioritise their health! Congratulations to Madison Staples-Kunoth for winning the Push-Up Competition and Mikaylah Deemal for winning our Stars Room Knockout Competition.

We’re now looking forward to our Year 9s head off for VET Week then camp in Week 10; our Year 8 Fun Day and our Grand Final game in the School Girls Footy Comp on Thursday in Week 9! Hope to see you all down at St. Philips Oval at 3:30pm to support our girls!

Clontarf Corner

Upcoming activities:

  • Football game vs Yipirinya School
  • Big Day out in week 10 (swimming and BBQ at the town pool) - *School attendance criteria required*
  • Staff vs Student afterschool dodgeball and basketball - week 9
  • Super Health Check Clinic at Congress – week 9
  • Year 9 VET - week 9
  • After school “Movie Madness” at the Alice Springs Cinema - *Clontarf value award and school value award winners*

Some great photos of our fellas this Term.

Logo for Alice Can Dance

Help Guts dance design a logo for their 10 years anniversary and win a $200 cashback! Send your entry to Gutsdance@gmail.com by the 23 September.

Community Announcements

Multilingual Storytime in Spanish @ Alice Springs Library

Join the town library for a very special Storytime in Spanish!

Where: Alice Springs Town Library
When: Sep 23rd 2022 - 3:15pm - 4:15pm

Spring School Holiday Program @ Alice Springs Library

Have a look below for the School Holiday Program at the town library. There are some great activities planned!

Ampe-Mape Alyelheme: Arrernte kids music event coming up soon!

Where: Telegraph Station
When: Saturday September 24th, 11am
Cost: Free

Please join Arrernte families, children and educators from Ampe-kenhe Ahelhe (Children’s Ground) as we share our uplifting new Arrernte childrens songs and stories in the beautiful surrounds of the Telegraph Station.

We have been writing songs and music that speak about our culture, country, families and language. We want our kids to grow up with music that reflects their culture – that can help them to learn, respect, speak, read, write and sing in their First Language.

We started this to keep our language strong, and it's grown into something everybody can enjoy and learn from. Join us to learn about our language and see the world through our eyes.

Alice Springs Desert Festival Other Events

Desert Festival is a yearly event celebrating arts, culture and community in Central Australia and is running over the school holidays this year.

Youth Sport Series

Where: Kilgariff recreation Centre, 71 Sadadeen Rd
Who: All genders ages 12 - 18
When: Tuesday 27 September

Central Australia Athletics Championships 2022

Link up Australia Central Australian Championships, have a look below for more details.

Questacon Invention Convention

Free 3 day workshop. Have a look below for more details

Desert Explorer Program @ Alice Springs Desert Park

Click below to download the Desert Explorer Booking Form

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