1/2M News

What a busy term! The children have been working very hard on our ‘Minibeast’ unit, listening to stories such as ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, making insects in craft and learning about the life cycles of some of them, such as butterflies. We have also been discussing nouns, verbs and adjectives within the context of minibeasts, which will help us when we write our explanation texts soon. We were very proud of our 2nd Place in the ‘Jewel on the Newell’ Science Week competition, and would like to especially thank Ben and Asher (our presenters) as well as Mrs Stiller and Mrs Bromage who accompanied the boys on the day! Ben and Asher talked about our bean plant experiment and discussed the results of their investigations about what plants need to grow’.

Mrs Davis has been teaching the class about the ‘shelters’ that people and animals use, and she has helped us finish a spectacular quilt, which was on display at the fete last week. Mrs Jackman has helped the students make some magnificent grass seed heads (a distant relative to Cousin It!). We enjoyed the Athletics Carnival recently and congratulate Will and Taylor for making it to the Zone Athletics. Good luck to Will, who will be running again at Tamworth soon in the North West PSSA Carnival. We are also hoping to have tennis for sport for the Year 2 children soon, so look out for a note that will come home with more information about this. Many children will enjoy the opportunity to learn new racquet skills.

Earlier this term we participated in a video conference with the author Frances Watts and thoroughly enjoyed listening to her stories, along with students from lots of other schools. Last week we also shared a narrative that we wrote using some special software with students from North Ryde Public School. Here are some of their recounts of the experience…….

On Tuesday, 1N and 1/2M went to the video conference room to watch the stories that we made. First we went for a jog and played ‘Duck, Duck, Goose’. Then we watched the stories that we made on ‘Create a Story’. Our story was ‘Spiky the Spider Finds a Friend’. 1/2D had a slightly different ending to ours. My favourite part was when North Ryde Public School showed their ending, At the very end we said ‘goodbye’. (William)

On Tuesday we went to a video conference and 1N came with us. North Ryde Public School from Sydney was on the screen. 1N’s story was ‘Tas-Kooka-Dragon’ and ours was ‘Spiky the Spider’. 1/2D and 1S were also there and we saw them on the t.v. My favourite part was the end of ‘Tas-Kooka-Dragon’. (Jonty)

On Tuesday we went to the video conference room. We sat in our lines. We watched ‘Tas-Kooka-Dragon’ first. Then we showed our story. I changed the page on the Smartboard and Harry read the story. My favourite part was when I changed the pages. (Asher)


All the children are becoming very excited about our trip to the Dubbo Zoo in a few weeks. Please don’t forget to send in your note and money as soon as possible.

5/6C News

Canberra was a sensational week and it has been hard to settle down after returning to school. We have managed to get back into our routine and are working furiously to get through the loads of work we need to complete. This term we have been researching Antarctica and the impact of whaling. We have also been making a speech about whaling and the food chain, our RATS all involve this topic. The fete is on tomorrow and we are getting ready to rumble. Many of the class have been busy bringing in bottles and jars for the bottle stall and we think we may be a chance of being the champion class this year. In technology we have been learning about animations and how to create them. We have been working in small groups to create animations and we have also made a couple of class animations. The animations take a lot of patience, although then results are worthwhile. A quality animation can take between 150 and 1000 photos. PE has been fun this term. We have been learning a variety of Indigenous games with whole school PE and one day a week we do basketball skills with our class. Our skills are developing well and we are improving at a rapid rate. We have completed our buddy craft project with KD and 1N. The results will be able to be seen in the 'Art Gallery' at the fete. It has been a great start to the term and we have been working very well.

5/6C

Congratulations Sturt - 2009 Athletics Champions

Our 2009 Pre School to Year 6 Athletics Carnival was held last week in front of an extremely large crowd of supportive, cheering and vocal parents, relatives and friends. Our athletes responded to the great conditions on the athletics facilities in our school playground with some outstanding performances! After two days of hard fought competition, Sturt was the winning house. The Ball Games Shield was won by Oxley. Age champions and medallion winners were:

5 yrs Thomas Snape

6 yrs Kyah Cornish Kobe Varcoe

7 yrs Clariese Ryman Harry Edwards

8 yrs Jessica Kelly Will Alexander

9 yrs Josie Wilson Lawson Morley

10 yrs Taylah Tordoff Tom Baker

11 yrs Sienna Brown Giulio Heimoana

12/13yrs Josie Kirkby Dylan Phillips

We had 4 new records set at our carnival – 2 of them by Sienna Brown! New records are: Harry Edwards (7 Years Boys 70m - 11.60m), Sienna Brown (11 Years Girls High Jump - 1.30m, 11 Years Girls Discus – 19.88m), Dylan Philips (Senior Boys Discus - 21.56m). Jaymie-Lea Wheeler also set a new record in the 11 years discus, only for Sienna to break it in the same event!

Ready to go for Term 3

We have started this term talking about Antarctica, we have realised already that there are lots of interesting facts. We have completed a RAKE and KWL on the topic. The new sports court has proven to be extremely useful and we have begun learning basketball skills. This has been great fun. It's starting to get very exciting because we are leaving for Canberra in 11 days and we can't wait to get going. The school Fete is coming up and our class is bringing in bottles at a great rate and we think we will have the most in the school. Our communication with Westdale is continuing this term and we have sent them a message on our Wiki, asking them to join us in a video conference. We are looking forward to the rest of the term and we can't wait to start our work.
5/6C

Our multisports court is finished!

Our new multisports court has just been completed. What a great asset this will be for our school for generations to come! This fantastic new facility has been built using funds provided by the Federal Governments economic stimulus package.

We are all very keen to test out our tennis, volleyball, basketball and netball skills on the Rebound Ace surface.

We know it is going to gets LOTS of use!

On Saturday Narrabri West's 7 year old football team drove to Tamworth to play in the Peel Schools Rugby League carnival.

We played two games and we marched in the march past.

We beat Manilla in the final 18 to 12 and we won a trophy, a football and a pennant.

We would like to thank our parents and Mrs Nichols for taking us.

by 1N

Exciting new projects at Narrabri West!

This week we have received official confirmation that our nominated projects for the Commonwealth Government’s Building the Education Revolution program have been approved. This is fantastic news for our school, with construction to begin very shortly on the following projects:

· A hall – this will be built in the back playground adjacent to the Pre School. It will have a stage, toilets, showers and storage facilities, as well as an adjacent Covered Outdoor Learning Area. This will be a terrific addition to our school and will allow us to have the whole school indoors for assemblies and performances etc. It will also provide a rehearsal and concert venue for the school band and other groups. Whilst it will not be huge, it will certainly be big enough for our entire school to use. Importantly, it will not encroach on our athletics track or any of our sporting areas in the back playground. Whilst this news is exciting, the second project as part of this funding we are sure will really excite our students, (and will be a major asset to our school). This will be the construction of a….

· Multi-sports tennis, basketball, netball and volleyball court – this sporting facility will be built in the existing staff car park (bad luck teachers!) and will be an all-weather surface with a surrounding fence. It means we will have our own court for these sports, as well as an adjoining area with handball and hopscotch markings etc. This is really exciting news and will ensure that Narrabri West will have without a doubt the best facilities of any school, not only in Narrabri, but in the entire New England area. How lucky are our students? The court will be similar to the one in the photo.

These projects will certainly enhance our school and we are looking forward to watching their progress as they take shape. These are exciting times for Narrabri West!