Next week we will celebrate two very important events of a very different nature, Anzac and Easter. The children have been preparing for both the events through singing and discussion. There will be hymns for both occasions as well as traditional readings. Both events in their own way celebrate sacrifice, honour and human dignity. Often the very best of humanity rises from the very worst of circumstances.
Di Renshaw
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Category: Latest News from John Colet School Belrose
Thank you to everyone who attended our 40th Celebration! While we are still finalising the total amount raised, the true success of the event was bringing our school community together to celebrate our shared journey—past, present, and future.
A special thank you to our Parents and Friends Association, everyone who helped on the evening, and those who generously donated auction items. Your support and dedication made this event a resounding success!
Julian Wilcock
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This week in Lower 1st
We’ve had a wonderful and engaging week in Lower 1st. The children enjoyed reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and explored the life cycle of a butterfly before beginning to write a recount of the story. They also took an important step in their writing journey by learning how to use a lined book.
In Science, we investigated different types of clouds, discovering how they relate to the weather, and used Cloud Identification Frames to observe the sky alongside our 6th Class buddies.
As a school, we marked Persian New Year, placing Sabzeh on the Haft Seen Table and learning about this special tradition. We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Nyla and Niki’s family for organising the beautiful Haft Seen Table for our school.
During Art lessons, the children have been busy creating ceramic pieces, carefully sculpting and painting birds in a nest. This has been a wonderful
On the vegetarian lunch menu for Week 9
Monday Fresh salad rolls served with tomato, lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber and cheese.
Tuesday Vegetable ratatouille served with buttered basmati rice
Wednesday Vegetable tagine served with lightly spiced couscous
Thursday Lentil soup served with crusty sourdough bread and butter
Friday Penne Boscaiola in a rich cream sauce topped with fresh parmesan and garden peas
(Chefs’ selection of fruits and vegetables provided daily)
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International Permaculture week
This week is International Permaculture week! Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable, self sufficient and resilient ecosystems, inspired by the natural environment. These are the principles that the school Kitchen Garden operates by. To celebrate, we cultivated community with the parent volunteers, the year 6 garden monitors harvested 15kgs of produce for the kitchen and lunchtime Gardeneers planted seedlings for the season ahead.
Laurie Green
Gardening educator and facilitator
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Deputy Head of School’s Comment
Today we had the first of our Inter-generational visits at Glenaeon retirement village. Eight children from 3rd and 4th class spent half an hour conversing and playing games or doing craft. The visit is engaging and uplifting for both the residents and the children. It gives children the opportunity to widen their circle of communication which also increases their confidence. Their behaviour is always exemplary. Our next visit will be at the end of May.
I would also like to take the opportunity to pass on the comments of the visiting ceramics teacher who wanted to commend the children’s behaviour. She teaches at a number of primary school across Sydney and said that the behaviour of John Colet students is outstanding.
Di Renshaw
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Head of School’s Comment
Our Value of the Term is Respect. Over the past two months, we have explored respect through giving attention, acting for the good of all, and being mindful of others’ needs. This week, through our assembly reading below, we focused on how we learn and grow through the support of those around us.
In the same way, our school exists today because of all those who have contributed over the past 40 years. We look forward to celebrating this shared journey on Saturday evening.
“We need other human beings in order to be human. We are made for togetherness, for family, for fellowship, to exist in a tender network of interdependence.” (Desmond Tutu on Ubuntu – No Future Without Forgiveness)
Julian Wilcock
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Week 7 in Lower 1st
It has been another busy week in Lower 1st. We have read and retold and summarized the story ‘Owl Babies’ by Martin Wadell. In Mathematics we have been learning to count, write and represent numbers from 0-20 and model simple subtraction problems. We have discussed how to keep ourselves healthy by eating lots of different coloured fruits and vegetables and learned about the indigenous seasons. In Philosophy we talked about the word Diversity, working through the book A New Alphabet for Humanity
The following is an excerpt from the book:
This week is an opportunity to help your child to learn more about diversity, how to respect and appreciate the differences in our world, and see them as a strength.
Talk to your child about the things that make them special or unique. Can they think of something that is different about a friend or a classmate? What’s great about people being
Week 7 in 3rd Class
Yesterday we completed our final NAPLAN test and so we spent yesterday afternoon relaxing with a movie.
In Maths this week, we revised Time by looking at half past, quarter to and quarter past. We also discussed analog and digital time. Next week we will extend our skills by working with five-minute and one-minute intervals. In English we focused on spelling and grammar, consolidating our knowledge of parts of speech and learning about prepositions. We also started looking at the homophones to/too/two and next week we will practise there/their/they’re. Homophones are also part of Spelling. This week, for example, we discussed key/quay and storey/story. Apostrophes of contractions were another area we explored.
Today the children were given their Maths Online log in details and glued them into their diaries. During our Maths lesson, they signed into their Maths Online accounts on Chromebooks. This was a lesson in itself as the children learned how
Week 8 in Upper 1st
English: This week was our revision and assessment week of all of the phonemes that we have been focusing on this term: ai, ay, ie, igh, –y, -y, ee, ea, oa. We also read the story of The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl. We used this as inspiration for both our short burst and extended writing this week. The children did a wonderful job using adjectives in their writing.
Geography: We focused on Monkey Mia and Turquoise Bay in Western Australia. We spoke about what Traditional Owners means, and we looked at natural and built features.
Maths: This week we are looking at length. We are using informal units to measure lengths and we are discussing the need for a more uniformed way to measure.
Health: This week we looked at Who is in my family? And the roles and responsibilities of each member of the family. We identified different types of families