Archive | November 2014

Student Leaders 2015

Well done to our 2015 student leaders – Heidi, Dan, Quinn, Lachlan, Sarah and Joseph – who did a wonderful job of presenting their captain speeches at our special assembly yesterday. The whole school has voted and our new captains will be announced in the coming weeks. Well done!

Thinkfest

Students have been busily preparing for Thinkfest, which is taking place on Monday at Maryland Public School. If you are yet to bring in your permission note and payment, the note is attached below. Please make sure students arrive at school by 8.50am.

Thinkfest Excursion note 2014

Here are some photos of students working on their backdrops, which are coming along beautifully.

Writing Stars!

Congratulations to Sarah and Oliver, who attended the Sydney Youth Writing Festival award ceremony last night, as finalists in the short story and free choice categories. Sarah received an encouragement award and Oliver received a commended award. Both Sarah and Oliver were in the top 50 students recognised for their fantastic work in writing.  Well done!

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OC Orientation

One Friday we welcomed our new students who have received a place in our class for 2015!

Despite the heat wave and power outage, we still managed to have a great time. We began with some getting to know you games, an iPad QR code scavenger hunt and finished with a straw bridge building engineering challenge. A big thank you to my Year 5s who did a super job of making our new students feel welcome and introducing them to our school. Our next orientation visit will be Wednesday 3rd December, 9.30-12.30pm.

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Vote for us to win $10,000

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Thanks to everyone who has visited the Water Catchers website to vote for our film.

Voting closes this Friday at 3pm, so please encourage family, friends and neighbours to vote for Tighes Hill and we could win $10,000! Click on the link below to watch The Drop of Destiny. 

There is a gala screening night on Friday 28th November at Tower Cincemas Newcastle from 5.30 – 8pm, where all finalist short films will be shown and the winner announced. Please let me know ASAP if you would like to attend.

Leading the Way

Well done to all of our Year 5 students for their effort and participation in our student leadership sessions over the past 2 weeks. Students discussed some great ideas about what makes a good leader and also demonstrated personal examples of these qualities. I was impressed to see so many students have a go, be brave and present quality reasons.

Following our leadership session yesterday, Year 5 voted to select the top 6 students to represent them as 2015 student leaders. Congratulations to Lachlan, Joseph, Dan, Heidi, Sarah and Quinn.

These students will now begin working on their speeches and campaign, ready to present to the whole school on Wednesday 26th November at 9.30am. Congratulations to our final 6 and well done to everyone who had a go.

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OC Bookclub!

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Last week we had our book club for October -The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. Well done to the students who participated by reading our text, sharing their opinions and generating a great discussion.

We will meet again in Week 8 for our last book club for the year to discuss the classic – A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

November = NaNoWriMo

This November the OC will be taking part—with classmates and over 300,000 writers around the world—in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It’s a fun, innovative creative writing event where the challenge is to complete an entire novel in just 30 days.logo

Novelists begin writing November 1 and must finish by midnight, November 30. The goal for NaNoWriMo’s adult program is 50,000 words, but our students will be participating through the Young Writers Program—which allows students 17-and-under to set reasonable, yet challenging, individual word-count goals.

NaNoWriMo will require students to write as frequently as possible. Especially with your reinforcement, this hard work deepens student investment in the process (and their finished products). At the end of November, educators and participants also report improved self-confidence, creative writing skills, overall writing skills, and time management.

Our class will be using the online components of the Young Writers Program, you can review the step-by-step guide via the website. Participants have individual profile spaces, plus access to forums and a private messaging system. These site features are not public, and can be viewed only by other young writers. In addition, all are monitored by NaNoWriMo staff for inappropriate content. Students who wish to write at home as well can use this to earn homework points.

Happy writing!

Visit the NaNoWriMo website by clicking on the link http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

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