A very big welcome back to everyone as we commence Term 4.

There are a number of events being held for our Gawura students across Years K-12 this coming term.

We have a cultural excursion planned for K-6 to the Art Gallery of NSW where our students will tour the new Indigenous section with Art Gallery Guides.

There is an opportunity for students in Years 4-6 to participate in a sculpture workshop as part of the upcoming, annual Sculptures By The Sea Exhibition from Bondi to Tamarama.

We are also putting the final touches to this years On Country Tour to Wiradjuri Nation for our students in Years 5-12 who will be visiting special Aboriginal sites in Lithgow and Mudgee with cultural knowledge being delivered by local Aboriginal Elders and Knowledge Holders from those areas.

Please check the Key dates to see when these events will be taking place.

Our next GPAC Meeting will take place on Tuesday 24 October from 2pm to 3pm where we will be able to provide you with an update and timeline for the Gawura Strategic plan. Please pencil this date into your diaries now.

Our next Yarning Session With Parents will be on Tuesday 31 October and we are delighted to confirm that Aunty Barbara Simms will be hosting us on a walking tour of La Perouse followed by a morning tea. We hope you will be able to attend this.

We wish you a wonderful and safe fortnight ahead.

May grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Mr John Ralph
Head of Gawura

Term 4 – Service learning

How do you use your time, talents and treasures?
Do you focus only on yourself or also on others?

Service learning is about encouraging our students to put their time, talents and treasure into action for the service of others, particularly living out our St Andrew’s Character Strengths and Christian care for those around us. Throughout our Junior School and Gawura this term, each class is engaging in a service learning project.

• Our Kindy and Stage 1 students are exploring the Character Strength of Grateful with a focus on their family and the School. They will be making cards of gratitude to share with people who they have been supported by, as well as Christmas gratitude chains to decorate our learning spaces.
• Our Stage 2 students will be exploring the Character Strength of Caring with a focus on their community. They will be coordinating the annual Anglicare Toys & Tucker collection throughout the Junior School and Gawura.
• Our Stage 3 students will be exploring the Character Strength of Servant-hearted with a focus on their world. They will be creating Christmas gift tags to sell to families and at a stall run by the SRC to raise money for Anglican Aid’s Adjumani refugee school in Uganda.

There will be further information distributed throughout the term about how you can contribute to these great projects and support our students in living out our Character Strengths and Christian care for those around us. Perhaps you could ask your child about the Character Strengths they are developing as they use their time, talents and treasures to make a difference through these projects?

Mrs​​​​ Bronwyn Wake
Junior School and Gawura Wellbeing Coordinator and Psychologist/Counsellor

Our Anglicare clothing drive is back

We're thrilled to announce the return of our clothing drive in partnership with Anglicare. Your support is crucial in this effort. By donating gently-used, still-in-good-condition clothes (excluding undergarments), you can provide comfort and love to those in need.

Drop your clothes off
Monday 23 – Friday 27 October, (Week 3), 7.45-8.30am
St Andrew's House foyer

Your generosity matters! Let's come together to bolster Anglicare's mission. Click here to read more details on the flyer.

Year 10 Students

Critical and creative thinking in the Library

Educators and futurists agree that young people will need some key skills for learning, life and ultimately work in the 21st Century. As young people navigate an increasingly connected world with more change, challenges, opportunities and now with a new generation of AI, what they need is a robust set of transferrable skills. Right at the top of that list of skills is critical and creative thinking.

• Critical thinking involves the ability to recognise or develop an argument, use evidence in support of that argument, draw reasoned conclusions, and use information to solve problems. Thinking about thinking means that students become aware of their own cognition, applying logic and carefully selected strategies to evaluate, synthesise and transfer information into new contexts.
• Creative thinking (innovation) can be described as thinking that is productive, purposeful and intentional. This happens as students generate and then attempt to implement new, out-of-the-box ideas, usually to solve a problem.

Information literacy necessarily involves the development and application of both kinds of thinking. In the context of library lessons, students are learning to think critically as they recognise differing perspectives in the historical narrative or in complex global issues, as they begin to ask who is behind the information they access, and consider the ethics involved in the creation of information. When students are asked to use the information uncovered by their research to initiate action, they are growing in creative thinking.

This term, in the Library, we will be stretching all of those thinking muscles. It's a joy and a privilege to be part of nurturing these skills in students at St Andrew's.

Mrs Nicole Cotter
Coordinator Information and Digital Literacy – Junior School and Gawura

AUSTA NSW Big Bass Day!

On Sunday 17 September Elly Lu (Year 7) and Hugo Gilmovich (Year 4) attended the Australian String Teachers Association NSW Big Bass Day at Santa Sabina College in Strathfield.

Students attended technique workshops and played in a masterclass lead by two of Australia’s top double bass players,  Kees Boersma (Sydney Symphony Orchestra) and Alex Henery (Sydney Conservatorium of Music). The day ended with a performance from all students playing together as a double bass ensemble.

Sandi Oh
Coordinator of Strings

Congratulations!

AMEB Results

Congratulations to the following students for their wonderful AMEB examination results:

• James Yeung – Violin Grade 4 – A
• Mairah Kharwa – Violin Grade 1 – A
• Annabelle Tee – Violin Grade 2 – B+
• Shuichi Matsumoto – Piano Grade 1 – A+

Performances

Congratulations to our Year 3 Band and to the Junior Concert Band who performed at the Celebration of Bands concert, Tuesday 19 September. It was a wonderful event and these groups each performed brilliantly!

Congratulations also to our Year 6 students who performed solo at our Year 6 Music Concert at the end of Term 3. It was a joy to see these students shining through their musical performances. Well done to Taali Paku, Jocelyn Tee, Hartley Ford, Lucas Mao, Marcus Chau, Leon Hoerr, Rafferty McGonigle, Harriet Loe, Freddy Beck, Ava Chakar, Karen Preston, Winda Mumbulla, Matthew Ting, Evren Gel and Clementine Collier on your performances.

Mrs​​​​ Kate Robertson
Head of Music (K‑6)

Term 3 recap

What a term of sports it has been! Well done to all students who participated in a wide variety of sports this term. We have some amazing things to celebrate. Some highlights from Term 3 sport include: 

• Athletics Carnival in Week 3 – an awesome day with some outstanding results from students aged 8 to 12 years. 
• Saturday sport teams – girls touch football and mixed rugby 7’s. Both sports saw some outstanding improvements from teams across the term. Personally, my highlights were seeing the Year 5 mixed rugby team go undefeated for the whole season and the Year 5 girls touch football team improve dramatically and win their final four games of the season. 
• Watching 35 students compete at the ASISSA Athletics Carnival with eight making it through to the CIS Carnival (see results below). 
• Being able to see students actively participate in a wide range of sports on Thursday afternoons. With the girls playing inter-school netball and the boys playing touch football, we had some amazing results across the term, but more importantly, we had a lot of improvement across the season. 

CIS Athletics Carnival results

100m
Maya Hughes – 14.68 – 17th place over-all
Katia Delic – 14.78 – 19th place over-all

200m
Maya Hughes – 31.10 – 14th place over-all
Alexandre Schlomka – 31.17 – 23rd place over-all

Long Jump
Annabelle Douglas – 3.60m – 8th place over-all

High Jump
Ned Robertson – 1.15m – 14th place over-all
Florian Spender McGuinness – 1.30m – 12th place over-all

Discus
Nyarla Gordon – 15.67m – 14th place over-all
William Hawkes – 19.91m – 16th place over-all

Term 4 sports preview

We have a busy and exciting term ahead for sports. We have six teams playing basketball, two teams playing cricket and one hockey team playing weekend sport. We also have cricket and T-ball inter-school sport for Years 4-6 on Thursday afternoons and our Kindergarten and Stage 1 students will be involved in the swimming programme.

With a short and busy term, I look forward to sharing sporting success with our community in Term 4 newsletters.

Congratulations!

The National Gymnastics Competition was recently held in September on the Gold Coast. Congratulations to the following three students who competed at this auspicious event:

• Evie Charles
• Niamh DeAngelis
• Vanessa Yang

Mr ​​​​Oliver Denny
Head of Sport Junior School

Year 5 and 6 Visual Arts

Year 5 and 6 have been working on slow-process projects in Visual Arts, using observation skills around the nature of vessels as cultural artefacts. Year 5 have learned to sketch still life drawings of vessels using shading, shadowing and smudging techniques as well as adding darkening and blackening line effects. Year 6 have learned to form and shape small handheld pinch pots, decorating these with textured designing tools. They’re now in the process of forming large vessels using coils.

What's coming up in Term 4

The 2023 inaugural K-6 Music and Visual Arts Showcase will be happening in our Cathedral and Chapter House. Dates are 16-17 November. Stay tuned!

2023 Young Andrean Artist of the Year Awards: The Opera House

It’s time to finalise and submit your entry for this special annual competition. This year it asks our young artists to create a piece of work around the iconic Sydney Opera House. The work must be done by students. Entries must be A3 size, no more than 5mm thick, and can be in all formats – painting, textiles, drawing, printmaking, photography, graphic design etc.  For more information download the flyer.

Entries to be submitted to the Junior School Reception with name and Year level clearly marked on the back of your work, please.

Mrs​​​​ Miriam Daly
Visual Arts Integrator Junior School and Gawura

The science of resilience: how to teach students to persevere

– by Judy Willis

Judy Willis has written this really interesting article. I have had the pleasure of hearing her speak and her work has influenced my great interest in neuroscience. I have included some important points Judy raised in her article.

The full article can be found here. 

“Resilience in learning, as in life, is about being able to persevere through setbacks, take on challenges and risk making mistakes to reach a goal. It’s not always clear, however, how to develop more resilient students. I believe there are three main areas to focus on – a child’s competence, their tolerance to mistakes, and their ability to set goals. These components help young people to sustain effort even when a challenge seems too great.

Competence builds resilience
It is not uncommon for students to come to your class with past experiences that have left them feeling like they can’t move forward when a task is overwhelming. You can help them overcome that mindset by building their confidence through experiences that develop their competence.

Learning from failure
When you incorporate opportunities for students to experience mistakes as an expected part of learning, you build their resilience to setbacks. Through class discussions, your own mistakes, and building pupils’ knowledge of their brain’s programming, your students will gain the competence, optimism and understanding to persevere – and even make progress – through failure. When students make mistakes, explain that these are not failures: they are opportunities for the brain to build a bridge that will bring them success in future." This, to me, is a key point in this article.

"More importantly, when you correct an error, your brain builds new wiring to guide you to make a better choice next time. So doing something wrong can actually be beneficial in the long-term, replacing misinformation with firm experience. The strongest understandings we have do not come from what we’ve memorised but rather from what we’ve learned from failure.

A final thought
By building students’ resilience in this way you can help them realise that when they engage confidently with a challenge, anything is possible and failure is not something to fear. This is vitally important. After all, it’s not what students know, but what they can do with what they know, that is the goal of education.”
One very important thing I heard Judy say was that even making mistakes still can move us forward towards our goals. I like to think that in education we see that as an important step." She calls it “Failing Forward."

I love the influence of a positive mindset that Judy has infused into this article as well. She has raised some great points and as teachers and parents we can use these ideas effectively I believe.

Mrs Joy Rohrlach
Year 5 Leader

Poem Forest competition

Poem Forest is a nature writing prize that breathes life back into the natural world. Selected students in Years 1-2 contributed to Poem Forest, composing poems about endangered animal species. Poem Forest invites students to use their words to make positive climate action. For every nature poem received a tree is planted to help heal habitats and create a Poem Forest for future generations. Since 2021, over 10,700 poem trees have been planted.

Selected Years 1-2 students began their Poem Forest journey looking at two commissioned poems 'Paleep' by Arika Walau and 'Sun Downs and Seasons' by Kirli Saunders. In the poems students analysed the literary techniques used by the authors including repetition, alliteration and personification.

Students then researched an endangered animal using library books. This provided insight into the animals' appearance, habitat and threats. This research was used to craft a poem for the competition.

As students developed their poems, they worked on refining their descriptions so that they were using adjectives and adverbs. They had to consider how to condense the phrasing so that each line was a powerful element in the description. Below are some extracts from some of the student poems. All the poems have been shared at this Google Site. We hope you enjoy their poetry.

Sam Ackad 2S – Blue Whale

Huge heart thumping,
Gentle creatures,
Catching krill,
Their mouth opens,
Toothless and wide,
Dark like a cave,
Belly rumbles like a roar,
The majestic blue whale.
 

Shaheli Periris 2C – Cassowary

A giant bird,
Featherless neck,
Flightless, can’t fly,
With small wings,
Sharp claws,
Tall and majestic,
A large courageous bird,
Cassowary the forest king.
 

Sienna Teng 1M – Plains-wanderer

Silent and well camouflaged,
Plains-wanderer is unique,
Full of curiosity,
It sits like a statue,
Hoping to be hidden from danger.
Very few remain,
They are a wild species,
Almost extinct,
One of the world’s rarest birds,
In need of protection.
 

Will Carroll 1C – Western Swamp Tortoise

A mysterious creature,
Thought to be extinct,
The western swamp tortoise,
A unique species,
Creature with pretty designs,
Covering their shell plates,
Like a patterned maze,
Each shell distinct,
Please help, please help,
The tortoise cries.

Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge results

In Term 3 selected students from Years 1-6 participated in the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge. This competition is an international initiative run by the CSIRO aimed to promote Computer Science among school students at all ages. The Bebras Challenge runs twice a year. It engages students’ computational thinking and problem solving skills in a fun, interactive environment.

Computational thinking is the process of formulating and solving problems by breaking them down into simple steps. It requires an interrelated set of skills including logical reasoning, algorithms, decomposition, abstraction and patterns. These skills are highly sought after in the digital careers of the future.

Each challenge has 15 questions with the highest possible score being 135 points. The level of difficulty of a question determines how it will be scored. Easy questions are worth 6 points, medium questions are worth 9 points, and hard questions are worth 12 points. Any incorrect or unanswered questions are awarded 0 points.

The Bebras achievement level breakdown is as follows:

• Participation 0-59 points
• Merit 60-86 points
• Credit 87-101 points
• Distinction 102-113 points
• High Distinction 114-134 points
• Honour Roll 135 points

Congratulations to the following students who achieved outstanding results.

Honour Roll was awarded to Abigail Mather, Bill Pan, Joshua Ahn, Meera Joshi, Douglas Madden, Isabelle Wood and Oscar Xu for full marks in the competition.

High Distinction was awarded to Oliver Boncukcu, Idelia Cao, Sophia Theodosiou, Leon Kenny, Luca Collins, Bodhi Journeaux, Sophie Kent, Harris, Shi, Baiyu Tao, Audrey Ash, Aiden Bhuyan, Amy Codrington, Bligh Jordan, Koji Takamura, Vanessa Yang, Tristan Lau, Zaccary Chieng, Sam McConnell and Matthew Ting.

Special recognition to Years 1-2 students who participated in the Years 3-4 competition.

Distinction was awarded to Cameron Harvey (Year 2).
Merit was awarded to Shuichi Matsumoto (Year 1).

Honour Roll, High Distinction and Distinction certificates will be awarded in a rooftop assembly. Participation, Merit and Credit certificates will be handed out in class.

Mrs​​​​ Emma Clemens
Gifted and Talented Learning Coordinator – Junior School and gawura

Congratulations!

During Term 3, Junior School and Gawura participated in its Annual Public Speaking Competition. The aim of the Public Speaking Competition is to provide students with the practical skills and knowledge necessary to express themselves clearly, with confidence and power, in a variety of speaking situations.

Congratulations to all students who prepared and presented speeches, with a particular congratulations to those who represented their grade in the Public Speaking Grand Finals. The calibre of speeches and range of topics this year was outstanding and made for some difficult decisions for our adjudicators.

Well done to the overall winners and runners up of the 2023 Public Speaking Competition:

Miss​​​​ Alix Vanny
Junior School Teacher

Entries close Monday 16 October!

Andrean Writer, Artist, Composer and Designer of the Year competition

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of Sydney’s most iconic buildings, this year’s Andrean of the Year theme is The Opera House.

Consider the ideas of its Sydney Harbour location surrounded by Botanical Gardens, ferries and crowds, its innovative design and creativity that reflects nature, or that it has been a place of performance, protest, Vivid light shows and New Year’s fireworks.
You could even redesign or extend it for the 22nd century and reimagine what new things might take place there.

Judging and prizes
Entries will be judged on creativity, skill, audience engagement and originality in exploring the theme. Entries must be created in 2023 and no group entries are permitted.

• Andrean Awards First prize $200, runners-up $50.
• Junior Andrean Awards First prize $100, runners-up $20.
• Apprentices receive certificates.

Entries close Monday 16 October, 2023 and can be submitted via the Student Portal or via the link below.

Year 3 Open Morning – a great way to introduce St Andrew’s Cathedral School to someone you know

Friday 20 October, 9-11am
St Andrew’s Cathedral School, Sydney Square

Do you have friends or wider family who are thinking of sending their primary school aged children to St Andrew’s Cathedral School? If so, our Year 3 Open Morning is a brilliant opportunity for them to experience everything Year 3 has to offer at the School.

They can participate in class activities, tour our specialist music and science facilities, and meet our experienced and highly qualified staff and wonderful students, who travel from all over Sydney to our dynamic city campus. It’s a way for them to see the School during a regular school day, experiencing what makes it such a unique place to learn.

Places in Year 5 and Year 7 are limited, with families experiencing long waiting lists. However, St Andrew’s Cathedral School Year 3 entry could make all the difference to the educational journey of a child of your friends or wider family. 

For more details please see the link below and forward on to someone you know today!

www.sacs.nsw.edu.au/Year-3Tour

Year 6 Farewell

Parents and carers of Year 6 students are warmly invited to Coffee in the Chapter House for a farewell event.

Come along and share a coffee with staff and other Year 6 parents to celebrate and reflect on your Junior School years and look forward to and prepare for the next adventure!

Thursday 26 October 8am-9am
Chapter House

Please RSVP by Monday 23 October