Dear Queenscliff Parents and Carers,

It was wonderful to see so many parents, friends and members of our school community join us for our Week 3 Assembly last Friday. It was a beautiful morning with the sun shining over the bay, as we celebrated the learning success and adventures of Year 2, 3/4TH and our Science specialist program. We had Year 2 showcase their research and planning in writing an information report on Olympic sports and athletes, Mrs Vistarini put on a show with an experiment about carbon dioxide and 3/4TH shared their heartfelt Acknowledgements of Country they have been writing as part of their learning about Australia’s history in their Integrated Studies unit.

Excellence Certificates

At our Assembly on Friday, we celebrated the successes of our students achieving 10 Excellence Stamps throughout Semester 1. Congratulations to the following students:

Prep - Noah Beekman-Luxford, Freddy Wilkinson

Year 1 - Hussain Mushtaq, Alby Wilmot, Eve Stacey, Hunter Murphy, Jimmy Ricciuti-Allen, Lucy Forsythe

Year 2 - Maggie Gaylard, Tariq Sayegh, Daniel Mauger, Will Ulph

3/4F - Elis Forsyth

3/4TH - Hugo Stacey, Esther Mclean, Kim Gorgievski, Aria Wolter

3/4TA - Lou Foott

5/6C - Oli Kent, Charlie High, Meeri Hamidi, Ruby Vistarini, Aydin Sayegh

5/6PH - Thomas May, Henry Morris, Asher Clayden

Pickleball Clinics

Last week, our Year 5/6 students engaged in a Pickleball clinic with our very own pickleball extraordinaire and parent, Tess Lapham. Students learnt about the rules of the games, practised drills to develop hitting and hand-eye coordination skills and participated in a few games to apply their new learning. We look forward to Tess running her second workshop with our students this Wednesday 7 August. Thank you Tess for your enthusiasm, passion and time in supporting our students to develop a love and interest for Pickleball.

Science Day

On Friday 16 August (Week 5), our School will be celebrating Science Week with a Science Day. The theme for this year is ‘Endangered Species - More Than Sustainability’. Students will participate in a range of exciting science workshops and experiments throughout the day based on this year’s theme and we will be hosting a few special guest speakers to share their insights and experiences related to sustainability with our students.

Year 3/4 Song Room Concert

Our Year 3/4 Families are invited to attend a Song Room concert put on by our Year 3/4 students on Tuesday 13 August at 12:00pm. The concert will be held on the upper basketball court. The concert will be a showcase of the Song Room Performing Arts program the Year 3/4 students have been involved in throughout Semester 1.

Grounds and Gardens

Last week, the Grounds and Gardens committee made up of parents and staff met to discuss next steps for the development of the bike storage area. The intended location for the new bike storage area will be where the chicken coop is currently located.

We are looking to host a parent working bee to begin dismantling the chicken coop in preparation for the bike storage area works on Sunday 25 August from 9am until 12pm. We would be grateful to have any parent volunteers who may be available to assist us with the demolition works for this exciting project. More information about the Working Bee, including details of works to be completed and equipment/tools needed will be provided to families in the coming weeks.

School Council

We have postponed our next School Council meeting from Monday 5th August to Monday 12th August. I look forward to meeting with our School Council to discuss school operations, fundraising and community engagement.

Nyatne baa Gobata

(Thank you and take care)

Mat McRae

Principal

Grade Prep News

This term, the Prep children are learning about Food & Farms.

Last week, we explored cows and the foods that come from them. The children discovered that butter is made from cow’s cream. Using jars, marbles, and cream, we made butter together. The Prep children had so much fun shaking the jars to turn the cream into butter. It took some time, and we wondered if it would work. Eventually, after much shaking and jumping, the cream turned into butter. We all enjoyed a slice of bread with our homemade butter.

There is much excitement in Prep as we await the hatching of the chicken eggs. On Monday, the Prep children placed 41 chicken eggs into the incubator. It will take exactly 21 days for the eggs to hatch. In the meantime, we will be observing, recording, and writing about any changes we see in the eggs

Wellbeing Unit - Bullying

Over the next four weeks, during the timetabled Wellbeing sessions, our students will be focusing on an important topic: Bullying Awareness and Prevention. Bullying is defined as repeated, intentional behaviour that aims to hurt, intimidate, or humiliate another person, often exploiting an imbalance of power.

To empower our students with knowledge and skills to foster a positive and respectful environment, we will be conducting a comprehensive 4-week unit dedicated to increasing students' understanding of what bullying is and how to address it if they encounter it at school or in our community. Our aim is to help students understand what bullying is, how to recognise it, and how to be positive up-standers in our school community.

For further information see links below:

Information on Bullying
Information on Cyberbullying

Book Week @ QPS

**Reading is Magic**

Book week is happening at school from Monday 19^th August until Friday 23^rd of August. We have many activities and fun events planned across the week for students to look forward to.

Prep to grade 2 students will be creating a paper dragon scale to be added to the Borough Dragon which will be put together at the Queenscliff Library. All 3 local primary schools will be contributing to this fantastic creation.

Prep to grade 2 students will also get the opportunity to explore some shortlisted books during their literacy sessions. They will be some engaging activities that match these new books.

Our grade 3-6 students will have an exciting opportunity to participate in and create a short story with our local author Jayne Tuttle from the Queenscliff Bookshop. Students will then have the option of having their stories published in a book containing stories from students in all 3 primary schools.

We will also be running our annual Book Fair from Tuesday to Friday of the book week. This will be open for students to visit with their teachers to have a browse and complete a wish list that they can take home to their families. The book fair will be open from 3.00pm until 3.30pm each afternoon. Thank you to the parent volunteers, who will assist in running the book fair. The book fair helps the school by donating some of the profits directly to the school, so that we can purchase new books for our kids.

Finally, we will be having our whole school Book Parade on the Friday morning. Everyone is encouraged to dress up with the theme in mind or as their favourite book character.

Hope to see you all there!

Please follow link to register for Point Lonsdale Tennis club:
https://forms.gle/5f17TuRg2BAZ...