The Vine Newsletter

Mrs Felicity Grima - Principal

John Lambert Awards

The John Lambert Award Assembly for Term 1 was held on Thursday 29 February.

The John Lambert Award is one of the most significant awards we present at the College, recognising the effort and achievement of students in a range of areas, including:

• Academic studies
• Sport 
• Creative and Performing Arts and other Co-curricular activities
• Community Service outside the College
• Citizenship and Fellowship.

The achievement of a John Lambert Award signifies that a student:

• Is actively involved in the College's life
• Displays effort and perseverance 
• Represents the College well, and 
• Demonstrates an attitude of service. 

Our College is committed to providing a breadth of opportunities for our students because we know the importance of participation and involvement of students in a vast array of curriculum-based, co-curricular and spiritual activities.

Our John Lambert Award Assemblies are also an opportunity to showcase College activities and student performances. This week we had Year 2 student, Selena Monzer, perform an Irish dance. Selena dances for the Brosnan Academy of Irish Dance and has been training since she was 5 years of age. She competes at state and national levels and later in the year will be competing to defend her Australian title. We also enjoyed Elena Tomaras (Year 12) singing 'Defying Gravity'.

Congratulations to all our award winners. They should be very proud of their achievements.

Mrs Felicity Grima

Principal

Parent volunteers play a wonderful role in supporting the learning activities here at the College. There are many ways families can get involved, such as: 

• Literacy and / or numeracy support 

• Art lessons 

• Excursions 

• Sporting events 

• P&F Activities 

• Special Provisions for assessments 

As we are a Child Safe community, parents interested in volunteering are required to complete an online induction module and provide the College with a current Working with Children Check (WWCC). 

The induction module outlines the responsibilities of volunteers working within the College. Please note the following key requirements: 

• Students must always be treated with dignity and respect 

• Teachers are solely responsible for student discipline 

• Volunteers should maintain confidentiality at all times 

Please understand that it is not always appropriate or possible to work with your child, or your child’s class. We recognise that for some students, it can be distressing to part with their parent/s through the course of the day, subsequently impacting learning and their disposition for the remainder of the day. 

If you are interested in volunteering in 2024, please use the QR code below to complete the Expression of Interest, providing the College with your name, email address and WWCC (if you have one already). Please register by Friday 8 March (Week 6). From this registration, we will email you the link to complete the PAC Volunteer Induction course. 

Some of you may already have a verified WWCC listed with the College. If your WWCC has not been verified by the College, you will be asked to attend College reception with your WWCC number, photo ID and Date of Birth. 

Once the induction is complete, and your WWCC verified, your name and details will be added to a database for volunteering, and you will be contacted when opportunities arise to confirm your availability. 

Each year, to comply with Privacy Laws, the College needs to obtain parents’/carers’ consent to the collection and publication of their child/children’s images. 

Please log into either Edumate where you will find the Permissions under News Feed - 'To Do') or the College App (Found under 'To Do').

Please either:

• Grant permission for all of the options below.
• Deny if permission is not granted for any of the media platforms.
• Deny permission if you would like to limit permission to select publications and then note the media platforms you are giving permission for from the below options.

The possible places students’ images may appear are: 

• The Vine Newsletter
• The Harvest Yearbook
• Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin)
• Newspaper or other print or online publications
• The College website
• College publications such as the Annual Report, Prospectus, Strategic Plan
• Marketing collateral such as brochures, posters, banners.
• Third party venues such as Shopping Centres and bus sides.

These permissions will be reviewed annually, however, you are able to alter your response at any time by emailing [email protected]. Please note, if we receive no response, we are required to either not publish your child’s photo or blur their face for anonymity. 

Prayer

Please pray for:

Those families in the College community experiencing times of hardship and stress.

Students attending ROCK and BIG and Bible Study Groups

Our Admin and Property Teams as they work hard around the College to support and enable the learning and safety of students

Praise

Praise God for:

Year 7 CEP which, despite some rain, was a wonderful time of our students pushing themselves to try new things and getting to know each other.

Rehearsals for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being in full swing.

The Wellbeing Show and Police Liaison visit helping our Primary students learn and grow

Mrs Melinda Richardson - Deputy Principal (Primary)

Deputy Principal (Primary)

Students from Pre-K to Year 6 enjoyed the highly entertaining and interactive performance of ‘The Wellbeing Show’ on Monday 19 February.

Here are some reflections about the performance from the students in 2 Silver.

Ooh la la, what a wonderful morning we had at The Wellbeing Show, it was amazing! Mickey & Michael took us on a big adventure where we learned lots of wonderful things about how to keep ourselves and others happy and healthy.  

Healthy thinking was our first learning discovery. We don’t want to have stinking thinking. It’s important for us to get rid of our ANTS (automatic negative thoughts) and embrace PETS (positive, encouraging thoughts) instead, especially when we learn. When we are feeling worried, we can put all our worries into a worry bottle at the end of the day. That way when we go to sleep, we forget about our worries and start new the next day. Mickey was being so brave when she was on the big mountain, it helped us to learn to be confident and face our fears.  

When it comes to being caring, we learned it is important to be kind to everyone. It’s easy to care for our friends, but we have a goal to be kind to everyone! We should give everyone our respect by having respectful, encouraging actions and to give others our best always. Smiling makes the world a better, happier place and the best thing is they don’t cost a thing. If someone is wearing a frown, we can share our smile with them. We should always include people and everyday is an opportunity to make a new friend.  

In between our learning, we loved Michael & Mickey’s funny skits. They had us laughing and having so much fun! Michael tricked Mickey into thinking she was outside. It was funny when he sprayed the water bottle and made her believe it was raining. Michael was also a great rock-n-roll guitar player. He could play the Sponge Bob Square Pants theme song and it was so hilarious when Imogen dressed up as him! We learned we could make sounds out of everything and that it is always better to work together than alone, like when we created a storm using sounds. Michael could also play the didgeridoo. He had been given special permission by an Aboriginal Elder in the Northern Territory and could share it’s special story of how it’s created and how it sounds with friends from all over the world.  

We had a great morning with Mickey & Michael. Thank you for your amazing show! 

Our Year 5 Brownie Stall was a huge success and was enjoyed by the Year 5 students who made them and served them. We raised an amazing $1569.60 for our sponsor children. Year 5 students and teachers would like to say a huge THANKYOU for supporting our efforts and for supporting our sponsor children!

The Year 5 Brownie Stall was so much fun for everyone including Year 5 students. All the Year 5s made brownies so we could raise money for our Compassion sponsor children. The Year 5 team loved making the brownies and then serving all the students. There were lots of varieties of brownies including M n Ms, icing, sugar-coated, sprinkles, and even dinosaur brownies. We sold brownies for the whole of recess and even at lunch.

by Isaac Leung and Ace Lee 5R

On Wednesday 28th of February students across Year 5 held a Brownie Stall, to raise money for our sponsor children. There were lots of different kinds of brownies to choose from which were made by the Year 5 students. Some of our first customers were little K-2 children. They were so cute and so excited to have money and be able to buy a treat! Being a part of the Brownie Stall was so much fun and it was an amazing experience.

by Olivia Taumalolo and Scarlett Sturt 5B

The Brownie Stall was so much fun. There were so many children eager to buy our brownies! Everyone’s brownies were so good and so yummy. People had great ideas of making their brownies look really cool and creative. We also thank Mrs Munce, Mrs Faurie and Mr Bell because if they hadn’t organised it, we wouldn’t have had yummy brownies. When you see those teachers say a big thank you!

By Jenson Pillai and Harry Wang 5W

On Wednesday 20 March we will be joined by multi award-winning author/illustrator Sami Bayly as she shares her love of all things weird and wonderful with our students from Pre-K to Year 6. Sami will be speaking, drawing and taking us on an incredible journey into the natural world over four sessions with our Primary students. If you would like to purchase one of her stunning books to be signed by Sami during her visit, please purchase using this link https://www.betterreadkids.com/. Please purchase by Tuesday 12 March to be sure the books arrive in time for this exciting event. 

For more information on Sami and her work check out her website www.samibayly.com/ 

Mr Leighton Corr - Deputy Principal (Secondary)

Mr Leighton Corr
Deputy Principal (Secondary)

Our Senior Choir is in full rehearsal mode every Wednesday morning at 7.30am preparing for their first events for 2024. The choir will be performing at the College Easter Chapel as well as at the combined school’s Anzac Service on the 9th April at Penrith Paceway.

Mrs Nerida Hext, our choir conductor, makes the rehearsals each week lots of fun, and would love to see more students from Year 7 – 12 join. If you love to sing, come along and have a great start to your day.

On Friday 16th February, Year 11 and 12 Drama students travelled to the Seymour Centre to attend OnSTAGE. Every year, OnSTAGE showcases exemplary major works by HSC Drama students from the previous year. The students viewed Individual Projects in the exhibition and watched individual and group performances from schools across New South Wales. This excursion was a wonderful opportunity for students to gain inspiration for their own individual and group projects that they will undertake in their HSC year. Indeed, there were many excited discussions on the bus ride home inspired by these brilliant performances and projects.

“Last week, on Friday, my fellow drama students and I attended OnSTAGE at the Seymour Centre, Sydney. It was fantastic! It was amazing getting to watch all these incredible performances, taking notes on the gorgeous costume and set design, and overall get an idea of what we could achieve for our HSC. I feel very excited to create my Independent Project next year and have gotten some ideas started. My favourite performances would be The Cavailer’s Club, Beating Eve, and Mona Lisa.”

Josie Birtles, Year 11

Latimer House Charity Day is coming up on Wednesday 6 March. The event will be raising money for Anglicare's Take Love. There will be food, music and fun. Orders for sausage sizzle and games tickets will open online next week. 

Year 7 have been exploring number theory and order of operations. Last week 7S participated in a collaboration challenge to create number sentences using tiles.

Recently our wonderful Visual Arts students enjoyed a rich cultural experience at The Art Gallery of NSW. Students visited Artexpress – to see exceptional artworks from the 2023 HSC. As part of student’s exploration of modernism and abstraction we saw the Kandinsky exhibition and aspects of the permanent collection. During the day Year 10 students photographed both the historic building and new addition in preparation for their next unit in Architecture. The artworks of Louise Bourgeois were a particular highlight with their contrasted curation exploring aspects of day and night.

There are a few places remaining for Visual Arts Camp, open to all students in Year 8 and elective Visual Arts students in years 9 -11. 

The 2024 Visual Arts camp will be held at Bundanon on the 15th -17th May, 2024. Bundanon is located in the Shoalhaven, New South Wales, and was once home to acclaimed painter Arthur Boyd. Students will participate in a range of artmaking masterclasses along with developing their knowledge and appreciation for art culture and history. 

For further information see your Art teacher or download the attached information document. Deposits are required by the end of February to secure your position.

Congratulations to all our swimmers who attended the CASA Swimming Carnival on 27 February. Our swim team competed extremely well throughout the night. Our Junior Girls Team won their 4x50m Freestyle relay and the Senior Girls Team placed third. Penrith Anglican College came third overall which is a fantastic result.

Well done to Charlotte B, Hannah C, Harper E, Mia E, Aaelyah H, Ava H, Charlotte N and Charlie W who have qualified for the CIS Swimming Championships in March.

Congratulations to Cranmer House for winning the point score.

An update on the Secondary CASA Swimming Carnival will be in the next issue of the Vine.