JUNIOR SCHOOL LEARNING

AUTHOR SUSANNE GERVAY

Year 6 students ventured to the Senior School library to listen to author Susanne Gervay speak about her latest book, Heroes of the Secret Underground – a gripping Middle Grade Holocaust novel based on Susanne’s parents’ childhood and their escape from Budapest during WW2.

With humour and heartfelt moments, Susanne shared insights into her journey as a writer and as an advocate for children’s literature. Her incredible warmth and passion to empower young people to make a difference in this world was evident, and her positive outlook after overcoming adversity was truly inspiring.

I was fascinated by her life story and felt different emotions. One minute I was excited, then sad and then

empowered. ELIANA MOSS (YEAR 6)

THE GIFT OF LIGHT

Year 5 Loreto Kirribilli students are playing their part in helping the more than 1.4 billion people globally who live without power. In partnership with the Origin Energy Foundation, students constructed solar powered lights, known as ‘SolarBuddies’, which will enable children in Papua New Guinea to study long after the sun goes down.

Designed especially for children, the lights are easy to operate, carry and charge. Without them, communities are forced to rely on fossil fuel sources like kerosene and diesel which are toxic, expensive and damaging to the environment. "These SolarBuddy lights will help children living in energy poverty to continue studying long after the sun goes down, improving their education outcomes and overall health and wellbeing", commented Martin Lobo, Acting Head of Junior School.

JUNIOR SCHOOL GARDENING CLUB

With trowels and seeds at the ready, gardening gloves on and armed with watering cans, our intrepid Loreto Kirribilli Gardening Club set out to conquer the world of vegetable growing. Although we have not yet categorically “won” the war, we can safely say that we are learning lots and smiling brightly as we valiantly battle our numerous enemies (slugs, snails, building work relocation and frosts to name a few).

The girls also enjoyed a visit to St Aloysius' to meet the boys involved in their long-established Gardening Club. Not only did our girls impart some of their handy tips, but they learned a great many more from their Aloysius' counterparts, including the enormous benefits of compost in enhancing vegetable growth.

Junior School Learning

LINDA WALBURN | ASSISTANT HEAD OF JUNIOR SCHOOL

REMOTE LEARNING TERM 3

We created a wonderful term of remote learning in the Junior School! Through the difficult time for all of our families and staff, the true champions were our wonderful teaching team. Mr Lobo and I had the opportunity to literally pop into the live sessions and just stay on mute and observe the teachers in action online, from large group sessions with the whole class, to small groups, or even listening to the 1:1 reading.

Adding the specialist lessons to the timetable also strengthened the variety of activities for students. It certainly did take a village to bring this all together. From challenging Maths break-out groups to reading and writing, cooking, wellbeing and art lessons, the girls were exposed to a range of learning tasks each day.

EXTRA-CURRICULAR ONLINE!

The Junior School extra-curricular program continued to thrive remotely with dance, music lessons, chess and even taekwondo sessions all available online. One activity that the staff had to look after was the very special Junior School Garden.

JUNIOR SCHOOL ONLINE ASSEMBLIES – LKJS NEWS

Our famous weekly Junior School Assemblies were held online each Friday at 8.45am. During the assembly the weekly news was shared, and adopted a different theme each week. From dressing up in green and gold for the Tokyo Olympics, Dance Fever, Science Week, Sustainability Week, Book Week to Grandparents’ Day, we covered so many fun topics!.

In the background, our Year 6 Student Leaders prepared a myriad of amazing short videos around which Mr Lobo and I could weave a wonderful script. The Anthem was rehearsed in a First Nations' language, collated by amazing Ms Granturco. The Junior School Song was also collated with students singing online at home, so whilst we could not sing together, we could sing loudly from home.

We delivered LK JS News each week online, not only to the students but to families, grandparents and pets too! Our online assemblies were also totally interactive as the students could upload photos of their dress up antics onto our CH@LK Playground page to share.

Junior School Learning

LINDA WALBURN | ASSISTANT HEAD OF JUNIOR SCHOOL

JUNIOR SCHOOL FELICITY FRIDAY FUNDAY

We held our first exciting Felicity Friday Funday. This was a House based competition led by our Year 6 House Leaders. Each class had a specific list of activities for the day, and then they uploaded photos of themselves via the CH@LK playground page to earn House points. Some fabulous outfits were created at home!

100 DAYS OF KINDERGARTEN CELEBRATED ONLINE!

We celebrated 100 Days of Kindergarten online. The finale of a day of action packed celebration was a homemade individual cupcake shared online with Mrs Dickinson and Mr Lobo.

TOUR DE LORETO RACE

We launched a very important active initiative with our Tour de Loreto. You may have heard of the Tour de France, the famous annual cycle race through the French countryside, but we held our very own virtual bike race, to cover the 1600km to visit our Junior School friends at Loreto Toorak Melbourne and Loreto Normanhurst Sydney. Each student was able to log in their daily scoot or ride and upload a photo. Congratulations Year 3, our 2021 winners! The active Tour de Loreto provided the perfect wellbeing motivation each day as there was no better time to stop, breathe and take some time to really focus on the importance of our wellbeing.

FAREWELL MR LOBO

We finished Term 3 on a wonderful note as we farewelled Mr Lobo. From musical performances and songs (with a few words changed) to beautiful prayers and blessings, it was so lovely to watch his face beam as he enjoyed sharing the memories of his time with us. The Junior School staff created online classroom visits with poems and songs, all which helped to make Mr Lobo’s week so magical. Mr Poppy, Rapper, Olympiad, Handstand, Limbo Lobo – a heartfelt thank you for seeing a need to be with us and doing an amazing job every day just for us! We wish you the very best with your next chapter travelling around the world to be with your beautiful family.

Junior School Learning

BOOK WEEK

Book Week’s online format this year did not dampen the enthusiasm of our Junior School literary enthusiasts! Thank you students, parents, and grandparents for taking the time to rummage through wardrobes, sew outfits and paint faces to create your favourite book characters. The costumes were truly spectacular!

The students are to be congratulated for their genuinely engaged and lively participation in all activities on offer. I am particularly proud that all students in the Junior School have completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge for 2021, and will be awarded a certificate by the NSW Premier to acknowledge their reading success.

Joanna Staikos Junior School Teacher Librarian

TECH & STEM CHALLENGE DAY

At the Junior School’s very first Interschool Tech Challenge, students from Year 6 collaborated with their peers from St Aloysius’ and Redlands Cremorne to creatively design solutions for several STEM-based activities incorporating drones and the Sphero robot. Each task was highly engaging and provided students with the opportunity for creative problemsolving.

Throughout each activity, students documented their process. Their final task was to present their findings to the group. Reflecting on the day’s success, the students agreed that they had been positively challenged and were very keen to participate all over again.

NATIONAL SIMULTANEOUS STORYTIME … FROM SPACE!

National Simultaneous Storytime is a yearly fun event organised by the Australian Library and Information Association to celebrate the importance of reading. This year NASA astronaut Shannon Walker read out the story from the International Space Station. The story was Give me Some Space! by Australian author, Philip Bunting. This intergalactic adventure took place in classrooms across the Junior School, and the Year 6 Library Leaders were invited to join Year 7 in the Senior School Library. The audience was also privileged to hear from Dr Jonathon Mascorella about his experiences during the 2018 NASA school expedition for senior students.

Junior School Tech Girls

MARIA EMMI | E-LEARNING TEACHER EDUCATOR

This year our Year 6 students were engaged in a program called Techgirls are Superheroes!, a competition designed to encourage more girls to develop an interest in STEM careers. The program, which runs across Australia and New Zealand, builds student ability to work collaboratively in the design of a mobile application (app). Loreto Kirribilli is one of the only schools to integrate the program into the curriculum.

The students begin the project with a Design Thinking workshop run by the Academy of Enterprising Girls. They then work on a real world problem, thinking up an idea for an app that could resolve it. They work with a business mentor to develop a business plan, along with coding and creating the app. They design the logo, create a promotional video and a video to demonstrate the app in action.

More than 20 amazing mentors, from all aspects of industry - CFOs, founders, women working in artificial intelligence and leading all sorts of projects - shared their expertise, in person and online, helping to build in our students 21st century skills.

The results have been outstanding with seven of the Year 6 Techgirls teams making it as finalists for NSW. Six teams were also selected as displaying a solution to one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Congratulations to our Year 6 team of Lily Broe, Amy Lloyd, Ava Prentice and Elizabeth Murray for winning a Highly Commended Award for NSW. The team developed 'Charity Run', an idea to support charities while developing personal fitness.

The team explained the goals of their app: “Charity Run is a fitness and donation app. Our two areas of impact are our community and people living in poverty. Charity runs start you off by getting you up and running. You can track how far you’re running, you can make goals for yourself and you can unlock prizes. Whilst getting fit and healthy you can also donate money to charity. Every five kilometres you run money is raised. You can set goals on how much you would like to raise and also unlock donating achievements. Each month there is a different charity that donations go to.”

According to the judges there were many quality entries this year. Our girls did really well. Listening to some of them chatting about their work and how they overcame challenges really displayed the depth of learning that went beyond the knowledge of content. The Techgirls project has so many learning dispositions in action.

We not only have amazing entrepreneurs in the making, but our girls have shown that they are also humanitarians, ready to help change the world for the better.