THE MESSENGER
Term 2 Week 10 Wednesday 25 June 2025
Dear School Community,
I’m sure your children are looking forward to a wellearned break, and I hope you can enjoy some time together
In this final week of Term 2 important events are happening: our Winter Festivals and the ‘Growing Up Online’ sessions with Susan McLean.
Our Winter festivals are a quiet, reflective experience held as close as possible to the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the point at which light begins to return. This festival acknowledges the unique light that each of our children brings to the darkness of this time of year and our community by the simple fact of their being here.
‘Growing up Online’ with Susan McLean is an initiative of the Mansfield Shire, Youth Centre, and all Mansfield schools. She is an expert in online safety, and all parents should attend the parent session on Thursday. It is in everyone’s interest to have a critical mass of parents, teachers, and students in the Mansfield area understand the reality that our children face significant risks online. We are not immune to this in Mansfield or at our school, and parents have a significant responsibility to ensure that they understand the risks and how to manage these in their homes. For the school’s part, students from Classes
6-12 will participate in sessions with Susan, and staff will attend sessions for younger students, which they will then bring to them in age-appropriate ways through the younger classes. It is vital that parents, as the gatekeepers of our children’s access to the online world, understand the issues involved.
Finally, we are keen to provide the primary students with some quality cubby building materials, and we request your help to locate some large, quality sticks to act as the basis for the students’ building adventures. What makes a high-quality cubby building stick, you may ask? Firstly, it’s a natural branch from a tree, relatively straight, about as thick as your arm, and about 2-3 metres long. Other desirable qualities to look for are bark that can be peeled, bark that is pleasing to the eye, not too thin at one end, and not too heavy. For those who have appreciated great sticks in their life, you will know when you
GRAPEVINE
“In
the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
see it. Some of you may recognise these qualities in the sticks and other treasures your children drag into the house, or the back seat of your car. If a great cubby stick comes your way, please bring it in and place it against the green fence near the Class 1 room and the Prep chooks. If it’s a particularly pleasing stick, make sure you get me, and we can appreciate it together.
Happy holidays
Glenn Hood | PRINCIPAL
MORNING STAR & ROSA MUNDI Sandi Valerio
King Winter has been visiting and bringing Jack Frost with him. As the children arrive each morning the gardens have been white as snow with sparkling icicles hanging from the leaves of the trees.
Our mornings are beginning indoors as we warm our fingers and toes by the fire working on pom poms and craft work. Winter soups are being cooked and bread kneaded as we embrace these cool days.We are preparing for the Winter Spiral festival, making crowns, sewing gnomes, gathering with the preps for our Winter morning circle, and finishing craft work to take home as the mid-winter break approaches. Our stories have reflected the cool months and warming our bodies with wholesome food as we do in Early Childhood each day. The stories of ‘Sweet Porridge’ followed by ‘The 3 Bears’ have been enjoyed as the children sit reverently whilst we tell the stories each day. Our treat last week was to have a visit from the Preps for morning tea around our fire, and then we visited the Prep room to watch a play of ‘The Enormous Turnip’ performed by the prep children. This week will finish a wonderful term. We have watched our school trees colour up in the Autumn and then go to sleep as King Winter arrives. Time to have a rest at home and cosy up in the cold days ahead over the break.
Albert Camus
CLASS 1 Samantha Charlotte
In the last three weeks of this term, Class One students experienced the drama and joy of practicing and performing the play “The Animals of Timbertop”. They worked hard and supported each other to a fault; it was so lovely to see the class working together as a group. The children have also been building their understanding of one-syllable words, and attempting to write independently and teacher-modelled sentences. Maths practice has been fun - students are growing their confidence by playing maths games and solving simple sums. Class One have certainly earned the upcoming break, and I hope that you’re all able to enjoy some time together over the mid-year break.
CLASS 2 Liz Morrell
Class 2 have had a very productive term with the class play being a wonderful highlight. Our latest main lesson has involved the class listening to a series of fables involving animal characters which personify human characteristics. The ‘moral’ of the story is often uncovered bringing lively discussion and personal input from the class. From these stories the students have written their own version and illustrated accordingly. Daily reading has been a great way to start these cold mornings and we look forward to the winter spiral festival. Wishing everyone a restful break!
CLASS 3 Amy Burns
Class 3 have been enjoying slower, quieter days as we embrace the inwardness that Midwinter brings. The children loved our week of Eurythmy with Jan, bringing many things they’d learned back into the classroom each day. We’ve been listening to very old, archetypal stories and children have been writing detailed drafts and beautiful recounts of them in their Main Lesson books, accompanied by complex drawings using new pencil techniques. While the class has shrunk for our final week of term with many children resting at home with the dreaded lurgy, we’ve enjoyed mornings of maths and singing by the heater and dancing to warm ourselves up. Wishing all of our families a healthy and warm winter break!
CLASS 4 Julie Beer
After the successful performance of the play, ‘Thor’s Wedding’, which was largely written by the students, we are now learning about everyday Viking life. We’ve learnt about their seasonal cycle and discovered that many of our days are named for Viking gods. Did you know, though, that Saturday is named for washing day? The students are also working in small groups to develop their research skills and will present their finding in small oral presentations.
CLASS 5 Lou Pullar
Amidst the whirl of construction across the road, we recently had a lovely visit to Bindaree to share our Class Orchestra pieces with residents. Then, in assembly last Friday, we performed again, giving our newer students practice ahead of next term’s solo concerts. Last week, we were fortunate to have Jan visit for eurythmy and the students enjoyed learning new movement pieces with her, using the Mesopotamian story of Gilgamesh as inspiration. In class, we worked with the story too, drawing on rich language to describe the friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, as well as the clash with the mighty Humbaba in the Cedar Forest. This week we are looking forward to the stillness of the Winter Festival and a well-earned three week break.
CLASS 6 Clare Bennetts
We have been learning about how the earth is actually not as solid as what we first thought and how magma inside the mantle is constantly causing the tectonic plates to shift. We studied how the continents were connected in one large land mass millions of years ago and how this theory came to exist. We read an article about one of the oldest animal prints in the world that was found in our Broken River near Mansfield and how it is 326 million years old! In the afternoons, students spend time completing their Greco/Roman pots and wooden spoons. We look forward to our reverent Winter Festival to celebrate the solstice.
YEAR
7 Dion Hall
In this Main Lesson, students journeyed into the ancient origins of mathematics by exploring the sexagesimal system—a base-60 number system developed by the Babylonians over 4,000 years ago, which still underpins our measurement of angles and time today. Through hands-on work with protractors, compasses, and geometric reasoning, they investigated the relationships between parallel lines, triangles, and quadrilaterals, uncovering unknown angles by drawing upon truths that can be known with certainty. From this firm foundation, students moved into artistic expression, creating geometric forms of striking symmetry and balance— works that speak not only to precision, but to the inner harmony and beauty of mathematics itself.
YEAR 8 Nicholas Koschitzke, Suz McKay, Amy McMahon
Year 8 students have begun their Shakespeare Main Lesson, learning about William Shakespeare and exploring the richness of his language, themes, and historical context. In preparation for their play, students have been engaging in weekly readings from some of his most famous works to enhance their pronunciation and understanding of Shakespearean English. Alongside this, they have begun rehearsals for their own performance of Romeo and Juliet, which will be staged at the PAC in Term 3. As part of this process, students will explore character development, stagecraft, and the complex relationships within the play, working collaboratively to bring the story to life. This experience offers a valuable opportunity for the class to build confidence, strengthen teamwork, and deepen their appreciation of Shakespeare’s enduring work.
YEAR
9 Suz McKay
Year 9 students have just completed 5 weeks of community service, working as both part of the school community to prepare the Autumn and Winter Festivals, and out of school with Up2Us Landcare and The Bonnie Doon Community Centre. Working to meet the needs of our immediate school community, and more broadly within the Mansfield community, encourages students at this age to see beyond themselves. It helps lift the veil away from work that just magically seems to happen to make our community a place people want to live, engaging students to be active and take action within the work, increasing the sense of responsibility to be part of the community they want to live and continue to grow in.
YEAR 10 O liver Raymond
‘La Communication Fonctionelle’ (Functional Communication) was a Main Lesson which concentrated on developing students’ everyday French communication skills. Students expanded their knowledge of the subtleties involved in expressing oneself and employing the most appropriate language across a range of informal and formal environments, from hanging out with friends to participating in classes in French schools. Over the course of the Main Lesson, students developed and acted out a variety of role-play scenarios to demonstrate their ability to use their newfound understanding of social cues and the vocabulary required to navigate their use. These included: proposing an outing/inviting friends out; accepting or refusing invitations; deciding where to eat/what to order; using public transport, and asking for directions/navigating in a new city. The communicative skills learned and applied during this Main Lesson were aimed at supporting our Year 10 students as they head off on exchange in Term 3.
MUSIC Celeste Cleason
Congratulations to Snowgum Strings who were highly commended for their playing in the Musica Viva Strike a Chord Competition. They were in the top 15 entries in the Australia wide competition and received wonderful feedback from the panel. The group have now been selected to take part in the Itet program which offers free ongoing professional mentorship, performance opportunities, collaboration for regional string groups from Victoria. Thank you to Danielle for her inspiring guidance and enthusiasm working with Snowgum Strings and giving them access to such wonderful opportunities.
TERM 3 MUSIC DATES
Week 3 All our early morning music groups, Wattle, Melliodora, Snowgum and Candlebark Strings, Lyrebird singers and the Senior Vocal Ensemble will be performing in an extracurricular music concert.
Week 5 Year 10 Solo Concerts
Week 9 Primary Solo concerts
Week 10 Secondary Solo concerts
DIPLOMA YEAR 11&12
Year 11
Willow Matthews and Saskia Schultz
Anthropology students have been busy with their first Internal Assessment (IA). This week is their opportunity to share their ideas with each other and the Year 12s before they begin to investigate their chosen topics over the holidays. Ideas for the IAs have been diverse, exploring people’s sense of belonging related to the beliefs we hold, the people we form relationships with, the activities we enjoy and the things we choose to own.
The Anthropology IA affords the Year 11s the chance to explore a personal area of interest in a more methodical and academic manner than previously possible, also enabling engagement with their communities. A few students are completing their research directly with our school community.
Alongside the IAs, the Year 11 music students have been performing in Secondary assembly as practice for their presenting music portfolios.
One culminative activity for the Year 12s at this time of the program is their English oral that explores how texts engage with issues of local and global importance.
