Centralian Middle School
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56 Milner Road
Alice Springs NT 0870
Subscribe: https://cms.nt.edu.au/subscribe

Email: Centralian.middle@education.nt.gov.au
Phone: 08 8955 2333
Fax: 

25 May 2018

Newsletter Articles

Important dates

23rd to 25th May – Year 7 Camp
8.30 Thursday 31st May Principal Tour of CMS for Prospective Families
Monday 4th June – Student Free Day
7th June – Year 7 Telegraph Station Excursion
8th June – CMS Athletics Carnival
18 to 22nd June – Year 9 VET
20th to 22nd June – Year 8 Camp
26th to 29th June – Year 9 Camp to Uluru/Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon
23rd June to 2nd July – Clontarf Camp to Adelaide

From the Principal

Dear families

I want to start with a mammoth congratulations to our Year 7 and 9 students who last week completed their National Assessment in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). This was a significant undertaking and by and large our students pushed themselves to do their best on these assessments. We have recognised all students that completed all assessments by entering them in a raffle to win one of four $50 K-Mart vouchers. We will draw this raffle at our assembly next week.

We have hit the half way point of Term 2 with many events and achievements completed and many still to come. Just this week we have provided our students with the following opportunities:

  • Year 7 students went out on camp to Glen Helen (thanks to the teachers who have sacrificed their sleep!).
  • Part of our student leadership group participated in an Aboriginal leadership forum.
  • Students participated in the McLeod-Davey Challenge football round robin organised by the Adelaide and Melbourne Football Clubs.
  • Students acted as officials in the Clontarf Territory Cup.
  • Students went to see the Lost Dance Project, a performance presented by maddy&frank (who work with our students on Alice Can Dance).

We will post photos on Facebook from some of these events so its worth liking our page so that our posts come up on your feed.

Coming up we have camps for Year 8 and 9 as well as Clontarf and a sleepover for Girls Academy. We also have Interschool Cross Country on Friday 1st June and our Athletics Day on Friday 8th June. We will be at Rhonda Dianello Oval for our aths carnival so please consider dropping by for part of the day.

We also have a school tour and information session coming up at 8.30 on Thursday 31st May. This is primarily for families considering enrolling their young person at CMS so please pass on information about this session on to anyone that you know may be interested.

Teachers have been supporting students this term to develop Learning Plans for themselves. Students have identified what they consider they are good at, what they need support with and setting some goals for themselves. This is the first step in forming Learning Portfolios for each student, which is a student owned document that contains their best evidence of their learning achievements. The strategy here is to help our learners have greater awareness, take greater control and greater responsibility for their learning. These plans and portfolios will be the basis of conversations at our Learning Conferences which will be early in Term 3.

As part of our school-wide focus on writing, students will be completing an online writing assessment called eWrite over the next two weeks. This is a relatively short assessment that gives us valuable information about students’ writing strengths and areas to focus improvement, which will allow us to more specifically target teaching to classes and individual students. Students will complete the eWrite assessment a second time later in the year so that we can ascertain their growth.

On Monday 4th June we have a Staff Learning day so there is no school for students on this day. Thank you for making alternative arrangements for your young person on this day. We will have a focus on the teaching of writing on this day, as well as picking up on a number of other improvement areas.

Thank you for supporting us on Monday when the Australian Education Union had a report back meeting with its members to recommend the proposed new Enterprise Agreement. Negotiations on this agreement have been going on since the previous agreement expired in September and it now appears to be close to resolution. We only had a small number of students present before 10.00 so we were able to provide appropriate supervision before classes resumed as normal at 10.00.

Thank you also to our families and students who nominated an educator in the Teaching in the Territory Excellence Awards this year. From here a rigorous process occurs to establish who will win these awards at the regional and the territory level (with territory winners being nominated for national awards) before the awards are announced in October. In a later newsletter I will let you know who was nominated from CMS.

Warm regards,
Paul van Holsteyn
Principal

Mr Paul Van Holsteyn

Notifications

School tour for prospective students

We have a school tour coming up for families thinking about joining the school in 2019. The tour will be at 8.30 on Thursday 31st May. Please invite any families that have students in Year 6 or at other schools.

Student Access Uncollected Clothing

All students that have clothing items left at student access throughout the term please collect them from student access. We have a large number of students clothing and will be looking at donating uncollected items to St. Vincent’s in the coming weeks. Any students unsure if they have left clothing can visit student access to check.

School Updates

Indonesian language at CMS

The Alice Springs Language Centre is phasing out the teaching of Indonesian at CMS.

This is caused by a few factors occurring simultaneously. Firstly, CMS is mirroring national trends with fewer and fewer students wishing to study Indonesian. In our Year 7 cohort this year only two students listed Indonesian as their first preference and classes at all year levels are the smallest across the different languages offered. This trend is continued at Centralian Senior College. Secondly, the Language Centre has struggled to recruit a second teacher of Indonesian so are understaffed in this area. Thirdly, the Indonesian teacher, Ibu Darmini, is taking long service leave in Term 3.

Arrangements are being made to support Year 7 students to move into other language classes. The Year 8 and 9 Indonesian classes will be continued but broadened to become an Asian languages and cultures program, rather than a specific Indonesian language program.

13 Reasons Why – Season 2

Netflix released the second season of ‘13 Reasons Why’ last Friday (18/5). In 2017, the first season of this show had a significant impact on the mental health of a group of CMS students as it did on a large number of young people worldwide.

Headspace has collaborated with Netflix to develop a series of resources to support young people, their peers, their families and their schools. The resources aim to support viewers of the show to be safe and informed. The resource for young people provides tips on how to safely watch the series, look after themselves and have constructive conversations with their friends and families. The resources include discussion guides for both parents and schools to assist them to have safe conversations with young people about the tough and difficult themes depicted in the series.

For information about the show, go to:

https://www.headspace.org.au/news/the-launch-of-13-reasons-why-season-2/

For more detailed resources and discussion guides, go to:

https://www.headspace.org.au/13reasonswhy/

CMS has a counsellor on staff, Kirsten Wilson. If you have concerns about your young person, please call Kirsten so that we can work with you to put in place appropriate supports for your young person.

Sports Vouchers

Just a reminder that the Semester 1 Sports Vouchers are about to expire. These need to be redeemed by 31st May. More details can be found at:

https://sportvoucher.nt.gov.au/

Dance Posters

The CMS dancers just want to send a big shout out of thanks to the wonderful Darren Galpin, Stephen Ryan and Jesse Kozeluh for knocking up some truly terrific dance boards for the dance studio! They look fantastic and add a nice splash of inspiration and colour. It’s a dance studio dream come true! Thank you!

Natalie O’Connor

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