27 November 2020

Newsletter Articles

Important dates

Monday 14th December – Year 7 and 8 pool excursion
12.00 Tuesday 15th December – Final assembly for the year
Tuesday 15th December – Year 9 Presentation Night
Thursday 17th December – Champs movie excursion
Thursday 17th December – Last school day of 2020
10.00am – 3.00pm Monday 25th-Friday 29th January – school open for uniform sales
1st February – First day of school for 2021

From the Principal

Dear families

The year is racing away with three weeks of school left. Students are working hard on their final assessments for the year and teachers are assessing learning and starting to work on reports. We will send reports home in the mail on Wednesday 16th December.

Last week we had all of our Year 6s join us for the day in preparation for them commencing Year 7 next year. We had a really good day, and our students reported feeling more comfortable and confident at the end of the day than they did at the start of the day. We are still accepting enrolments for 2021, across all year levels. If you have a young person who you would like to join the school next year, please get in touch with the school so that we can work through the enrolment process.

There are a number of celebrations that are occurring in the last week of term. On Tuesday 15th December, we are having our Presentation Assembly at midday. We will present awards to studentsduring this assembly, and families are invited to join us for this event. That evening we are having our Presentation Night event for our Year 9 students. This is different from previous years, as it is more like our Year 9 formal event and less like our traditional Presentation Night. The event is just for Year 9s, will have a very short ceremony where we announce Year 9 award winners and will be followed by the student formal event. We have a committee of Year 9s who are organising this event.

In addition to our final assemblies, there are a range of excursions that we are operating at the moment. This term, our Physical Education classes have been playing squash, beach volleyball, waterpolo and bowling. In Week 10, our Year 7 and 8 classes have an excursion to the pool on the Monday, and on the Thursday we are taking our highest achieving ‘Champs’ card recipients to the cinema.

As was announced in the last newsletter, I will be moving to Centralian Senior College next year to take up the Principal role there. I am looking forward to continue working with our Year 9 students, as well as past students of Centralian Middle School. The principal role at Centralian Middle School has been advertised and we are expecting an announcement soon on who will take up the role in 2021.

Warm regards
Paul van Holsteyn
Principal

School news and updates

Colour splash 2020

On Friday Week 5 we had a great celebration filled with water and colour. Here are a couple of the highlights of a very fun day at CMS!

What’ll Happen to the Wattle??!

Our school has been selected to take part in a project run by One Giant Leap Australia Foundation to send native golden wattle seeds to the International Space Station in early December, 2020.

In collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) the seeds will live in space for six months, returning to Australia in time for Science Week 2021.

We will receive wattle seeds that have flown to space, plus seeds that have not. The seeds are from the same seed lot. Students will germinate and grow their seeds, recording data about the germination and seed growth. Data will be uploaded to the ‘What’ll happen to the wattle??!’ app and One Giant Leap Australia Foundation will run teleconferences and provide educational support to participating groups.

The project will also result in the creation of a nationwide map identifying the location of Australia’s ‘space wattle’ trees.

Hospitality Vocational Education and Training

Thursday’s class have been busy finalizing the Customer Service and Assistance nit.

Early in the term, students were tasked to hold an event for one guest each. They had to plan what they were going to cook and serve, set up a small restaurant style eating area, and attend to their guest’s needs through-out, ensuring that any verbal and non-verbal feedback was relayed amongst the team to ensure quality customer service.

The menu consisted of Chinese noodle soup and a variety of fresh made dumplings. The dumplings proved to be a great test of the skills everyone had learnt over the past year. To finish off the lovely experience all students sat together and enjoyed a hot chocolate while getting feedback from their guests.

Tuesday’s class has also been busy, learning everything there is to know about becoming Alice Springs next top Barista’s. We learnt about the background of coffee beans, including where they come from and how they are roasted. We also looked closely at an espresso coffee machines and all the equipment required to make a great espresso.

After having a better understanding of how it all works, we created an espresso coffee starting with grinding the coffee beans and extracting the espresso and also stretching and texturing a smooth glossy milk. It takes a lot of practice to get to the final product of making the perfect espresso coffee.

Once the students felt confident enough to make their Cappuccino’s or Flat white’s they were asked to put their skills to the test by setting up a little coffee stall in the staff room. Well done everyone, it was a great success!

This term, students have also had the opportunity to visit DuYu coffee, Alice Springs coffee roaster and our supplier for the VET class. This visit has allowed them to further understand and contextualize their knowledge around coffee beans, the roasting process’s and their origins. On the day, students partook in the process of a roast by measuring 12 kg of beans, tip them into the hopper ready for the roast, monitor the temperatures, check the colour of the beans, then quality check the roasted beans before getting a chance to see the packaging process.

Students who came on the excursion had iced chocolate and freshly made scone served with cream and jam for morning tea. Estelle, from Duyu Coffee explained to students that the fruit of the coffee beans make a fantastic jam and other products which can be used in food. Here are some photos of this captivating excursion.

Beach Volley Ball & Bowling during PE

This Term for Physical Education, students have been going students have gone on an excursion to Alice Springs beach volley ball & bowling Club, here’s a few photos of them having a great time.

7.2 Garden Project

A little story brought to you by Riley Swan in 7.2

Year 8

In science the Year 8’s have been learning about how substances undergo physical changes (crushing, mixing, expansion, changes of state etc…). We were lucky enough to run an experiment using dry ice, solid carbon dioxide, which turns straight from a solid to a gas at room temperature. Dry ice is used in movies to create theatrical smoke and fog. We also got to add dry ice to soapy water and watch it expand like a balloon and fill a container with dry ice and wait for the pressure to build up causing the lid to pop off, so much fun!!

CMS students sing Under the Sea in Japanese!

Japanese Talent

Year 9– Science Class

This term, Y9’s are investigating examples of energy transfers – light and sound. They have seen how they bounce (reflect), they bend (refract) and how they move.

Year 9 – VET Course @ CDU

In Term 4, Week 6 all Year 9 students headed over to CDU for a week-long VET course. Subjects on offer included Coffee Assistant, Business & Finance, Cooking, Plumbing, Retail Assistant, Sheet Metal, Music & Media. This is a great opportunity for them to try out something different which will help them make better choices around learning programs as they move to Centralian Senior College in 2021 and beyond. Students are having so much fun!

Centralian Girls Academy News

Centralian Girls Academy News

This has been an exciting two weeks with our girls celebrating NAIDOC Week – Always Was, Always Will Be for 2020. We commenced the week with our amazing Speakers, Latoya Miller- Martin and Jasmine McGinness, in opening with an aspiring speech that was felt by everyone, a true testament to their heritage and connections. We played an exhilarating fast paced game of Basketball against the Clontarf fellas with them coming out on top but a great game of sportsmanship and mostly fun was had by all. Even our fearless P/M Beck Miller came out and challenged the young men.

We also had lots of activities up in the room and around the School. Some of our Artists have been creating their own connection to this year’s theme in their painting designs, can’t wait to display all the artwork in our Girls Academy Room. We also had a great yarning circle with our girls and presented our connections and stories. Development Officer Emma Lake has been the Artist of The Week in sharing her invaluable knowledge in making earrings with our girls with ninti seeds from burning the holes to create their own unique designs, they will be used for gifts.

We also had home grown movies and music on each day to share with our girls around Aboriginal Artists. We completed the week off with an amazing Colour Smash Event which all our girls were involved in. Team Girls Academy were Aunty Michelle, Beck Miller, Emma Lake and Chealcee Fitz at station 1, we absolutely bombarded all our girls with Team Colour Splash, lots of fun and laughter had by all.

Centralian Girls Academy Awards Night

Girls Academy celebrated their annual Awards Night on Thursday 19th November at Centralian Middle School. It was a spectacular night of all our girls and families coming together to celebrate these young women and all their achievements for the year. We saw our Year 9 graduates come together and share their journey from the past three years.We are going to miss them dearly. We also celebrated all the wonderful achievements of our Year 12 graduates, we wish them well on their journeys and we are sure they will always remember our philosophy, “develop a girl, change a community.”

We would like to thank all our amazing girls. We hope they keep on striving to do their best and always know that we are walking every step of the way with them.

Staff Corner

We are at week 7 and still have lots to do and we are so very proud of all our girls and what they have achieved this year, keep stepping we can get to the finish line together. We have some fun activities coming up and we can’t wait to celebrate with you all.

Beck, Aunty Michelle & Emma

Community Announcements

Get SET in the NT – STUDY.

Are you a high-achieving Year 12 student leaving school this year?

Charles Darwin University in partnership with Northern Territory Government are offering scholarships to the top ATAR students of 2020.

Email getset@nt.gov.au or visit education.nt.gov.au/getset for more info.

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