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: 

7 May 2021

Newsletter Articles

Important dates

Tuesday 11 May – 8.45am & 5.30pm - School Tour for prospective parents
Wednesday 19 May to Friday 21 May – Clontarf Year 7 & 8 Camp – Tennant Creek
Wednesday 19 May 5.30 to 6.30pm – School Council meeting
Friday 28 May – School Athletics Carnival – Rhonda Diano Oval
Monday 31 May to Friday 4 June – Reconciliation Week
Tuesday 1 June, Friday 4 June & Saturday 5 June – 7pm to 10pm – Chicago the Musical High School Edition

From the Principal

Hello – Werte!

We have had an action packed term so far! In our very first week back CMS hosted the Science and Engineering Challenge. What a highlight it was. We were extremely proud and excited to see our CMS team compete against high school teams from across Alice Springs and do so well – winning first place. Our students will receive a special career coaching session from Atlassin and a reward lunch from the school for winning the competition!

Not only that - on the second day of the competition our students volunteered on their day off to help the Primary school students. We received this feedback from an impressed visitor to our school.

"I did want to note to you and compliment CMS students not only for their engagement in the activity I assisted with on the Thursday, but across the board in other activities as well. Unknown to me CMS had a Pupil Free Day on the Friday. Several CMS students volunteered their day off to assist with the Primary School event. Their involvement and guidance to the Primary school students was outstanding and spoke volumes of their character. Could I ask you to acknowledge their involvement and willingness to give up their time to help others."

We also had a very important day of staff learning where we got together to start to design an observation model. The Teaching and Learning Team developed a presentation where staff were able to review different models of observation and give guidance and feedback about what they believe will be best for our school. We also reviewed our understanding of attendance processes, school wide positive behaviour and revisited the instructional model.

Students in Year 7 and 9 will start to participate in NAPLAN testing next week. We encourage students to make sure they come to school every day, eat breakfast and get enough sleep during both weeks. It has been lovely having so many long weekends but now it is time to get back into attending school every day. Every day of learning counts!

Kind regards
Cassie O’Bree
Principal


Ms Cassie O’Bree

Assessment Schedules

Each term we will provide you with Assessment Schedules so that you know the key assessment tasks your young person has to complete in each subject area and the timeframe for when items are due. The Term 2 Assessment Schedules are below.

If you have any questions, please contact your young person’s teacher.

School news and updates

Science and Engineering Challenge 2021

Last week CMS partnered with the University of Newcastle to deliver two fun-packed days exploring how science works in everyday settings. Students work through many activities, such as making a bridge, building a hovercraft, coding, balancing energy needs, creating a bionic hand, designing a tower to withstand an earthquake, planning a transport network and creating a water turbine.

Thursday, was the challenge day where all high schools across town attended and participated, earning points for their schools. Congratulation to CMS for winning the Challenge Day!!! Friday, we saw all the primary schools from across town participating in the Discovery Day, learning about science, meeting other students from other schools, cheering for each other when it came time to test out their creations. Thank you to all the volunteers that help make this event run smoothly and to the CMS students who came in on the student free day and volunteered their time. It was much appreciated, and we look forward to hosting this event next year.

Chicago the Musical - High School Edition

Chicago the musical is only 3 weeks away! Our talented CMS & CSC students are working brilliantly together to create what is guaranteed to be a wonderful show so don't miss out! Tickets are only $5 and are on sale now! Click the link below to purchase your tickets

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/chicago-high-school-edition-tickets-152800240633

Year 7

Students in Year 7 Science practiced their separation techniques in for an assessment. They needed to use sieving, magnets, filtration, and evaporation to separate dried beans, iron filings, sand, and salt. They had fun in the labs too!

Year 8

Year 8’s are learning about the importance of their wellbeing. They are participating in various activities that promotes this. Here’s a few photos of them.

Year 9

The fellas in Year 9 Home Economics class decided to bring some science into the cooking class, how hard is it to crack an egg using your forearm? The winner? or loser? As he ended up covered in egg was Zealan.

9.3 students have been busy working on their Humanities assignment.

Utnenge

Last term Utnenge entered the Alice Springs Recycled Art Prize. We made all of our artworks from stuff that CMS was throwing in the bin, including lots of cardboard which we glued to make some fantastic sculptures of food, cities, camp sites and a house. Zaffy made a cosplay costume from recycled textiles.

We have begun to paint a mural on the outside wall of our classroom. We wanted to spell the word ‘Utnenge’ and after that we have been decorating the letters. It’s so large and colourful that you can’t miss it when you are walking to the bus shelter.

We are growing seedlings of cauliflower, spinach, kale, lettuce and silverbeet for gardens in Alice Springs Town Camps. William and Alex grew tomatoes from burying slices of fresh tomatoes in pots of soil. Utnenge now has hundreds of tomato seedlings.

We welcome our new teacher Brit. Brit has been traveling around Australia and has been in Alice Springs for two weeks. Brit loves to teach outdoor Ed, drama, English and wellbeing. Brit studied improv theatre in Chicago and we feel really lucky to have her.

VET Hospitality Program

2021 has brought a fresh group of students along with different set of skills and amazing personalities into the Hospitality program. This year our key focus is about “Providing a service to others” in food and beverage (coffee). During Term 1, the Tuesday class provided food service to CMS staff and the Thursday class to the Clontarf fellas.

In Term 1, we learnt about hygiene and working effectively with others within the Hospitality space. We covered topics like basic hygiene, industry standards and policies & procedures in order to understand the correct processes and ensure all food is stored, prepared, transported and served in a safe manner for consumption by customers. These units are the building blocks to working effectively in hospitality and produce excellent service.

Early in Term 1, students participated in “Meet the teacher” night where they served coffee to the families. This experience inspired our students to work on their coffee skills and provide staff with a caffeine fix during the day. We also had a couple of opportunities to serve coffees to meetings held by the Education Department. Students learnt about different food requirements in particular vegetarian diets and discussed options to be able to cater to meet dietary requests.

As you will see in the pictures below, there is no fun without cleaning in this program. As you would in the industry, students strip the kitchen down, take everything out so that everything gets a thorough clean.

Students in Term 2 will start their official Barista training. They will learn how to make coffee by creating a pop up coffee shop in the staffroom at during lunch.

The images below are from both programs throughout term 1, stay tuned for more news & images in term 2!

Clontarf Corner

Welcome back for the new edition of the world-famous CLONTARF CORNER.

Morning training

Our morning trainings sessions have been very well attended, we have seen some awesome by-in from the boys, especially the Year 9 cohort at our footy trainings, where they are now really starting to drive the standards, expectations and energy for the whole group. It has been amazing to watch the growth, from guys leading the Year 7s who have not played before. Our aim is for these standards, expectations & confidence to be carried over into the classroom and within the community.

Other activities have been:

  • Soccer with special guest Toby Churchill from Headspace.
  • Joint training sessions with CSC & Yirara.

After school activities

After school activities are a great way of getting to know the fellas as well as having a bit of fun. The activities we plan are mainly based on what is going on around the school, the Clontarf Pillars, or any team sports. The activities we ran this week were:

  • Town Pool
  • Footy Vs Yirara
  • Bike Mechanics
  • Basketball vs St Phillips & OLSH
  • Clay Pans

Year 9 Camp

In week 7 of Term 1, the year 9’s went on a camp up to Tennant Creek with the Centralian Senior College. It was a great three days, one of the best camps I have ever been on. The fellas behaved like wonderful young men and were true ambassadors for our schools and the academy. Activities undertaken were:

  • Backboard footy vs the Tennant Creek academy
  • Dinner @ Sporties
  • Morning training with the Tennant Creek academy
  • Breakfast @ Wicked Kneads
  • Cinema

Term 2 – Weeks 1-2

It has been a great start to the term for the Clontarf lads with morning trainings, after school activities, contact times and health checks all swinging into action.

To commemorate the ANZAC spirit, Clontarf’s contact times were based around ANZAC day and what it means to the fellas. We also had a football match on Tuesday of week 2 at Albrecht Oval to show respect to the ANZACS. The match was against the Yirara Brumbies and an amazing Clontarf spirit was shown from both teams. The Last Post was played prior to the game along with one minute silence; during this time thought was given to the sacrifices of the ANZACS and all Australian service men and women.

We have also teamed up with the Alice Springs Turf Club and gained some work experience by helping organising the car park. This has ran for two weeks now and both the Turf Club and our lads are very pleased with what they have learnt.

As the major race event ran last Sunday at the Turf Club, our boys were also there to give Coles a hand by selling food and drinks to punters to help raise money for Red Kite. Here too, the lads gained great customer service skills.

Worksite visits to the Alice Springs Cinema and KFC had also taken place in the first two weeks with some great potential outcomes. Both businesses did an amazing job at showing the lads around and answered all the questions the fellas had. Thanks so much to Sam and Kylie from KFC and Renee from the Alice Springs Cinema, we really appreciated your time and efforts.

All of these activities including awesome cook-ups, attendance challenges, minute-to-win-it games, backboard footy, basketball, table tennis competitions, primary school activity and gym sessions have all made the start of Term 2 an amazing experience for the lads. Keep up the great work fellas!

Coming up in the next few weeks are camps, camps and more camps…so stay tuned!

School Vaccination

Reminder for parents & carers

The school vaccination program will be running again this term.

All year 9 students that have not received a meningococcal ACWY will be offered the vaccine in Week 6, Tuesday 25th May.

Consent letters have been sent out in the mail and need to be returned as soon as possible. Please return the consent form even if choosing to decline the vaccination, with the NO ticked.

Consent forms are also being sent out for the year 7 vaccination program (Gardasil and Boostrix) to all students that have not returned the forms previously.

The next round of vaccinations for year 7 takes place in Term 3, Week 8 (Wednesday 8th September).

Community Announcements

Night Markets

Here are the Alice Springs Night Markets dates for 2021

Big Day Out in Harmony

Come & celebrate our culturally rich and diverse community with music, dance, food, kids’ activities and more! All details in the flyer below.

Indoor Cricket

Here at the Y we are starting our indoor cricket league that will run from May 10th – July 12th for 15y+ (or younger with parental consent).

Pets on Parade

Young Territory Author Awards

Youth Climate Workshops

Check out the Youth Climate Workshops on offer!

This Sunday why not take your young person to try their hand at Creative Vegetable Gardening!

Register today!

YDO@astc.nt.gov.au or call 8950 0547

Phoney Film Festival 2021

Sports voucher

Sports Vouchers are available now!

Apply for yours online,

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

*** Children living in an urban area are eligible to receive two $100 sport vouchers each year - one in January and one in July - for sport, recreation and cultural activities.

Parents or carers need to apply for vouchers online each semester.

All vouchers expire on 31 May each year.

Facebook

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https://www.facebook.com/CentMS/