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 March 2023

Newsletter Articles

Important dates

Wednesday 8 March – Interschool Basketball Competition
Wednesday 8 March – International Women’s Day
Thursday 9 March to Friday 10 March – Year 7 Sleepover
Friday 10 March – Swimming Carnival Competition
Tuesday 21 March – Harmony Day
Friday 5 April – Interschool Swimming Competition
Friday 7 April – Good Friday Public Holiday

From the Assistant Principal

Hello, Werte!

We have gone past the halfway mark and this promises to be an exciting term throughout the school. The vibe across the school is encouraging. Students are stuck in their learning, starting on or completing their assignments. On the sporting front, there is the interschool basketball competition and the Swimming Carnival which our students will participate in soon.

Years 7 and 9 will be sitting for their NAPLAN tests in Weeks 7 and 8. This is an excellent opportunity to measure growth in student learning. We encourage families to ensure that students go to bed early, have enough rest and come to school on time. Breakfast will be provided to the students before they start the tests.

We had a successful “Meet the Teacher ‘night last week. This was an excellent opportunity to meet our families and build a solid partnership. The support we got from our families was quite humbling. Thank you, families, for turning up to support our students and the teachers.

I am happy to observe that the Year 7 students are settling into the CMS routines. There is a buzz in the classes. I am seeing great friendships forming and a spirit of generosity amongst a number of these young people.

When we opened the school year, CMS focused on developing positive relationships with our students across the school. We understand that relationships matter if we are to set up a productive learning environment. Related to this is the development of class routines. Routines build familiarity. Familiarity helps set up students for success in the classroom.

I had the privilege of talking to Y7 students about the CMS values and the concept of ‘Living Together’. This was to ensure that we have a common understanding the school expectations. Our values are based on the belief that we all belong to this school. Our different cultural and racial backgrounds should be a source of strength not weakness. To accommodate our different backgrounds, we have common values which all members of the CMS community are expected to adhere to. These values are Respect, Responsibility and Fairness. It is encouraging to note that most of our families are inculcating those values to our students.

We recognise that at school, differences may occur. However, our strong belief is that we should never teach our children that it is okay to use violence as a mean of settling differences. I am confident that our families share the same belief. It is part of good practice to build the capacity of our students in peaceful conflict resolution. Thank you to our families for supporting us, building, and modelling to students the community we would like to see. Please contact the school if you have any concerns.

I would like to thank our families for working with us on the new ‘No Phone Policy’. We are experiencing great success as there is a marked decrease in phone usage during school time. This has been achieved because we have worked together as a community.

We look forward to working with our families as we strive to impart social, emotional, and academic skills in our young people.

Wellington Pasi
Assistant Principal – Centralian Middle School

School news and updates

NAPLAN Testing

NAPLAN testing will be taking place for Year 7 and Year 9 students from Wednesday 15 March – Monday 27 March. Please see the attached information regarding testing. Breakfast will be available before school for all students from Wednesday 15 March – Monday 20 March during our main testing period. If students are absent and miss a test, there will be an opportunity to catch up in the second week of testing. Please contact the front office if you have any questions regarding NAPLAN.

Year 7

Maths

In maths, Year 7s have been learning about square, cube numbers, perimeter, and their connection to Algebra. They practised matching perfect squares and square roots with their basic numerals." To help with this we used a 'Sphinx shape' where 4 Sphinx's make one larger Sphinx and so on the pattern goes! All classes through teamwork were able to quite large Sphinx's illustrating their understanding of perimeter and area!

Science

In Science the Year 7s have been learning about scientific equipment (all the different names to remember!), in particular the Bunsen burner.

To achieve their Bunsen burner license, students needed to successfully

  • label the parts of the Bunsen burner
  • be able to safely light a Bunsen burner
  • safely adjust the flame from the yellow Safely flame to the blue flame (very hot)

Congratulations to all those who have passed and are awaiting their licence!

The year 7s have also been learning about making and recording observations (they particularly enjoyed the chemical reactions practical) and have started learning to design their own experiments. "

VET Conservation and Land Management

Our Land Management crew have continued their strong start to the year.

These Year 9s have...

  • have already needed to pot-up their seedlings, giving them more room in bigger pots.
  • practised first aid skills for snake bites
  • continued with their "daily duties" checklist for maintaining our training room
  • demonstrated another set of pre-start checks and reading S.O.P.s (Standard Operating Procedures) for brushcutters
  • used the brushcutters to maintain the area around our training room and prepare our hoop house for the garden beds.

Almost all the excursion permission forms have been signed and returned - this means we'll be starting our industry visits in the next few weeks.

Also, if you have not yet formally enrolled in this program, please let us know how we can help get the forms completed.

Jacelyn Anderson

VET Land Management trainer/assessor

Clontarf Corner

The Term has continued with good energy and positive vibes from fellas at Clontarf Centralian Middle Academy with the fellas enjoying camps, trainings, and afternoon activities.

The Year 7’s had their induction camp kicking of the Year with a bang in week 3. Full of fun activities the fellas got an introduction to life at Clontarf. The fellas loved it and Dennis reckon it “was the best camp I’ve ever been on!

A group of boys from all Year levels also had the opportunity to represent Clontarf, Centralian Middle Academy at the Imparja Cup Middle School Carnival. The boys showed what they were made of coming up against Tennant Creek High School, Clontarf Academy and Yirara Clontarf Academy. Tennant Creek were eventual winners but still a great camp all round!

Finally, the lads were up at sunrise for training again but this time for Clean Up Mpartnwe Day on the Todd River. We joined the fellas from Centralian Senior and Yirara Academies and filled up plenty bags of rubbish leaving the river much cleaner than before! We were lucky to be joined by special guests including the Mayor, Matt Patterson; Member for Braitling, Joshua Burgoyne, and our friends at Bunnings.

We are halfway through the Term now, keep going fellas!

Polly farmer Foundation

Follow the Dream students have had a great start to the year. There are plenty of familiar faces have returned this year as well as many new year 7 students.

The program is held on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon 3 to 5pm. Applications to join will close at the end of Term 1 so make sure you join now! Enrolment forms can be found at the front office.

So far this term students have set goals, made ice cream, designed and engineered boats, played educational games, celebrated and acknowledged significant days in modern Aboriginal history and received their Resilience Project journals to practice gratitude, empathy and mindfulness. Later this term students will visit Central craft to screen print t-shirts and continue build on their learning at school.

Pancake Tuesday!

In week 4, we started the day with a pancake feast and went to class with a full belly!

Former CMS student’s new life in Japan!

Previous CMS student Eli Hocking says her new life in Japan is “SUGOI”!! (That’s Japanese for “AMAZING”!) After studying Japanese at CMS with Brenda Sensei and Kiyo Sensei, Eli continued on at CSC.

Eli left Alice Springs in January to spend a year as a Rotary Exchange Student in Japan! Eli’s class at CSC caught up with her on Zoom last week. The first thing they noticed was that she was wearing a winter school Uniform as its winter in the northern hemisphere, and it snows a lot in Japan.

Eli lives with her host family in a high-rise apartment, not far from Tokyo. She said everyone has made her feel very welcome and she has made heaps of friends at school. Her new favourite food is “katsu don” (Pork cutlet on rice), and she demonstrated how well she can use chopsticks now.

Her host family gave her a beautiful set of chopsticks just for her to use. Now that she is actually in Japan, she said she is learning Japanese language much faster, with the help of her classmates. Eli’s sister Lucy is currently studying Japanese in Year 8 at CMS. Lucy said, “I miss her but I’m happy for her that she is finally living her dream of being involved in Japanese culture”.

Ethics Olympiad

Students from CMS competed in the international final of the Ethics Olympiad on Thursday last week.

After winning silver and bronze in last year’s regional final, a team of five students competed against schools from India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and around Australia.

In three heats, CMS students Olive Barwick, Chloe Hildebrandt, Xuan Le, Kate Rodwell and Noeline Forbes, discussed issues related to sports funding, nuclear energy, government responsibility, bullying and many more.

CMS received an honourable mention for their performance from the judges who were all professors of ethics or masters students. CMS will compete again in the regional competition in November this year.

New Canteen Menu

We have a brand-new canteen menu at CMS, check it out!

Community Announcements

Northern Territory Sports Academy - Foundations Program

This is a free program that has been developed as a fun way for kids to build skills, strength, conditioning and fitness which is suitable for all ages, sporting codes and for those that just want to get some fitness in a non-competitive setting. For more details, have a look at the posters below.

Netball

World Hearing Day - Friday 3 March 2023

World Hearing Day is Friday 3 March, and this year’s theme is ‘Ear and hearing care for all’.

The best way to take care of our ears and hearing is by limiting exposure to loud noise addressing any ear and hearing problems immediately. Early detection and treatment is key to preventing hearing problems from getting worse.

NT Hearing provides free hearing assessments for people of all ages and includes visiting services to regional centres and remote communities.

Make an appointment for your free hearing assessment at:

https://nt.gov.au/wellbeing/hospitals-health-services/get-a-hearing-test

CareFlight Territory Challenge 2023

CareFlight cares for over 7,000 patients in the Northern Territory every year, including 72 children every month.

This April, you and your family can support their work and take your fitness to new heights, by signing up to the CareFlight Territory Challenge! Visit the link below for more information or contact events-nt@careflight.org

http://www.careflightchallenge.org/

Junior Hockey Training/Competition

Alice Springs Hockey Association is starting up a Junior Hockey Training session this week, on Wednesday 8th of March from 5:30pm. More details below.

Sports voucher

Semester 1 2023 Sports vouchers are now available. Parents and carers will need to apply online each semester by going to the following website:

http://www.sportvoucher.nt.gov.au/

Please note if the details of the young person are already on the system, a voucher will be available to print or save straight away, if the details are not found by the system a voucher will be sent to the email address you have provided within 7 days.

More information is available from the link below, alternatively you can also contact our Sport Voucher team by phone on 1800 817 860 or by email sport.voucher@nt.gov.au.

http://www.sportvoucher.nt.gov.au/

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