Meghan Carroll – Deputy Head of Primary

New Parent Welcome Evening

Thank you to all new parents for joining us for this special event. We are thrilled to welcome you to Emanuel School and appreciate you sharing your experiences so far. We look forward to working with you and your children this year and beyond. Thank you to Michelle Favero and  Belinda Levin for organising this event and the Primary and the High School Madrichim for helping out and sharing their stories about our amazing school and community.

Year 6 Canberra trip

On Friday we welcomed Year 6 back from an exciting camp in Canberra. The children were able to participate in a range of exciting visits to the National Gallery of Australia, the Australian War Memorial, Parliament House and Questacon. This is a very busy and worthwhile camp and I thank the teachers, Hugo Adrian, Diane Clennar, Karon Rom, Kim Haddix, Hagit Bar-On and Genna Radnan for the enthusiasm and commitment they offered in order to make the camp such a success. Thank you to Holly Dillon for helping to organise this camp for our students.

The Australian Government recognises the importance of all young Australians being able to visit the national capital as part of their Civics and Citizenship education. To assist families in meeting the cost of the excursion the Australian Government contributes funding of $20 per student under the Parliament and Civics Education Rebate program. The rebate is paid directly to the School upon completion of the excursion. We have factored this into the costing for the excursion.

Year 5 Bathurst trip

This week Year 5 had an adventurous trip to the Bathurst Goldfields. The students participated in a number of tours and activities to learn about life in Colonial Australia. At Hill End Ranch they explored the Bald Hill Underground Mine, participated in a village treasure hunt and experienced gold panning. In the evening the children engaged in line dancing and colonial music activities. The trip was a meaningful and interesting learning experience as well as a great opportunity to build and strengthen friendships. The students represented Emanuel School proudly. Thank you to Holly Dillon for helping to organise this camp for our students as well as the teachers who attended the camp this year: Tanya Jeckeln, Gabriella Wynhausen, Lara Kepitis, Stuart Taylor and Adam Carpenter.

BBQ Day

Thank you to the following parents who assisted in the smooth running of the JNF BBQ fundraiser on Monday: Ruby Berkovic, Samantha Butt, Amanda Fraser, Amanda Isenberg, Simone Joffe, Evelyn Marczak, Nikki Michel, Tonja Nachman, Jennifer Opit, Joanne Rose, Carli Rothman, Monika Silver, Valerie Smaller, Lisa Strous and Rahel Wise. We are very grateful for your support!

Colleen Elkins – Gifted and Talented Co-Ordinator K-6

K-6 Gifted and Talented news

More and more teachers sign up for G&T courses at UNSW!

We are thrilled that last year, many teachers nominated Gifted Education as one of their areas of interest and attended professional learning at UNSW. This year, we have several new teachers initiating studies in Gifted Education at UNSW and a number of others continuing theirs.

These staff members add to our already extensive number of gifted-trained staff within the School, who are acting in a supportive, mentoring role to these newly trained teachers – working together to plan learning that will inspire and extend students who are in the gifted range. The excitement shown by staff inspired about sharing ideas and implementing additional strategies within their classes is palpable and a credit to all teachers involved.

To assist class teachers in supporting the needs of our gifted students, we have G&T staff members assigned to each grade in the School, to work in close partnership with one another.

Another strategy employed by Emanuel to cater for highly able students, is participation in an extensive number of competitions and external challenges such as The Mathematics Challenge for Young Australians (Years 3-6), Maths Olympiad, ICAS, the da Vinci Decathlon and the Young Writers Award to name but a few. Individualised programming for children with a particular strength allows for competitions or the pursuit of an area of passion to complement learning within the classroom.

Also, our mentoring program, matching a student with an older student for support and sharing of a passion, continues to be a valuable strategy to cater for the social/emotional or intellectual asynchrony that gifted students may experience.

Several parents have asked for ideas of what their child could pursue at home. Reading is still the ultimate wish of each teacher for their students. Extending this activity further could be: writing a screenplay for the novel (and possibly producing it), writing a new ending to a story, imagining what would happen if one thing in the story had been different and writing about it.

Click here for some helpful websites for parents and children.

 If your child loves writing, have them write their ideas, story beginnings etc in their own writer’s journal. Ask them to share this with you or a teacher. There are several writing competitions throughout the year and these musings would provide good fodder. A similar journal could be kept by a child who loves to ask questions and discover, or a reflection journal, recording feelings.

Thank you to the parents who attended our Parent Training Courses in 2018. Aside from the theory learnt, parents met a number of others with highly able children and were able to share rich experiences with one another.

Parent Workshops this year will be held on:

• Tuesday 21 May
• Tuesday 25 June
• Tuesday 13 August
• Wednesday 30 October
• Wednesday 20 November – guest speaker

The content covered will be differentiated for 2018 attendees and attendees new in 2019.