Reconciliation Week
Gabrielle Wynhausen – Primary Teacher
Reconciliation Week
This week is Reconciliation Week – a week that marks our Country’s reconciliation journey and encourages us to take action to work towards a more mature and reconciled Australia. To mark Reconcilation Week, our Primary School students wore Yellow and raised money for the Children’s Ground Organisation. They were introduced to the Schools Reconciliation Challenge, an art and writing competition open to NSW and ACT students. This year, the theme is Under One Sky: Yesterday, Today and Forever. Here are the entry details if your child would like to enter this competition.
Students have been engaging in the Reconciliation process in class in a variety of ways. Some students have written their own Acknowledgement of Country using a guide from Narragunnawali, an organisation that supports schools to promote knowledge and pride in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and contributions. This was a meaningful process in which the students explored the significance of an Acknowledgement of Country and the difference between a Welcome to Country and an Acknowledgement of Country.
They then worked together to explore the following questions:
- What is the name of the language group of this area?
- Where does this Country extend to?
- What some of our neighbouring language groups?
- What are some special places on this Country?
- What is special about this area?
- What do we love to do here?
- Could we incorporate words from the local language into our Acknowledgement?
- What does reconciliation mean to us?
Here are a selection of Year 5 students’ Acknowledgement of Country:
