Coffs Harbour Public School Blog

Courtesy & Honour – Principal:Leonie Buehler

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Thinking Skills

The Stage 2 and 3 thinking skills group were set the challenge of devising a way to balance a basketball for 1 minute at a height of 50cm. They could only use newspaper and masking tape.

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Bad Maths

Mr Easey, Mrs Booth thought you might like these for your next maths class. Flickr: Bad Maths

Mrs Booth

Can you find the maths errors in these examples?

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Murder under the Microscope Results

This explains what happened: MuM 2012 Case Notes

Well done Mighty 5M for fantastic sleuthing and researching  to solve the 2012 Murder under the Microscope challenge.

5M successfully selected the correct victim, villain and crime site after researching and forming a hypothesis as to who, what and where the eco-crime had been committed.

We all thought it was the cane toad who was the villain but then at the last minute an urgent email came in telling us that no toads had been sighted at the crime site! It had to be gamba grass! We then had a last minute vote using our selected democratic council and at 11am lodged our accusations online. Wow, was it busy, even though our accusation was logged at 11.01am we were approximately the  260th school that made an accusation. Over 600 schools logged in within the first 5 minutes!

It was great fun and to have the correct results was brilliant. Did you know some scientists have suggested bringing in elephants to combat the Gamba grass epidemic. Read about it here and wouldn’t this make a great topic for a discussion or persuasive text? What do you think? Should we introduce elephants into Australia to combat the gamba grass problem in the Northern Territory and Western Australia?

Victim: Northern Quoll

Villain: Gamba grass

Crime site: Pentecost River, Kununurra, Western Australia

Ms Mulrooney, Mrs Booth and 5M

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Get well soon Ms Mulrooney

Ms Mulrooney had a little tribe of well wishers in the library today…Get well soon Ms Mulrooney from all the staff and students and remember you can melt chocolate 🙂

 

 

Mrs Booth

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Welcome to – Acknowledgement of Country

On Thursday local Gumbaynggirr Aboriginal elder, Mark Flanders, came to our school to share his local knowledge about the traditional landowners of the Coffs Harbour area.

Gumbaynggirr Language Fact Sheet

He also spoke to a year 6 class about the significance of the ‘Welcome to’ or ‘Acknowledgement of Country’.

1. What is a Welcome to Country?

A Welcome to Country is a ceremony performed by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people to welcome visitors to their traditional land. It can take many forms, depending on the particular culture of the traditional owners. It can include singing, dancing, smoking ceremonies or a speech in traditional language or English.

2. What is an Acknowledgment of Country? 

An Acknowledgement of Country is a way of showing awareness of and respect for the traditional Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander owners of the land on which a meeting or event is being held, and of recognising the continuing connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to their Country.

An Acknowledgment of Country can be informal or formal and involves visitors acknowledging the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander owners of the land as well as the long and continuing relationship between Indigenous peoples and their Country.

 Why are Acknowledgements of Country and Welcomes to Country important?

Incorporating welcoming and acknowledgement protocols into official meetings and events recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and custodians of their land. It promotes an awareness of the past and ongoing connection to place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

Unlike New Zealand, Canada and the United States, Australia has no treaty with its Indigenous people. While land rights laws and Native Title determinations in recent years have meant that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have been officially recognised as having some ownership rights to some areas, for many groups there remains no official recognition of their connection to the land of their ancestors. A Welcome to or Acknowledgement of Country doesn’t replace a treaty, Native Title or land rights, but they’re a small gesture of recognition of the association with land and place of the First Australians.

Information sourced from Reconciliation Australia

 

Mrs Booth

 

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Sailors with disAbilities Try Sail Day

 Sailors with Disabilities offer a Try Sail Day Program which is designed to give disabled and disadvantaged children and young adults the opportunity to go sailing. Through our crew, SWD are able to provide positive role models, demonstrating that people with a disability do not have to be confined by it.

Here is a video of various schools participating in the TSD program. Coffs PS starts at 0.23 sec and finishes at 1.54sec

What a great day the staff and students had and a huge thank you to the Sailors with disAbilities program as without this great organisation the day would not be possible.

All photos and video sourced from Sailors with disAbilities

Students and staff CHPS Special Education Unit

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4P – Being Australian Virtual Quest

4P discovered virtual worlds today embarking on the ‘Being Australian’ virtual quest for HSIE. Mrs Booth decided to adapt the original learning unit to include multi-user and was very glad to see that it worked brilliantly with no crashes. All the students understood the in-world behaviour expectations and used text chat to communicate . The most excited student was the class teacher, Mr Pike, who decided to cause a bit of havoc in-world 🙂

…and just in case you thought it was a quiet lesson…

Mrs Booth, Mr Pike and 4P

 

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3C Limericks

A limerick is a 5 line poem that rhymes with aabba. Lines 1, 2 and 5 have to rhyme with each other. Our teacher wrote a limerick for our class which we wrote in our work books. You can make limericks sound funny or sad, and Lachlan found rhyming hard.

Here are some of our limericks.  Ahamed and Mrs Booth filmed us.

Luke, Ahmed,  Lachlan, Jace and Tara 3C

 

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3C Claymation

3C have been working hard on their claymation movies that are being made using the iPad. It is a very time consuming process but in the meantime, as you continue with your projects, be inspired by this video of ‘Gulp’ the world’s largest stop motion animation that was shot using 3 mobile phones. The second video that runs for 5 minutes is amazing as it shows you how  the film was made. Maybe this is a project for 3C down at the harbour? Here is a hyper link to the wonderful Wallace & Gromit website which is probably the most well known clay animation series.

Gulp. The world’s largest stop-motion animation shot on a Nokia N8. from Nokia HD on Vimeo.

Gulp. The making of. from Nokia HD on Vimeo.

Mrs Booth

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What is Ramadan?

Many students have been asking why some children didn’t have recess or lunch therefore one of our Muslim students, Saadia, made a video to explain why and what Ramadan meant to her.

Ramadan is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar, which consists of 12 months and lasts for about 354 days. The word “Ramadan” is derived from an Arabic word for intense heat, scorched ground and shortness of food and drink. It is considered to be the most holy and blessed month. Fighting is not allowed during this period.

The month of Ramadan traditionally begins with a new moon sighting, marking the start of the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. Many Muslims (except some children, the sick and the elderly) abstain from food, drink, and certain other activities during daylight hours in Ramadan. This is considered as the holiest season in the Islamic year and commemorates the time when the Qu’ran (Islamic holy book) is said to have been revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. This occurred on Laylat Al-Qadr, one of the last 10 nights of the month. Ramadan ends when the first crescent of the new moon is sighted again, marking the new lunar month’s start. Eid-al-Fitr is the Islamic holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.

Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bob Carr, also sent a message to all Muslims in Australia wishing them well. Ramadan Mubarak.

Ramadan message

 

Ramadan Mubarak

Mrs Booth and Saadia

 

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