Forbes Street, Woolloomooloo 2011 Telephone: 9358 5335/6 | Fax: 93571831 plunketstr-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Plunkett Street News

Term 2 Week 7,

2021

Dear Families, It was my pleasure to escort two of our school leaders to the Garden Island Navy Base to participate in the 79th anniversary memorial service for HMAS Kuttabul. The Kuttabul was an accommodation ship located at Garden Island. During the submarine attack on Sydney Harbour on 31st May, 1942, Kuttabul was sunk with 21 naval personnel aboard. During the service the names of each person was read aloud in memory. Our two school leaders were invited to join the special guests to enjoy a morning tea in the Heritage Centre, an historical building that houses many naval historical relics. This area will be open to the public in the next year, once the build of the new wharves are completed. A date has been set for the Woolloomooloo Community NAIDOC Event, hosted by WEAVE – Saturday 3rd July from 2-8pm. The event will take place on Forbes St and in Plunkett St School. There will be an art wall, face painting, BBQ, activities, jumping castle and the screening of a movie. Everyone Welcome! Teachers are currently completing assessments to inform the Semester 1 students school reports, which will go home on Friday 18th June. Teachers will send out an interview schedule for families to make a time to speak to them about your child’s progress. If you require an interpreter, please let your teacher know in advance. In light of recent COVID developments, the Department of Education has asked schools to prepare a COVID Learn from Home Plan in case a large number of students or staff are required to remain in self-isolation for a period of time or a period where the school is directed under public health advice to only remain operational for children of essential workers if an outbreak of COVID-19 were to arise in the local area. Please make sure your contact details, including email are up to date at the office. A quick reminder – our whole school assembly will take place on Monday 21st June at 2:30pm. The Coraki Class will be sharing their learning and all students will be receiving their Books In Homes Bags with thanks to Mosman Rotary.

Our school rules • Be Safe • Be Respectful • Be an Active Learner

Dates for the Calendar Term 2 and 3, 2021

June 2nd Year 6 Ceramic Lesson 5th World Environment Day 10th P&C Meeting 8am in COLA 14th Public Holiday 16th Year 6 Ceramic Lesson 18th School Reports home 21st Assembly – Coraki and BIHA 21st Parent Teacher Meetings all week 25th Last day of term 2 25th BBQ Breakfast with Salesforce

Volunteers

July 3rd Community NAIDOC Event 13th Students return to school for term 3 14th Year 6 Ceramic Lesson 26th Beginning of Education Week

School Leaders at Garden Island Navy Base

News from Kakadu Class

In class this week we have recognised the significance and importance of Reconciliation Week. Over the week the children have created a handprint to place in our Reconciliation garden; dot painted stones for a collaborative and open-ended game of hide n seek, where the children ‘hide n seek’ the stones they find in the school grounds and have shared a number of Dreamtime stories. Last Friday was dress-up as a relative day. It was an awesome day and we all enjoyed learning about our friends’ families, from the jobs our relatives do to some Irish history dating back to the Vikings! The children took their new roles very seriously and all looked amazing…a big thank you to all the families that got involved. In the classroom this week we have been learning about two dimensional shapes in maths and learnt how to program a Beebot in science.

News from Uluru Class Uluru students have been busy, busy, busy over the last two weeks. We are coming to the end of our drama lesson with Tegan, with only two more sessions left. We have been reading the story “The Island” and we have met a sea creature in the story. We have been so lucky that Tegan has helped us recreate our very own sea monster out of paper mache to turn it into a puppet. Over the past few weeks we have been working together to paint the sea monsters head and to design and create the tentacles. It is starting to look fantastic! Uluru kids have also been lucky to use the robotics kits. Mr Tyack and the Jenolan kids have been teaching us how to operate the mini robots and move them around on the carpet. It has been lots of fun and everyone has learnt new skills. During reconciliation week, both Uluru and Kakadu class have painted stones and combined together to play an on going friendship game outside. Students got to hide their stones and they have to try and find everyone else’s stones. Once they find someone’s stone though, they hide it again for someone else so the game just continues on.

News from Jenolan Class Jenolan have been building on their writing each week in our Story Factory sessions. The focus this term has been giving classroom objects human characteristics and writing about what the objects get up to when the students go home. We are all looking forward to reading the published class book of their stories in a few weeks. Students continue to work on their tennis skills each week and have improved over the semester. Last week we visited the Kindy Farm that was at school as part of the Big Day In at the high school. The students enjoyed patting the cuddly friends. We completed our unit on robotics, creating and programing using the Lego WeDo kits that we have had on loan for the term.

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News from Coraki Class We’ve been focussing on positional geometry using ‘cartesian’ planes to plot coordinates and have looked at using algebra to follow ‘rules’ when plotting points and have mapped the classroom. 2D shapes have been revised, covering angles, types of triangles an how to find the area of a circle or the volume of a cylinder. Drama has continued with Teagan and the class is really getting into the role now in our study of Shaun Tan’s, the Lost Thing. We’ve been getting into character, making scenes and creating our own written texts based on the characters and their relationships with the story. Our study of Australian history has focussed on ‘the statue debate’. We have explored who is represented in these statues and monuments and how these can be problematic representations of history. Our research into some of the people represented, such as Charles Cameron Kingston in Adelaide, Captain Cook in Sydney and John Batman in Melbourne, has given us answers as to why and we have explored possible solutions to one-sided histories. At Hope Street we’ve had lots of good discussions around the meaning of NAIDOC. It’s been commented on that the Coraki kids are a wealth of information on the topic of history and reconciliation. Great to hear! Science is taking us deep into the solar system with our study of the Earth and its place in the solar system. Working with ‘astronomical units’ we know that Earth is 1AU from the sun (150 million Km). PSSA sport has continued, the steady improvement in the class’s teamwork has continued and everyone has had a lot of fun both at games, training and during daily soccer games at lunchtime. Go Plunko! Congratulations to our Young Archibald’s finalist Deya for her artwork. An honourable mention went to Maggie as well. The feedback from the gallery NSW Art Gallery was that all the portraits were fantastic and it was an extremely hard choice to make. You can see them on line and up in lights at: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/prizes/young-archie/2021/

News from Preschool The gurung of Plunkett Street Preschool commemorated National Sorry Day and celebrated Reconciliation Week this week. In commemoration of Sorry Day, the gurung created purple native hibiscus flowers which were designed by following a step-by-step guide to origami. The native hibiscus flower is recognised by the National Stolen Generations Alliance as the official symbol for Sorry Day. This purple flower was adopted because it is a survivor, found widely across Australia with the colour denoting compassion and spiritual healing. Origami too helped the gurung to develop skills in; eye hand co-ordination, sequencing skills, maths reasoning, spatial skills, memory, but also patience and attention skills, fine motor skills and mental concentration. The gurung then painted their own interpretation of a hibiscus flower using purple and green paints and sticks and wool to represent the middle of the flower and the pollen. At our yarning circle we read the book ‘Sorry Day’ by Coral Vass and Dub Lefflert which is a retelling of the momentous day when the then Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, acknowledged the sorrows of past and said ‘Sorry’ to the generation of children who were taken from their homes. At the end of the story Miss Bree posed the question “Why do we say sorry?” with the gurung responding by saying; Lorcan - "Because the person (prime minister) said sorry to the kids. We say sorry because the kids got taken away". Daisy - "Mum couldn't find (her children), sad mummy and daddy". Nurlan - Talked about a time when he lost his Dad. Luciana - Because we say nice words" and Daisy agreed. The gurung spent the afternoon creating Aboriginal 'gunyah' which is the word for shelter. We talked about how the Aboriginal people would use paperbark for many things including warmth, toilet paper and to waterproof their gunyah and we collected some paperbark from our tree at preschool for our shelter. The gurung also created fires to cook foods like fish with Nurlan creating a fishing rod using a vine to catch barramundi like crocodiles also like to eat. Nurlan was so pleased with his efforts in creating his own gunyah that he told a community member walking down the street what he had created showing her the poster. Lorcan and Daisy were focused on collecting seeds, nuts and berries in a coolamon for the other gurung to eat as well as a baby. Zephyr and Elias were focused on creating a powder by grinding down leaves in place of wheat to make bread by hand like the Aboriginal people traditionally made and were interested in how the Aboriginal people would use the lomandra grass for tying things together or making baskets. The gurung had the opportunity to create rock cave painting of their own with Miss Bree asking the question “Tell me the story of your painting” to encourage the gurung to use their imagination and tell a verbal story. The gurung could use paintbrushes or had the opportunity to use bush paintbrushes made from the middle of a banksia flower by peeling back the outer layer to reveal a soft fluffy brush. These were some of the stories they painted onto our cave; Elias - "The echidna is going to find some insects like ants. There is a storm right up in the sky and it is going to destroy the animal’s homes. Now the trees are falling down". Nurlan - Liked Elias' idea stating that an "Aboriginal man saved the echidna from the storm". Zephyr - Told Miss Bree that he was creating "symbols of people and plants and nature" because that's what they used to paint with.