newsletter19 August 2016Term 3 Week 4

TORONTO CAMPUS

Search for Avondale School - Toronto Campusfacebook Like us on facebook for regular school information updates.

Open Day

Have you seen our new promotional video on facebook?

Students of the Week Pre-Kindy - Thomas

K-2 - Daniel3-6 - Uriah

Values Award Pre-Kindy - Ben

K-2 - Isobel3-6 - Tamar

Art Show Toronto Campus students have the opportunity to participate in this year’s Avondale School Art Show. The event will take place on 10 September at 6:30pm in the Collaborative Learning Centre, Cooranbong Campus. The theme is “My Family” and students can enter by completing a form and attaching it to their artwork. Artworks need to be dropped off to the Cooranbong Campus office by Monday 5 September 2016.

Book Week - 22-26 AugustBook Week is almost here and we are looking forward to lots of fun activities. A book character parade is planned for Tuesday 23 August at Toronto Campus and students can start preparing for this exciting event by thinking about what costume they are going to wear (please no superheroes, witches, wizards and the like). Students will also have the opportunity to purchase books from the Book Fair when they visit our Cooranbong Campus on Wednesday 24 August. Items will be sold for a cost of $5-$20. We are looking forward to another great Book Week!

Fundraising You have another opportunity to make a difference at Toronto Campus. By ordering yummy vanilla slices, plain lamingtons and cream lamingtons you will be supporting our school. Please encourage your friends and family to place an order! Order forms and pre-payment of order need to be returned to school by Friday 9 September. Delivery arranged for 21 September - just in time for the school holidays!Thank you!

Newcastle Permanent Maths TestYears 5 and 6 students will be able to participate in the Newcastle Permanent Maths Competition on Wednesday 24 August. This is a good opportunity for the students to put their Maths skills to the test! Students will receive a certificate for their efforts.

Pre-Kindy Extra Day - Expressions of InterestWe are pleased to share that all positions are now filled for our Pre-Kindy classes. Therefore we are calling for expressions of interest in opening for another day - Friday. Should there be sufficient interest we could present a case to the Avondale School Principal for opening an extra day.So far 5 families have shown interest.Please share this information with family and friends and register your interest at reception. Thank you!

Principal’s Message

Awards

General News

Welcome to Term 2! It’s great to see everyone back at school again. We hope you had a wonderful holiday. Congratulations to Riley who celebrated his birthday during the holiday break.Even though we’ve only been here for four days this week, it has been a busy time filled with lots of activities. We really enjoyed our Chapel program on Wednesday. Pastor Jack was our speaker and he told us a great story. We also had Mr Bill and Mr Ron come and present special medallions to us at the beginning of Chapel. The medallions are to commemorate a centenary of landings at Galipoli. We plan to take good care of these special reminders of what others have done for our country. We have begun to study a new book in English and we are having lots of fun finding out all about the adventures of a girl called Anne. We have been working really hard to learn how to write a persuasive text in Writing and we are looking forward to sharing our work with others. Well done everyone for a fantastic effort in our spelling test! We are trying really hard to fulfil our homework requirements for the new term. We need to remember to complete our new Reading Record each night. We are going to try really hard to read lots of books and record our efforts in our new Reading Record Booklets. A great start to the term, everyone!

We Value Honesty

Awards

Father’s Day Stall - Tuesday 30 August

On my way to work I notice roadside stalls sell ing honey, tomatoes, firewood or eggs on offer for sale by the road. Sometimes we’ll drive up to an unattended stand that operates on the “honour system.” As we make our selection, we put our money into a cash box or an old coffee can. Then we go home to enjoy the ‘home grown’ product.

But the honour system doesn’t always work. My friend has a flower stand in front of her house. One day, as she glanced out her window she saw a well-dressed woman with a big hat loading pots of perennials into the trunk of her car. She smiled as she mentally calculated a $50 profit from her labours in the garden. But when she checked the cash box later, it was empty! The honour system revealed that this woman was not honourable.Perhaps to her, taking the flowers seemed like a small thing. But being honest in little things indicates how we will respond in the big things (Luke 16:10). Honesty in all areas of our lives is one way we can bring honour to Jesus.The best “honour system” is in Colossians 3:17, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of Jesus.”Honesty means never having to look over your shoulder.

Enjoy the news for this week.

Dr David FaullPrincipal

Pre-Kindy

Welcome to Term 2! It’s great to see everyone back at school again. We hope you had a wonderful holiday. Congratulations to Riley who celebrated his birthday during the holiday break.Even though we’ve only been here for four days this week, it has been a busy time filled with lots of activities. We really enjoyed our Chapel program on Wednesday. Pastor Jack was our speaker and he told us a great story. We also had Mr Bill and Mr Ron come and present special medallions to us at the beginning of Chapel. The medallions are to commemorate a centenary of landings at Galipoli. We plan to take good care of these special reminders of what others have done for our country. We have begun to study a new book in English and we are having lots of fun finding out all about the adventures of a girl called Anne. We have been working really hard to learn how to write a persuasive text in Writing and we are looking forward to sharing our work with others. Well done everyone for a fantastic effort in our spelling test! We are trying really hard to fulfil our homework requirements for the new term. We need to remember to complete our new Reading Record each night. We are going to try really hard to read lots of books and record our efforts in our new Reading Record Booklets. A great start to the term, everyone!

K-2We are still missing some of our classmates this week due to sickness and we have been praying that they will feel better soon and return to class. There seems to be a lot of ‘bugs’ around so take care. Unfortunately the flu also caused the Tower Challenge to cancel, as you can imagine we were all very disappointed about this.Our class has finished working on our four small wheelbarrows for the garden and some have even tried them out.During Maths this week our focus has been on length. We went exploring in the garden to measure and compare leaf sizes and plant heights.Group 3 – garden scavenger huntGroup 4 – planting potatoes, and checking the rain gauge. They also picked some very yummy snap peas which we all enjoyed eating.Group 1 and Group 2 – preparing for our bean experiment for the class.The theme for show and tell for this week was: Tell about your favourite season and the things you like to do in that season. We had a variety of seasons that were the favourite and many different activities that the students enjoy.Next week the topic for show and tell is: Retell a favourite story to the class. This topic is just in time for Book Week. It is shaping up to be another busy and exciting week.Congratulations to the following students:Star of the Week – DanielValue of the Week Award – IsobelSuper Improver Wall – Grady, Kayden, Eden, Katie, Ioana, and Mikayla.Speedy Maths – Mikayla, Ioana, Isaac, Georgia, Tyler, Daniel, Katie and PeterWe are still needing more plastic milk bottle lids for word building activities, so please if you have these to spare send them in with your students.Georgia has lost her size 8 sports jacket, please check to see if your student has taken the wrong one home by mistake. Library is on a Friday and we all need a library bag to take books home. So if your student has lost their bag they can simply bring in a cloth shopping bag or something similar with their name on it so they can participate and reap the benefits of taking home some more books to look at and read.

What a busy week we have had so far! Maths time has involved more testing on our maths rockets, and some very excited children finishing off rockets and moving onto the next colour. Some children played a maths bingo game looking at numbers up to 100. We watched a short film called Boundin’ as part of our English program. The children loved it. They ate rice crackers while they viewed the movie, which was for the letter “r”. We have also been reading and then writing about our stories. It has been exciting to see children reading back the story that they have helped to write. In the garden, we have formed three groups to make gardening time easier. We have, The Shovels, The Watering Cans, and The Wheelbarrows. We saw our first potato plant breaking through the surface of the ground today. We are looking forward to cooking some hot chips when we harvest the potatoes later in the year.Keep up the great work Pre-Kindy.

3-6

We Value Honesty

It has been another exciting week in 3-6! We hope you enjoyed seeing our emu sculptures on Open Day. If you were not able to make it to Open Day then you still have the opportunity to see our sculptures as they will be on display in the library for a bit longer. We had so much fun making them! There were feathers floating about in the process and a big clean up was necessary when we had completed our artworks but the results were worth it. A big thank you to Mrs Greensill for teaching us on Wednesday. We are thankful that she could come and take care of us while Miss Dias was away.On Wednesday 24 August (next week) Years 5 and 6 have the opportunity to participate in the Newcastle Maths Competition. Our School participates in this competition each year. Good luck, Years 5 and 6!Next week is Book Week and we can look forward to yet another week of fun and exciting activities. We need to remember to get ready for the Book Character Parade on Tuesday. We also need to remember to return our permission slip so that we can attend the Book Fair on Wednesday.

Well done, everyone!

School Term Dates 2016Term 1 Wednesday January 27 - Friday April 8Term 2 Tuesday April 26 - Friday July 1Term 3 Monday July 25 - Friday September 23Term 4 Monday October 10 - Tuesday December 13

Cnr Wangi Road and Parkside ParadeTORONTO NSW 2283

p. (02) 49595647e. torontops@avondaleschool.nsw.edu.au

w. www.avondaleschool.com.au

Prayer Requests We would like to encourage our school community to come together in prayer.

If you have any prayer requests, please feel free to let the staff know, so that we can include your request in our prayers.

Office Hours Monday ClosedTuesday 8:30am - 12:30pmWednesday 8:30am - 12:30pmThursday 8:30am - 01:30pmFriday 8:30am - 12:30pm

Uniform Shop Hours (Cooranbong Campus)Monday 8:30 am - 4:30pmWednesday 8:30 am - 4:30pm

TORONTO CAMPUS

Calendar - Term 3Book Week commences....................................Aug 22Newcastle Maths Comp Yrs 5 & 6 ....................Aug 24Father’s Day Stall ..............................................Aug 30

Campus Information

Chaplain’s MessageGossipThere is something about gossip. It’s in newspapers, at work, when we’re out for lunch or chatting with friends - gossip is everywhere. In fact, according to Psychologist Robin Dunbar, gossip makes up a whopping two-thirds of the conversations we have.Gossip affects each of us. Of course, this shouldn’t come as a shock, but when I did some research into gossip,

I was surprised with what came up. I thought that I’d find that when we gossip it has a negative affect on our brains - similar to the effects of anger and anxiety. But what I found was entirely different.A 2015 study, made up of a random sample of men and women, dug deeper into what happens in our brains when we gossip. The researchers conducted MRI scans (basically a fancy brain scan that shows activity in the different parts of a brain) of the subjects’ brains as they listened to positive and negative gossip about themselves, their friends and celebrities. What they found was that when the subjects listened to gossip, there was heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Regardless if the gossip was positive or negative, about themselves or others, the same part of the brain - the prefrontal cortex - lit up.The question is, what does the prefrontal cortex do? Two main things: it takes care of social cognition and executive control. But what does that mean? Social cognition is a trait that makes us want to conform to the accepted norms and rules of society. Executive control is the ability to behave and act based on our internal goals.When I read this, though, I was still confused. So what does all that actually mean?It means that as humans, we use gossip as a tool for observational learning: negative gossip makes you realise how society reacts to different behaviour, and in turn you learn how to act correctly to avoid the negative reactions/judgements of others.

Whereas when we hear positive gossip about ourselves, we gain motivation to carry on with our good behaviour or sustain positive habits. Basically, gossip acts as a self-improvement tool. What tops it all off is that our brains get a kick from exchanging juicy tidbits with others.So, go ahead! Gossip away. It’s good for you!Or is it? In the short term and in some contexts, we can learn and improve our own behaviour based on gossip. But what does gossip do to us in the long term? Because when we open up the Bible we are confronted with a LOAD of negative comments about gossip. Here are just a few:“You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness.” - Exodus 23:1 “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.” - Titus 3:10 “A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends.” - Proverbs 16:28It would seem that the Bible speaks strongly against gossip, particularly negative gossip. If you keep reading you can see a theme developing: gossip can become incredibly divisive. Interestingly, a study conducted in 2014 found that while gossip can make us feel good and help to positively alter our behaviour, it also has adverse effects. Apart from the harm that incorrect information can have on people, the adverse effects of gossip include raised concerns about how a hearer of gossip’s own image may be perceived by others. This can create a sense of anxiety in which we realise that there are threats in our environment that can hurt us. In short, gossip may give an initial positive response in our bodies, but it can also create a higher sense of anxiety.Next time you’re presented with gossip, ask yourself the question: “What will I do with this? Will I keep this gossip in circulation, or will I put an end to it and live from a place of affirmation?” In the words of Ephesians 4:29, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

Pastor Brock