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Principal: Mark Spencer PO Box 4030 - 595 Ballina Road, Goonellabah 2480

Phone: 02 6624 1444 Fax: 02 6625 1072

Email:goonellaba-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au Website:www.goonellaba-p.schools.nsw.edu.au

31st July 2018 – Week 2 – Term 3

P&C Working Bee Thank you to all the parents, teachers and community members who helped at the working bee on Sunday. A lot was accomplished during the three hours and the junior playground certainly looks great. The Dinosaur Garden and the Fairy Corner are popular and it is great to see the children playing together.

Canberra Excursion final payments due this Friday Final payment for Canberra is due this Friday, 3rd August. All payments must be finalised by this date. The "Items to pack" list has been sent home. If you require another list please contact the office. It would be a very good idea to start gathering these items together ready for the excursion.

Opportunity Class Placement Testing The OC Placement testing will be held at Kadina High School tomorrow commencing at 9.30am. This day is for students who have nominated for a position in the OC class for 2019. Students will return to school at 11.30am. If you have questions about this event please contact Mr Rhijaan.

OT Before School Program The OTs will be running activities every Thursday morning on the oval for interested children in Years 3-6. The sessions will start at 8.45am until 9.15am.

School Hats The weather is warming up and the children want to play in the sun. As part of our school sun smart policy, students are required to wear the blue broad brimmed hat while playing at lunch and recess. These hats are available at the office for $5.00.

River Rock Performance The Rivers Secondary College combined theatre production "River Rock" is a student based musical theatre performance comprising of 160 cast members, dancers, choir, band and tech crew from the Lismore region of Northern NSW. It is a project instigated by the Rivers College and the Rivers P-12 Community of Schools aimed at providing high-level performing arts opportunities for regional students. It will be presented as five shows from Thursday 2nd August 2018 11:00 AM and Saturday 4th August 2018 7:00pm. To book tickets or for more information, please contact the Lismore Workers Club.

Head Lice There has been a number of students with Head Lice at school. Head Lice are very common so there is no

need to be alarmed. However, they should be treated quickly to prevent them from spreading. We are

asking that all parents examine their child’s hair and look for the following signs:

Persistent scratching, particularly behind the ears and the nape of the neck accompanied by a red

rash

Tiny silver white eggs at the base of the hair shaft

Small pale brown lice

If Head lice are found please treat your child’s hair and remove the dead lice and eggs using a fine tooth

comb before sending your child back to school.

Warren Rhijaan, Assistant Principal

Save the Date - Stage 2 Overnight Excursion 2018 Dorroughby Environmental Educational Centre, on the 18th and 19th September

Day 1 - Students will participate in a Platypus walk, use Geographer’s tools, environmental

games and map making. They will visit a working dairy before setting up their bunks at the

Centre. Following dinner, students will enjoy some healthy competition in a Trivia night.

Day 2 – Students will investigate the health of a local waterway, investigate insects and use

technology to create Stop-motion based on insect movement, before returning to school.

The first 50 students to pay the deposit will be able to attend the overnight camp. A note with

additional details and final costings will be sent out early this Term.

Welcome Back Speech Pathology and Occupational Therapy Trainees

For term 3, Goonellabah Public School welcomes back four speech pathology trainees (left to right:

April Mills-Thom, Chaya Patel, Caitlin McConnell, Georgia Wingett) and four occupational therapy

trainees (right to left: Caitlin McCarty, Brittany Gater, Karlye Williamson, Lucy Walsh) from Southern

Cross University. The trainees are grateful to be involved with the school and are excited to work with

the children.

Child Oral Health Service

The Child Oral Health Service would like to remind parents and carers of

the importance of regular, supervised oral hygiene.

When children start school they are often, keen to be as independent

as possible. Most children don’t have the skills to brush their own

teeth well enough to prevent decay until age 8-10, depending on their

level of dexterity.

Thorough brushing twice per day prevents significantly more dental

decay than brushing once per day or less often.

Help your child gently brush their teeth and gums twice per day with a

small amount of fluoride toothpaste.

Goonellabah School Community News

Stage 3 Excursion On Friday the 27th July the Stage 3 students went on an excursion to the Lismore CBD. This was to deepen our understanding of what we have been learning about in History, PDHPE and Geography.

Living Libraries On our excursion, the first place we visited was the Lismore library. We had two people share their life stories with us. It was fascinating hearing what they had to say. Grace

Anton was from Vietnam and he shared his story about how he was a refugee and moved to Australia. I enjoyed Anton’s story as I learnt a lot more about what other people experience. Anton’s father was captured during the war and he became a prisoner of war. He was sent to prison for six years. They were made to walk through the jungle with no shoes on, this was so that they didn’t escape as the jungle was very rough and it was hard to get through without shoes on. He shared with us that when he was ten he got on a boat with his Dad and came to Australia. He had to leave his Mum and family behind. They were on the boat for ten days and have no food. They only had a capful of water each per day. It was 10 years before he was able to see his

Mum and other family members again. Aiden At the library Sarah shared her story about how she was a journalist in Sierra Leone in Africa. Her family were slaves in America and when slavery was abolished they came back to Africa. When she was a young mum she was living in a refugee camp with her baby. Every day she would go to the notice board to see if she was going to be sent to a new country. One day when she went there they told her she was being sent to Australia, she was very happy. When she arrived in Australia she was sent to Lismore. She loves being in Lismore and now does a lot of work to support the education of children in Africa by sending books to Sierra Leone. When Sarah was a child there were very few books in Africa. If she got a book she would have to read the whole thing over night because the next day another person would be waiting for the book because there weren’t many books to go around. Tanisha

Stage 3 Excursion Visiting the Community

After the visit to the library we had morning tea at the Quad then we broke up into four groups and went into town to visit different people in the community.

Visit to the Fire Station Our group visited the Lismore Fire Station. They

told us about what happened during the floods and how they worked with and helped the

community. The Lismore fire station only reopened again last week after the floods. Since

the 2017 floods they have been working out of the Goonellabah Station. They showed us the

trucks and told us about how one truck weighs 13 tonnes. Braydan

Visit to Shop Baby and Tropicana Fruits Our group visited Josh at Shop Baby. It was really

interesting listening to Josh talk. He showed us photos

of the flood and took us upstairs to show us how high

the waters reached. He explained how they had everything stacked up and then the floods knocked it

over and a lot of stock got destroyed. Next we visited

Alex at the fruit shop, he gave us all a banana and told us a bit about his family’s history and how Lismore has changed. Sienna

Visit to Andrew Gordon We visited Andrew Gordon who is a local business owner who grew up in Lismore. He told us about his experiences of the 1974 floods and how he had to help his Dad clean out the business after the floods. In 2017 he had to clean out the business again after the floods. Andrew shared that because we use more technology today these floods cost a lot more to businesses as the costs of replacing equipment is high. Caleb

Council tour of the flood walls Andy from Lismore City Council took us for a tour of the flood walls. He explained to us how the levee works and how it is designed to take water away from the river and through the car park and down the drains away from town. During the 2017 floods because there was so much water it flowed back up from the drains. He also showed us the heights of the different floods in Lismore. Hayley

Visit to Restaurants After the visits to the businesses in town we met back at the Quad and broke up into lunch groups. We had a choice of visiting four different restaurants. This was to show us the different cultural influences within Lismore. The restaurants we went to were Mumtaj Indian Restaurant, Mandarin Palace Chinese

Restaurant, Café Capello Italian Restaurant and Banzai Japanese Restaurant.

My Dad works as the chef there. I had Karaage Chicken and it was delicious. Meiya