Foundation – Year 6 Ormiston Spirit Awards

During this week’s assembly, our Junior School teachers handed out the prestigious Ormiston Spirit Awards in front of the school community. These awards are handed to Foundation – Year 6 students who are consistently displaying our CGGS School Values of Respect, Integrity, Commitment, Hope and Courage in their classroom learning and participation in school co-curricular activities. Congratulations to the following students:

Foundation S
Kayla Yao

Foundation R
Cathy Gao

Year 1G
Angela Hu

Year 1J          
Alice Xu

Year 2S
Ailey Poon

Year 2Z
Nan Cao

Year 3C
Eleanor Robertson

Year 3L
Cathy Wang

Year 4H
Charlie Russo

Year 4G
Ashley Wang

Year 5R
Grace Wan

Year 5 D/K
Abbey Marcou

Year 6R
Sarah Zhou

Year 6C
Lily Thomas

Art
Madison Hall

Physical Education
Madeleine Law

Music
Erena Zhu

Library           
Mo Lin Yu

Chinese (Mainstream)
Sophie-May Ronzani

Chinese (Enhanced)
Jasmine Li

French           
Lucy Ciro

Boroondara Division Athletics Carnival

Over one week ago, three students participated in the Boroondara District Athletics carnival and did a wonderful job competing against the best athletes among local government, catholic and independent schools. Congratulations to Anika Selvaratnam, Christina Weickhardt and Jessica Wu who were all very competitive in their events. Anika came second in her 1500 metre race and qualified for the Eastern Regional Championships, and she came fourth in her 200 metre race. Christina came seventh in her long jump event and Jessica came fourth in her 80 metre hurdles race. I would like to thank all three students for being excellent representatives for Camberwell Girls Grammar School.

Years 3 – 6 Author visit – Felice Arena

The Years 3 – 6 students began Term 4 with a fun and engaging visit from popular children’s author, Felice Arena. Felice shared his path to becoming a children’s author and his ‘sliding doors’ moment with J.K. Rowling. He introduced students to many of his books, including a Chinese edition of his picture book Sally and Dave, A Slug Story. Cathy from Year 3 read some of the story for us in Chinese while Felice read it in English.

In recent years, Felice has written three historical fiction novels – The Boy and the Spy, Fearless Frederic and A Great Escape. Felice captivated students with the stories behind his books, the fascinating research he has done to ensure his books are authentic and gave a valuable insight into his writing process. He had the Senior School Library ringing with laughter when he taught students and teachers how to do Morse Code in a fun and unique way! We could easily have stayed longer to listen to Felice who has definitely gained many new readers with his visit. Felice will be back again in Week 4 for the highly anticipated YABBA Awards where he has two books shortlisted.

Thank you Felice for reminding us of the joy and power of reading.

What I liked about this author visit is that there was a lot of humour and that Felice Arena had his eyes bursting out like he was so interested in telling us about his books and past. As well as that he made us move and stand up so we were not just listening to him, but we were having fun. – Rudra, Year 3

Kim Yeomans
Junior School Library Teacher

Year 4 Excursion

As part of their Inquiry topic this term of ‘who is responsible for changes to planet Earth?’ the Year 4’s visited Blackburn Lake Sanctuary last Friday to learn about the natural and man-made changes that have occurred over time. Students viewed maps of the area from the 1800s through to current day to understand how natural and human developmental changes to the landscape and surface of the earth have affected the local flora and fauna.

Students enjoyed walking through the sanctuary and learning how man-made changes such as the planting of vegetation and erecting barriers can have a positive impact on the environment. These include minimising erosion and attracting wildlife and creating ecosystems. It was also very exciting to spot various birds such as lorikeets and even a tawny frog-mouth.

Jasvindar Gill & Emma Hinchliffe
Year 4 Class Teachers

Year 3 – 6 Netball

Netball has kicked off at Ormiston for Term 4. The Years 2 and 3 Netball Skills is a huge hit, the students have been working on many skills and learning the rules of the game. A Year 3 team has formed and they played their first game last Friday afterschool in the Boroondara Netball Competition. The opposition came out strong, but the CGGS team were up for the challenge.

The Year 4 Rubies had a good game but went down 5-2. The Year 4 Garnets had a very close game against MLC, CGGS had plenty of opportunities but couldn’t finish it off.

The Year 5 teams both won their matches last Saturday. Opals were unstoppable down both ends of the court, CGGS kept Ruyton scoreless for the whole game and our students scored 10 goals. The Jets also played a great game, the ball flowed very smoothly down the court and the CGGS team defeated MLC 11-2.

The Year 6 Topaz welcomed some new players to the team and had great patches of play. Unfortunately, Genazzano defeated CGGS 10-5. Congratulations to all netballers on their efforts.

Lexie Joyce
CGGS Netball Coach

Digital Wellbeing

We have completed surveying the CGGS community about digital wellbeing. Thank you to our students, teachers and families for your participation. Your contribution has helped us gather current data about our community’s technology usage and perceptions, including any concerns.

Now we begin the process of examining this data. It will be used to help inform our next steps as we work together to promote digital wellbeing. Our teachers have begun this process, by looking at some data trends and considering their implications. We have also had initial student focus group sessions and will be running more of these as we look at refining our shared expectations of device usage for learning. We are grateful that many parents have expressed an interest in participating in digital wellbeing forums and focus groups. Details of these opportunities will be published in upcoming editions of CamNews as well as results from our student, teacher and family surveys. We look forward to continuing our community’s focus on digital wellbeing throughout this term and in 2020.

Paul Donohue and Felicity Carroll

Student Achievements

Years 5 & 6 French

We would like to congratulate two Year 6 students, Monique Desai and Samantha Chua.

Monique came second in the Alliance Française Berthe Mouchette poetry competition. This is a competition open to all French students in Victoria. She competed against 700 students in total and 76 finalists. Félicitations Monique!

Samantha received first place in the Alliance Française Berthe Mouchette drawing competition. Samantha illustrated her own representation of the Year 6 poem studied this year. Bravo Samantha!

Year 3 Asha Bhattacharjee – Eisteddfod by the Bay

On 8 September, Asha competed in the Years 8 – 9 section of the Piano category in the 64th Eisteddfod By the Bay (Piano Section). She played a piece titled “Two Little Birds” by Frank Hutchens. In a highly competitive group of 25 participants, Asha missed out on the top three prizes, but did tremendously well to have received an Honourable Mention in her category.

Recently, Asha also sat her Grade 5 piano exam in June and received an A+ (High Distinction) for her results. This is an outstanding effort.

As a school, we are extremely proud of Asha and her musical achievements this year.

I wish all Ormiston families a restful weekend.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Donohue
Head of Junior School