Term 2 Week 3 - 2020

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Term 2, Week 3

Principal

FROM THE PRINCIPAL


A Different Kind of Normal

With the majority of students having returned to the classroom for Term 2, there is a certain degree of normality around the campus, but we are still in very unusual times.

We are so grateful for the support we have received from of our school community during this time, with 98% of students now back at Cedar for face-to-face teaching. The transition back has been a great success and we are so thankful for the efforts of our parents, caregivers, students and staff over the last few months.

The New “Normal”

While South Australia is currently experiencing relatively low infections, around the world there are still very major concerns regarding COVID19, and rightly so. Along with this comes the issue of mental health and wellbeing, as we count the economic and social costs, and our television screens continue to show unimaginable repercussions worldwide.

During this time, there are still a wide range of restrictions and practices that have been put in place for the safety of the school community. Please remember to maintain physical distancing from other parents and teachers when attending school, including when dropping off and picking up your children.

Please Remember

  • Don’t send your child to school if they are sick
  • Parents of unwell children will be contacted by the school nurse and asked to arrange collection of their child.
  • Where possible, parents are asked not to walk their students to and from the classroom, to minimise the number of people moving about the property
  • The normal social distancing rules apply if parents/adults are on the property
  • Classrooms remain for students and Cedar staff only until advised otherwise
  • In order to minimise the number of people from the school community on the property parents are encouraged to contact the Front Office by phone or email.

Mr Peter Thomson, Principal


Calendar

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LegoMaster in Action

Find out what it takes to be a Lego Master

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Reversible or Irreversible?

Year 6 science looks at changes in everyday life

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Engineering the Future

Year 8 students investigate future sustainability

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Powering future growth

New solar array as High School facilities increase

The Front Page

From Chaplain to LEGO Master

Full of creativity, colour, fun problem-solving, and of course our very own Primary School Chaplain, Josh Taylor, this season of Lego Masters Australia has been extremely popular at Cedar College.

Josh’s LEGO skills have made their way into the Primary School Chapel videos this term, and there’s even the opportunity to win Josh and Trent’s “Bull Rider” by entering the competition on the LEGO Masters AU Facebook page!

After their recent underwater build, Josh and Trent have headed into Finals Week, and all Cedar eyes will be glue to their screens to see just how far they can go.

A Cedar Exclusive

This week, we’ve managed to secure an exclusive interview with Josh, to find out more about what it takes to be a LEGO Master.

Josh, we’ve been watching you come up with some amazing winning creations on LEGO Masters. How do you come up with the ideas for your builds, and have you ever been worried that your ideas wouldn’t work?

What you see on TV obviously has been edited so that only snippets of what actually happens make it to air. For nearly every single build, Trent and I had committed to one idea for sometimes as long as a full hour before we changed tactics. We knew the idea wouldn’t work if we weren’t enjoying ourselves or we couldn’t think of an easy way to engineer the idea. The ones that we were most successful at were the ones we were having a lot of fun and knew it would meet the brief if we could pull it off. We always began the process writing down our ideas and brainstorming until we both landed on something we were excited about creating. For our style of building, we wanted to make sure it pushed our ability, it was fun, and we would be able to divide up the tasks according to our strengths.

Some of your builds go for 14 or more hours. We assume you get some breaks, but do you get exhausted working with LEGO for that amount of time?

We do get breaks, for sure, and we are well looked after! Some builds even happen over multiple days. In saying that, there were some pretty long days and you can be building for quite a few hours before you get to stop. This definitely takes its toll as you can go a bit “brain dead” working on the same thing for too long. A good tactic that we used, if we were getting frustrated or tired with one thing, was to put it down and do something else and then come back to it later, which really helped.

It seems that a big part of the show is using LEGO in unusual ways, and thinking outside the box. What are some skills that students can develop through LEGO?

LEGO is such a great tool to teach us lots of things! Building on the show really pushed us to think creatively and to use the bits in weird and wonderful ways, and it pushed us to think with an engineering mindset. Building with LEGO at home does this too! If you set yourself a challenge with LEGO (or copy one from the show), you will see that you have to use a lot of different parts of your brain! What’s your idea? – creativity. How are you going to achieve it? – problem solving. What if you don’t have the pieces you want? – resourcefulness. Now try and do it with a friend or family member – teamwork!

Finally, now that you’re a LEGO celebrity, what things can we expect to see you doing around the Cedar College campus, and with the Primary School classes this year? 

Since LEGO has become a bit of a craze now, especially because the students are excited to see me on the show, it makes sense to use it within my role. It’s a great way to connect with students in class or one-on-one, which is always a big part of my role. We have already started to use LEGO in Chapel and devotions and maybe we will see some cool LEGO competitions happening in the near future too!

Week 3 News and Notices

Public Holidays – Term 2

Monday June 8 – Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday


Student Free Days – Term 2

Friday June 12 – Student Free / Staff in-service day


Year 10 – Work Experience Placements 

Due to current restrictions within South Australia, the decision has been made to cancel Year 10 PLP Work Experience Placements for 2020. Placement providers have been advised.


Uniform Shop 

Please note that from Week 3, all students are required to wear full winter uniform.

We have currently implemented an online appointment system for the Uniform Shop, for any purchases or fittings required. Appointment times can be made via our website under School Life > Uniform. There are also a range of accessories and items, including PE uniform, that can be ordered and purchased via the Qkr! App. Once fulfilled, your order can be collected by your student from the Front Office.

When ordering, please ensure that you first select your collection method. Failure to do this can result in a delay in the Uniform Shop fulfilling your order.


High School Cedar Rain Jacket

Please note the following clarification of expectations regarding the green rain jacket. The green Cedar College rain jacket may be worn with the sports uniform. When wearing the normal Middle School uniform, the rain jacket may only be worn over the red school jumper, i.e. the jumper must be worn first.

Senior School students must wear their blazers when in full uniform, not their rain jacket. The only time Senior students can wear the rain jacket is when wearing PE uniform.


Canteen Updates

Canteen lunch orders continue to be available through Qkr! on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. Menus are currently reduced due to both health and safety and supply constraints. To minimise cash transactions, recess snacks can now also be ordered and paid for through Qkr! and are available from Monday to Friday, from the new Recess Menu selection.


School Banking

Our school banking program has been temporarily paused, at the request of the CommBank. At this stage, we have been advised that the banking program will remain on hold until further notice from the Commonwealth Bank.

Virtual School Tours, Week 5

Cedar College runs school tours each term for prospective families in Primary and High School. This term, our tours will be an online, virtual experience, featuring a combination of a pre-recorded tour video and a live information session.

If you have friends who may be interested in looking at Cedar College for their child’s education in the coming years, please feel free to forward them the following link, to book their place on the virtual tour: https://www.cedarcollege.sa.edu.au/school-tours/

REGISTER NOW  

Scholastic Book Club

The Scholastic BOOK CLUB will look a little different this term with a virtual catalogue rather than the printed catalogues you’re used to receiving. You can browse the catalogue online here: Scholastic Book Catalogue online>

Orders need to be made by Wednesday Week 5 (May 27) and paid online on LOOP as normal, via the Scholastic Book Club website

You order will then be sent to the school as usual and given to your student for collection.

Dates this Term

TERM DATES 2020

Term 1, 2020 – Tue 28 Jan – Thu 9 April


Term 2, 2020 – Tue 28 April – Fri 26 June


We will continue to have a three week break between Term 2 & 3


Term 3, 2020 – Tue 21 July – Fri 25 Sept


Term 4, 2020 – Tue 13 Oct – Wed 9 Dec

UNIFORM SHOP 2020

Regular opening hours during Term:

Monday 8:30am – 4:30pm

Wednesday 3pm – 5:30pm


Thursday Extended Opening Hours:


TERM 2 – Weeks 1-4, 3pm – 5.30pm


TERM 4 – Weeks 1-3, 3pm – 5.30pm

PRIMARY SCHOOL ASSEMBLY

Please note that our School Assemblies and Chapels, usually held on Fridays at 8:50am, have currently been suspended for this term.


Chapels will be held for students via video during Term 2.


Students will spend Assembly time in their normal class groups.

Primary School News

Year 6s Investigate Reactions

The Year 6 students have been excited to get back to the classroom and explore the topic of reversible and irreversible reactions, with a range of science experiments.

The students considered a range of different reactions and changes that take place in everyday substances when elements such as heat, and other chemicals are introduced.

Irreversible Changes

The child-friendly chemical reactions also allowed the students to predict if the changes that took place would be able to be reverted to their original state or not, before carrying out the experiment.

The ten different experiments engaged the students as they documented the results with photos and videos in small groups. Some favourites were the changes that occurred as they observed an egg being cooked, and the effects that took place when Mr Carson poured hot water onto a plate of smarties. The colourful reaction that took place when a small amount of detergent was added to milk and food colouring was also a popular experiment.

The observation and collaboration helped to create discussion and a better understanding of everyday reactions that take place in the amazing world we live in.


Mr Nigel Austin, Upper Primary Co-ordinator


Building News

Green Power as Facilities Expand

Cedar College now generates much of its own power – thanks to the South Australian Government (and the sun, of course!).

Green Energy

Over the last 12 months Cedar College has installed 714 solar panels across the campus, to enable a solar panel system of just under 200 Kw to be commissioned for the school site.

The school would like to acknowledge the generous contribution of $200,000 from the SA State Government School Capital Grants program for school improvement and energy efficiency initiatives that it has received toward this project, with the balance being paid by the school.

This project, whilst generating power for the school, will also provide a learning tool for our students to be able to understand the dynamics of the sun and solar generation, as well as the opportunities we can have to be good stewards of the planet on which we live.

New Two-Storey High School Block

After completing and moving into our new Primary School Science and CLIC building at the start of this year, focus has turned to our next building project on the High School campus.

After many weeks of preparation, the slab for our new two-storey High School building has now been poured. This project begins the second-stage plan of the Creative Arts building, extending both the ground and first floors along the eastern side of the Sports centre, towards Meadowbank Drive.

The building site has been busy again this week, as the walls of the new facility have now begun to appear, as pre-fabricated panels have been trucked in and craned carefully into place.

The new building will house a number of general classrooms on the first floor, while the focus of the ground floor will be five classrooms specifically designed for our High School CLIC program. The new building is on track for completion in 2021.


Mr Jeff Thorpe, Business Manager


Middle School News

Year 8 STEM

This term, in Humanities, the Year 8s have been focusing on the subject of Urbanisation. They have watched videos and discussed what urbanisation is, the effects of urbanisation and what urbanisation was like in the past, present, and what it might be like in the future.

In Week 2 of this term, Mr Lou George, the chairman of the Cedar Board, spoke to the Year 8s about urbanisation. He talked to us about his career as a civil engineer and also answered some questions the class had for him about urbanisation. He talked about the Lightsview suburb and how the area was built to suit and accommodate certain people’s lifestyle and needs, and also gave us some tips for the urbanisation assignment that we were about to start.

Sustainable Futures

The first part of the assignment was a report and investigation researching the negative impacts of urbanisation. We are looking at how cities in Australia are trying to become more sustainable for the present and future, the ties between a country’s wealth and the urbanisation, and the expected amount of urban growth in countries from the years 2020-2050.

– Katelynn, Year 8

Our assignment on this topic is to plan and design an urban city, that is sustainable, environmentally friendly, clean, well-planned and responsibly sourced in things like energy and water. Mr Lou George, Board Chairman and former civil engineer, provided insight into our topic, with useful information such as building quality, housing distribution, environmental sustainability and transport. Some of the students have used their creativity to design their city using Minecraft, using all of the features available, including different materials, plants and animals, to create a life-like city, that ticks all of the boxes.

Endene, Year 8