Big Week Year 6!

Hello All!

I am due to make an exciting update about my most recent full week of school and this past weekend. This past week was the students' 8th week in their fourth term as year six students at St. Patrick's Catholic Primary School. They had been busy working on end of the year assignments and preparing for their graduation mass 30 December. The students each made a poster they were to carry in the mass procession for graduation which highlighted their teachers while at St. Pat's, their favorite memories, their friends, what they will miss, and their best qualities as respectful, responsible learners. The students had decided upon using a ladder as their graduation symbol to represent their educational and social journey or "climb" throughout primary school.

In Australia students finish primary school after completing year 6 and then move onto high school beginning with year seven and ending with year 12 , which is called a college in most cases. Thus unlike American schools, high school students are not considered freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior, as those titles do not exist in Australia. We spent countless hours at school practicing the order of events in which made up the graduation mass: from processions, to liturgical movements, readings, musical performances, and to the awarding of the certificates. Our principal wanted our students to be perfect for their perfect night commemorating and celebrating their hard work at St. Patrick's. The students did a beautiful song called, "I Light a Candle," where they each lit a candle in the dark church, and (as corny as this sounds) it nearly brought a tear to my eye! This must be a sign I'm getting old...

This then began the nostalgia of my own graduation from St. Thomas, for another year six teacher had put together a photostory slideshow of the students together from kindy through year 6. My own memories of this celebration, but in 8th grade, began filling my head and brought a smile to my face. I was so honored to be a part of such a special time in the year six students' lives.

Above are the year six teachers I worked with during my time at St. Patrick's. Jenny, in the red, taught the students two days a week this year and is such a lovely lady. Fiona, in the purple, is my supervising teacher and has taught me more than I could imagine about the sporadic life style of planning and teaching year six students! Kevin, the solo male of the group, is the other year six teacher at St. Patrick's and the kids adore the fact they have a young, fun, male teacher!

After graduation finished up, the students got right back into the swing of school as they still have two more weeks! Our last day together will be Friday, December 16th :( As school has been insanely busy with graduation practices, I had to delay the Thanksgiving lesson plan I made for the students. However, it did not matter to them what day it was taught for they loved my lesson teaching them the historical content of our American holiday and learning about the traditions of the past and present through various forms of media. I then had the students write a letter to their parents starting with, "I am thankful for..." I shared my own letter I had written to my family (if I was home I would have read), and I was so proud of my students for thanking their parents not just for their x-box or footy balls, but for the non-materialistic items like shoes on their feet, clothes on their back, and a roof above their head. The students will give this letter to their parents on the last day of school at our all school mass.

I also have the students working on creating a visual representation of a poem they either selected by a favorite author or an original piece of their own, and artistically illustrating the poem's meaning through symbolism on a blank mask. The students are WOW'ing me with their ideas and I love giving them the chance have such artistic freedom. It is such a difference doing art projects with 12 year olds verses with 6 year olds, let me tell you!!! Below are some of my kiddo's excellent work! :)

Then, this past Friday Elizabeth came up to visit me from Mosman and I had the opportunity to show her my school and we had a lovely evening just relaxing on the veranda at the Goodways house. Cherie had made us AMAZING Pavlova for desert. Now for those of you that do not know what that is, it is a meringue-based traditional Australian desert with heaps of fruit on it!

We had an early night as then Saturday morning we woke up early and caught a bus to Avoca Beach, about 45 minutes east of Gosford along the Central Coast. Here Elizabeth and I did some kayaking in the lagoon by the beach!

The beach here was beautiful, sand soft, and water as blue as can be! We did not go swimming since the water was a littttttle too cold for my liking and there were heaps of blue bottled jellies washing up to shore. You will not die from them, but it will hurt like hell (so they tell me)! This did not seem to bother all the surfers, young and old, who were out there all afternoon but you had to be extra careful walking about barefoot along the water. Here are what some of these bad boys look like.

We then had a delicious lunch on the ocean at a cute little cafe and then headed back towards home. Elizabeth and I had a rather large American craving for chocolate chip cookies, so we rummaged through the grocery store and found a Hershey's recipe online, and went to town!!!

Today we went to the Australian Reptile Park in Somersby, about 15 minutes away from home. We were went to the alligator basking area, bird aviary, koala deck, tasmanian devil area, Galapagos tortoises, free range kangaroos, dingoes, wallabies, wombats, crocodile pit, lost world of reptiles, spider world, platypusary, and frog hollow! The park put on shows every so often and we were able to watch the Galapagos tortoise feeding of a old tort about 86 years old. There is a children's book series called, "Flat Stanley" who is this little flat boy who travels around the globe sight-seeing famous places, people, animals, and land marks. Numerous chapter books have been written about his adventures and I promised my students and teachers from Monon Trail in Westfield, Indiana that I would have my own Australian adventures with Flat Stanley. I will collect all the photos of Stanley and I on our Australian and New Zealand adventures and create my own photo book to give to the Monon Trail Students. You will see our adventures below!

Kangaroos!

Hugo the Galapagos Tortoise!

Momma and baby Koala bear

Emu

Reticulated Python.... EEEEK!

Frogs at the Frog Hollow

Dingo

This afternoon I helped Cherie, Emily, and her friend Mel put up the Christmas tree and holiday decorations around the house here! It is so weird thinking that Christmas will happen without snow this year and I will be having a barbie (shrimps) by the pool for Christmas. OH YEAH! I will have to make waterproof flat versions of you all in order to celebrate Aussie style. By the way, the Seevers family deserves a huge round of applause of their creative efforts in crafting numerous flat Julie's who were present for Thanksgiving. (If you are unfamiliar with a "flat" version of a family member, it is a cardboard torso cut out with an enlarged color photo of one's face glued to the top of it and it is dressed in a shirt resembling that person's style and decked out with accessories and thought bubbles. See Facbeook for more detail).

Well... 2 weeks left with my kids :( Time is FLYING BY! It seems that once you just get into the swing of things at school, that your time is coming to an end. But, I am super excited for this week as I will have this one all to myself without graduation practice distractions! I have an extra nerdy science lesson on making fake snow, planned to help celebrate the holidays as well :)

Hope all is well with each and every single one of you, I miss you all!!

LOVE

JULES