A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF WATERFORD, GABRIELLE SMITH
“When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts.” Dalai Lama
It is our goal to educate, to build students’ confidence, and create capable, empathetic, intelligent life-long learners. It is essential we teach the boys to look outside themselves to a larger world view. To think of others, to be compassionate, and to realise everyone’s impact on society and one another. The boys have had many opportunities this week to immerse themselves in meaningful activities outside the classroom environment that contribute to the rich education offered at Waverley.
Debating Day
Last Friday Waverly hosted the Catholic Schools Debating Association State Finals and Waterford was fortunate enough to hold one of the debates. The boys watched a Year 7 debate in which Mt. St. Patrick, Murwillumbah competed against St Mary’s Catholic College, Gateshead. The boys gained valuable exposure to debating as they watched senior students challenge themselves to conceive, articulate, and evaluate an argument.
Science Incursion
Report by Yannick Hott and James Peate (5 Gold)
Last Friday all of year 5 were lucky enough to go up to the High School to have an exciting Science experience. Each class went up to the Science labs, for lots of us it was the first time we had ever been in a proper Science lab before. We were greeted by Miss Alborough who taught us about the water cycle and explained all about how particles behave in solids, liquids and gasses. After some strict safety chat we donned our goggles, lit our matches and turned on the bunsen burners. You will all be happy to know that Science labs are still standing and no casualties occurred! We used the bunsen burners to demonstrate the water cycle. The ice melted from the heat of the flame and became water, then it evaporated into steam, it condensed at the top of the glass to make “clouds” and then water dripped from the roof of the glass back down, it looked like it was raining. It was so cool.
It was a day full of new experiences such as lighting matches, discovering all about Bunsen Burners and learning about the water cycle. We want to say a huge thank you to Miss Alborough for letting us use her Science lab and giving us a really exciting lesson.
Languages Day
Report by Lachlan Miranda (Year 6 Green)
I woke up on Tuesday morning in a panic. What am I going to wear to impress the judges? Tuesday was Languages Day… THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR! I put together as inventive a French costume as I could and rushed to school ready for all of the special activities that awaited me. This year was particularly exciting because we had two great languages and cultures to celebrate, French and Spanish. We began the day in our wellbeing groups, listening to French and Spanish stories, some of us were even lucky enough to have parents from our community come and share their language skills with us. For the rest of the day the year fives got to take part in a lot of scintillating Spanish activities such as; creating their own Spanish memes, salsa dancing with Miss Downey, sampling churros and bocadillos in the Spanish cafe, to name but a few. The year fives really outdid themselves with their creative costumes, Waverley has never hosted so many matadors and Spanish soccer players there was even a taco!
After my tough decision, (I went with a French artist in case you were wondering) my day got A LOT more enjoyable.
It started off with a miming activity with Ms Rollins, we may still need to work on keeping quiet during our mimes. We hurdled obstacles in the playground with Mr Ryan in our parkours session, cooked and sampled crèpes and pain au chocolats, researched French trivia and even did a scavenger hunt around the school. My favourite part of the day by far was the scavenger hunt, it was so fun to be able to run around the school and learn new facts about French monuments. Miss Stephens and Miss Iturietta did such a great job decorating the school and organising the day. Thank you to all of the teachers who made such an effort dressing up and making it a fantastic day.
