We will shortly be emailing detailed information about our plans for Week 3 and beyond. I look forward to sharing this information with you.

Community service
While it has been a ‘holiday at home’ for many of us, I’ve been immensely proud of the many Knox boys, parents and staff who have been working to make a difference in the lives of others.

Throughout the break:
• Knox Cadets delivered a Ku-ring-gai Neighbourhood Centre letter advising of the support that elderly residents can receive.
• Students helped each morning to pack food parcels for local residents in need.
• Boarders were involved with supporting elderly residents near where they live.
• Knox students helped local elderly residents with food deliveries, putting out the bins and maintaining yards.
• Knox staff delivered an information pack to local businesses in the area about government support available at this time.
• Knox staff helped a South Sydney hospital knitting ear protectors in conjunction with face masks.
• Knox pipers played in support of the elderly in aged care facilities on ANZAC Day to let them know that they are being remembered on this day.

We also had a large number of Knox musicians take part in the ‘Light Up The Dawn’ campaign by playing ‘The Last Post’ outside their homes on ANZAC Day morning.

In this time of uncertainty and challenge, it’s wonderful to see how our community coming together and making a real difference.

ANZAC Service live stream – Sunday 17 May 2020
While our ANZAC Service and Parade scheduled for Sunday 17 May 2020 has been cancelled, we will be sharing an online service via live stream on the day, which will feature an address by Dr Brendan Nelson AO, readings by members of the Cadet Unit and musical items. More information will be provided in the coming weeks. I look forward to sharing this important annual event with you online.

For parents supporting their children learning at home, the Australian School Library Association has collated some wonderful resources including the national Learning from Home resources from each state.

The library staff are all online from Term 2 to help students and parents in any way we can. Please use the online form on the library portal to request assistance with research related assessments or any other library related issue, or contact us via email.

The Knox Annual Easter Egg and Pots of Noodles Drive - Thank you!
Given the restrictions of movement and access at the time, we had all of the Easter eggs and noodles distributed through the KNC. 

One of the activities students and staff has been involved in has been packing donated fresh food for local organisations who support those who are homeless, shelters and isolated. Our noodles and Easter eggs were a welcome surprise to all who received them. Thank you to the many Knox families and Lindt Chocolates who generously supported the Appeal.

Our Gala Day Social Justice Stall online
In lieu of our support of Social Justice initiatives at Gala Day, we are hoping that you will support the following organisations in 2020 .

Fair Trade is about stable prices, decent working conditions and the empowerment of farmers and workers around the world. Find out about the work they do by clicking here. By purchasing Mother’s Day gifts online, you will help mothers in developing countries who create beautiful traditional crafts to support their families. Please have a look at the Mother’s Day Shopping Guide and plan your purchases.

The Fair Trade Mother’s Day Shopping Guide - we are also supporting The Possibility Project, which is an initiative of local advocate Kim Pearce and Kath, founders of the clothing label ‘Slumwear108' and are peaceful disruptors, using social entrepreneurship to promote restorative justice. They have a shop locally which is also a source of Mother’s Day gifts which support women in India who through small enterprise initiatives and their creativity, are supporting their families. Visit Kath and Kim at 29/31 Red Leaf Ave Wahroonga and visit their website for more information.

The Knox Social Justice (SJ) Club
With the current restrictions, our SJ Club is now meeting on Zoom each Friday at 1pm (commencing Week 2 of Term 2) and we are hosting guest speakers, exploring justice issues and presenting opportunities for volunteering. If your son would like to join in, please email Mrs Helen Clarke.

Parents for Justice
We were so appreciative of the parents who volunteered to help with sewing for Liverpool Hospital and helping their sons with community service, driving them to aged care facilities to play the pipes on ANZAC Day and helping deliver flyers for the Ku-ring-gai Community Centre.

Please call Helen Clarke on 0404 839 762 or email if you would like to join this group of supporters.

I am starting to receive images of the towers that boys and families have built together as part of the challenge I set in Assembly towards the end of Term 1. My goodness! I’m loving seeing the collective efforts of all of the members of the household in action. If you’ve not yet built your tower, get to it! Submissions are open until the end of next week. Once the tower is built, upload an image of your son standing next to his tower and submit it here. Please ensure that to upload your photo, you must login with your son's Knox account or a home Gmail account. I am looking forward to sharing these with you all soon!

Over the course of the next five weeks you are encouraged to logon between 8.30am and 9.15am each Friday to share your experiences as we learn from each other and laugh together.

Please register your interest for these events by Thursday afternoon at 4pm with Mrs Kate Standing who will email you confirmation and a link to join.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognised moral qualities of men.
Confucius



To save a copy of the flyer with all the details, please click here.

We continue our Knoxigations unit inquiring into workers in our community who help us. We began the week by discussing ANZAC Day, looking at the traditions attached to this important cultural day and how the soldiers helped Australia. In Maths, along with investigating numbers, we have begun exploring fractions and will later learn about data, time and 2D and 3D space this term. We continue examining these mathematical concepts using manipulatives found around the home to support the boys’ understanding. We begin learning to read and write ‘tricky words’ next week in our InitiaLit program, as well as continuing to learn our sounds and enjoy the richness of storybooks, looking at different authors and illustrators, making predictions about stories and answering literal and inferential comprehension questions.

The Kindergarten teachers are looking forward to Term 2 and having fun with our learning. We are thrilled to be connecting with you via Zoom, but are counting down the days until we see you face to face and we are grateful to you all for your continued support.

As we begin a new term we will all be experiencing learning like never before. I am really excited about the opportunities remote learning is presenting to us. We will all learn new skills, face new and unique challenges and display courage when faced with problems that we need to overcome. Year 1 are focussing on being independent learners. We want to continue to encourage the boys to develop their independence by organising their learning space and equipment each day, completing tasks independently, having the confidence to make mistakes and learning from them as well as having the opportunity to make choices about how to display their knowledge and learning.

Over the coming weeks, Year 1 will continue their inquiry into Earth's Treasures and how we can protect our world. The boys will create an Augmented Reality which demonstrates how we can protect our world. The boys will add Earth's Treasures and add in information to explain why they are Earth's Treasures.

We are so grateful to all our parents for the support you have given the boys and the teachers and we look forward to continuing to work together in partnership with you this term.

As we recommence Term 2, students can continue to find their daily timetable and Zoom links each morning from 7.30am on their individual Google Classroom page. This term, the structure of online lessons will be altered slightly to allow students time to complete wellbeing and brain break activities. Students will be encouraged to take a break from their screens during this time and complete an activity aimed at fostering positive mental and physical health. The Year 2 Brain Break Grid can be located on the Year 2 Google Classroom page as well as being available on the daily class timetables.

This week, Year 2 is continuing our exploration of ecosystems, with a focus on understanding the important role climate and rainfall plays on the survival of plants and animals within an ecosystem. The boys will also have the opportunity to go hunting in their backyard ecosystem while learning to classify living and non-living things based on their observable features.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Mrs Alicia Baldry for all of her hard work throughout Term 1 and we wish her and her husband all the very best of luck on their new and exciting journey into parenthood! We welcome Mrs Kate Jackson who will be teaching 2A for the remainder of the year. We are all looking forward to getting to know Mrs Jackson and working with her. She will be a wonderful addition to the Year 2 Team.

This year, the Year 3 boys have designed, and will lead, the ANZAC Day commemoration at the Prep School. This is also an excellent opportunity for them to demonstrate the wonderful learning that they undertook during our first Knoxigations unit. This commemoration will be accessible online next week for all boys in the Prep School to view.

On another note, Australia’s education ministers have decided that the 2020 NAPLAN testing will be cancelled this year due to the current situation. These tests were due to be held in Week 3 this term. As a school, we are not concerned by this decision as we obtain countless forms of rich data throughout the year which is used to assist teachers in informing us about the current level of each student and also what they are ready to learn next.

Finally, all parents are asked to ensure that you please sign your son’s school diary each night during the week (excluding weekends) in the relevant section. This way, parents are able to acknowledge the nightly reading conducted by their son and also become aware of any daily notes, announcements or upcoming events.

Dates for the diary:
• Monday 8 June - Queen’s Birthday Public Holiday
• Friday 26 June - Term 2 Concludes

The Year 3 Team hopes you have an enjoyable week, especially now that your son is back at school (even if it is only remotely) and settling into routine once more following the holiday period!

In our first Knoxigations unit, the boys learnt and applied their historical and geographical skills to investigate a specific explorer, their journeys and discoveries. Through the inquiry, the boys began to understand that exploration changes our understanding of the world.

As young detectives, they studied a variety of historical world maps in small groups to make connections between particular time periods and world events. They also learnt about the motivations behind certain explorers. The boys made some important discoveries such as the fact that it wasn’t Captain James Cook who discovered Australia and nor was it the British who made first contact with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. They also learnt the importance of collaboration; to more effectively process information, boys worked in small teams to ‘jigsaw’ texts. This is where they divided a text up, read their part, considered the main idea and collected some ‘Very Important Points’ (VIPs) to report back to the group.

Over the holidays our teachers enjoyed reading their ‘Rewarded’ posters, noting the thorough research of some, the attention to presentation of others and the developing understanding of all our boys. We will be returning these assessments to the boys and we encourage you to sit with your son to discuss the feedback provided.

Welcome
A special and warm welcome to Dougray Cameron and his family who join 5O with Mr Oates this term. We welcome you to our Knox and Year 5 community and wish you all the best in settling in at this time.

Maths and Reading groups - Term 2
We completed MAP Maths testing towards the end of Term 1. Fortunately we got this in before the move to remote learning. As a result, there have been quite a few changes to the Term 2 Maths groups. We continue to work with fluid groupings in order to cater for each boy's individual learning needs. The new classes will start this week. Boys will be told on Tuesday who their Term 2 teachers are. If your son has a particular strength, he may just move while we are concentrating on a specific topic. These groupings will continue to change each term to cater for your son's needs.

Accelerated Reader
Congratulations to the many boys that achieved our Term 1 Accelerated Reader (AR) goal. We were pleased to announce this on Tuesday morning at our Year group Zoom meeting. Those boys will be receiving a WISDOM merit sticker in their diaries. The Term 2 AR goal is to read and pass quizzes for two x fiction and two x non-fiction within each individualised AR Reading range. The AR quizzes are very brief ranging between five and 20 questions. This is important to check that your son is comprehending at the level he is reading.

We hope you have enjoyed the time together as a family these holidays during this unusual time. Please do not hesitate to contact Mrs Tammy Paterson if you have questions or concerns. We are really looking forward to all being back together again very soon. Thank you again for all the hard work and support you have given the boys during this  time. We appreciate your collaboration and your words of encouragement has kept us going - thank you.

A couple of reminders as we continue remote learning over the coming weeks. Firstly, the day will always commence with a whole year Zoom meeting at 8.20am. This is the time boys will receive any year group messages for the day. The Zoom link for this can be found on our whole year group Google classroom. The boys will then enter a Zoom meeting with their class teacher from 8.30am and it is critical that your son is present for this time as it is when the class teacher will mark the roll. The class teacher will also run through the outline of the day with your son so they are aware as to what is happening throughout their time online.

The boys will be continuing to work through their Interconnected Systems Knoxigations Unit for the first five weeks of this term. This unit focuses on systems of government around the world, both past and present. Your son will also take part in class parliament with their class teacher and work on their skills in debating, policy making and also looking at the preferential voting systems. This unit culminates with the boys developing their very own system of government for a newly founded country, Knoxtopia. We are very much looking forward to seeing the work the boys produce over the coming weeks.

Just a reminder that at the end of last term an email went out regarding the novel studies for each boy for this term. If you haven’t ordered your son’s novel as of yet, could I please ask that you do this. We will be commencing Literature Groups this week and it is critical your son has the correct novel at home to assist with this. If you have any questions about this please feel free to email Mr Liam Flanagan.

Key changes include:

• All students will be able to include 10 choice books on their 2020 Student reading records.
• All students will be able to include books read as part of collaborative reading with teachers or parents/carers, either in person or online.
• Students who do not complete the Challenge in 2020 will not be disadvantaged from achieving cumulative PRC awards in the future.

Students can add extra choice books to their challenge by searching ‘Bonus 2020’.

It was great to see so much dialogue between coaches and students through the final two weeks of Term 1 then into the Easter break with the various challenges and fitness sessions rolled out by the Sports Academy. I also hope the families enjoyed the 'family activities' that have been circulated at various intervals through the break.

Finally, please understand we are doing all we possibly can regarding the winter season. We will communicate with everyone once the CAS Headmasters together with all the professional advisors decide on how to proceed to make the safest and correct decisions regarding any potential commencement of sport.

Stay safe and go the Black and Blue.