Welcome to the Richard Gill School Blog for the month of November. We have been focused on community engagement this month with a film crew recording our use of new music education resources, Discovery Day, Muswellbrook Shire Council incursions and Kindergarten Orientation Days. I am also pleased to share my appointment as Principal of Richard Gill School. I look forward to watching our school grow and flourish over the coming years and feel honored to spread the vision of Richard Gill within our community.
Learning For Good
Thanks to sponsorship from the Muswellbrook Shire Council, our staff have been accessing exciting new educational resources from the Learning for Good platform. Learning for Good offers schools, educators and community groups access to a range of high quality arts & cultural content via their online platform. The resources include videos, worksheets and engaging lessons to expose students to new musical instruments and styles. On Tuesday 15th of October, a film crew for the program Helping Hands travelled to our school to document our use of the Learning for Good resources and talk with our Music Teacher Olivia Ellis about the value of music education. Helping Hands provides mainstream exposure to social enterprise, community groups, business, charities, and individuals driven by passion and purpose to make a positive impact.
Ms Ellis spoke about her passion for music education and her history with the Sydney Youth Orchestra, while also demonstrating how she uses the resources when working with our Stage 2 String Ensemble. We feel very fortunate to share the values and educational philosophy of Richard Gill with a wider platform and hope to continue sharing our school’s journey as we grow.
Muswellbrook Shire Council Incursions at Richard Gill School
It was all about animals with our recent incursions, which our students loved! On Wednesday 16th October, Michael from the Muswellbrook Shire Council and his colleague Liz helped our school take part in the Aussie Bird Count. Students observed and documented the different birds around our school, adding them to the National Bird Count data collection. We were all surprised by how many different birds pass through our school grounds, particularly around our pond.
On Thursday 31st October, we were also visited by Michael from the council and a special guest. A frog expert! Michael and Kirk shared lots of information about the role that frogs play in our natural ecosystem and our students were very excited to see the surprises they brought along with them!
Musica Viva: Two Wheel Time Machine!
During the Term 4 Musica Viva visit, our students and staff experienced an engaging performance dealing with aspects of learning and facing challenges. Songs about courageous journeys, spectacular failures that lead to growth and success, and dealing with the stress and anxiety of challenges to emerge victorious. It was great fun travelling in time with the performers!
Discovery Day for 2024
Our staff and students worked extremely hard to organise and deliver a fun afternoon to celebrate the Richard Gill School. There were games, prizes, delicious food, face painting, a performance by our students and of course, a jumping castle! Thank you to everyone involved in making this such a success, what a wonderful community we are building together. We enjoyed it so much that we plan to do it all again next year.
2025 Kindergarten Orientation Days
Our first Kindergarten Orientation took place on Friday 1st November. It was lovely to see the 2025 Kindergarten class play alongside the other students and complete a variety of fun learning experiences with Ms Ellis and Mrs Goodhew. We are very excited to add some new faces to our growing student body and school community. Don’t forget, if you haven’t enrolled your child in Kindergarten for 2025, we are still taking enrolments and offering school tours to interested families. Our next orientation session will take place on Friday 8th November.
Enrolment
If you have any questions about Kindergarten in 2025 or would like to speak with our staff about enrolment enquiries, please follow the link below.
Richard Gill School is taking enrolment enquiries for Kindergarten - Year 5 for 2025. Contact us to setup an interview with the Principal and tour of the school.
We look forward to helping you unleash your child’s creativity at Richard Gill School.
Thank you,
Tara Stanford
(Principal)