On Tuesday eight avid writers and readers from 6th Class, decked in shining accessories and various costumes from their favourite books, along with librarian Miss Bower, pulled up on the coach at the Dee Why RSL for Lunch with the Stars. Lunch with the Stars is a Children’s Book Council of Australia run program which invites children from schools across the peninsula to meet and greet some of the most profound Australian Authors and Illustrators, like Jules Faber (illustrator of Weirdo) and Pip Harry (Winner of 2020 CBCA Book of the Year). John Colet was lucky enough to be seated with two authors: Libby Hathorn and Elizabeth Cummings who, when combined, have written more than 50 books for a …

JCS hosted Oxford Falls Grammar School for IPSHA Debating today  – the topic was That we should ban school assemblies. Oxford Fall’s negative team narrowly won the first debate, with the adjudicator saying they had made the points that assemblies unified the community and were a more powerful way of getting out information to students. The adjudicator said the JCS affirmative team made a very strong point that assemblies are a waste of time, that could be much better spent learning things in class, because they described clearly how much time is wasted and showed how it could be better used. In the second debate, where JCS took the negative side, the win went to JCS in a close …

In English this week 4th Class read in Storm Boy about how the hunters and the tourists were treating the bird sanctuary poorly by destroying birds’ nests and shooting the birds. The children were placed in one of five groups: hunters, tourists, rangers, local people (Storm Boy) and the Ngarrindjeri people. Each group had to come up with a persuasive argument for their side. We held a town meeting where each group was given time to present their opinion and try to persuade the mayor (the teacher) to agree with them. We came up with an excellent solution that made all parties happy.   Sara Bell Teacher   …

On Friday last week we hosted a debate against Newington College. The topic for the debate was that ‘staying in the shade is better than using sunscreen in the sun’. We won both debates and the adjudicator commented on the interesting and unique points raised in both our Negative and Affirmative debates. As feedback, she said that we could improve our reasons by explaining them more and providing more evidence, and to rebut all the points.  She also pointed out that we should not say our point is good, but why it is better than the other team’s point. Overall, it was a very good debate, and we had a lot of fun. Eason S and Padma R 6th …