News gallery

Every day at Royal Far West School is different and fun! Here are some recent stories:

NSW Aboriginal languages week

We celebrated NSW Aboriginal languages week across our school. Aunty Caroline taught Purple group a Dinawan (Emu) dance in Gamilaraay language. In the playground everyone had the opportunity to make personailised language badges.

Wombat stew

Can you guess which baby Australian animal is born the size of a jelly bean? The wombat (and there are others, like the tammar wallaby)! Blue group enjoyed hands-on learning about the wombat, listening to the story Wombat Stew and dramatising it by making their very own wombat stew.

Great work, Green group!

Green group students this week are excelling! Using great team work they are working on a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle of all the flags of the world and finding connections with the New York Times daily puzzle. It’s very pleasing to see the care they’re taking in painting their take-home bags.

Natural soap

Blue group discovered that you can make soap using the leaves of the coastal wattle bush! They wet their hands then rubbed the leaves vigorously and then practised the proper technique for hand hygiene. Their hands had a delightful fresh scent from the wattle.

Getting to know you

The first day of each week we have a fresh cohort of students so we take time to get to know each other. Green group students showed where they travelled from using an interactive map while Purple group used conversation prompt cards. Blue group students went straight to exploring all the fun activities in their room!

Staff training

At the beginning of term 4 our staff gathered for professional learning led by out school psychologist Georgia and her colleague Emma, the senior psychologist for our Beaches network. They facilitated a session on how to be responsive to students' needs and encourage overall wellbeing.

Communicating by Sign

To celebrate International Day of Sign Language students in Blue group created a farm signing the name for each animal we put in our farm, then we listened to a story supported by Auslan signing. It’s an amazing way to communicate!

20 years of SWAY

The SWAY program within the Royal Far West School this year celebrated its 20 year anniversary. On Friday 4^th September this was honoured and shared amongst community members, including Cathy Breanna (Executive Director, Public Schools -Met North) and Peter Skinner (Director Educational Leadership, Metropolitan North), original authors of the program Lois Birk (RFWS Aboriginal Education Officer), Eileen Kalucy (former RFWS Early Childhood Teacher) and Joanne Blackbourn (current RFWS Lead Speech Pathologist) as well as many other significant contributors and partners of the SWAY program over its 20-year history.

SWAY, which stands for Sounds, Words, Aboriginal language and Yarning, is an oral language and early literacy program which weaves local Aboriginal language and stories within the early learning environment. SWAY is delivered across rural and remote playgroups, early childhood services and ES1 classrooms across NSW. SWAY supports children’s successful transition to school journey. Aunty Lois Birk’s yarns of growing up on Ulgundahi Island in the Clarence River on Yaegl Country is the beating heart of the program.

SWAY is a culturally responsive, play-based program and with evidence-based speech and language strategies this creates its uniqueness. Participating in SWAY supports the capacity building of teachers and educators to deliver the whole class program, together with weekly telehealth targeted speech pathology sessions to children in across NSW. Along the many seasons of the SWAY program, it has seen growth to over 50 rural and remote settings in NSW. This year alone over 2000 children have participated in the whole class program, listening to Aunty Lois’ yarns and a further 166 children have participated in the targeted speech pathology intervention sessions. SWAY is honoured to share these yarns throughout the program and look forward to supporting many more children and communities in years to come.

Celebrating culture

Nearly all our students this week are First Nations so we took the opportunity to celebrate Aboriginal art and culture at morning tea time. Juliana helped students to make soap using particular wattle leaves (harder than it looks!), Joel and some of the boys played yidakis (didgeridoos), and Aunty Caroline organised a beautiful activity with ochre and pebble painting. A happy way to end the term!

Healthy hearts

Students in Blue group celebrated World Heart Day by discussing healthy lifestyles, creating beautiful artworks and reading stories - and checking teddy's heart was working well.

Numeracy and literacy

Jo, who teaches Blue group, has creative ways of introducing numeracy and literacy to our youngest students. They played a die game to create a monster: great for subitising (looking at a small set of objects and knowing how many there are without counting them). Then they focussed on the skills of a palaeontologist. After finding bones in the sensory KidFetti, they measuring them and comparing length.

Our deputy principal, Marianne, brought a special visitor - her pet piranha! the students loved Piranhas dont eat bananas by A Blabey, a great story for rhyme, vocabulary and fun!