NAIDOC Week Celebrations in the Primary School

NAIDOC Week Celebrations in the Primary School

Warami (Hello) everyone. This week the Primary school acknowledged the incredible history, achievements, and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, celebrating NAIDOC Week, and embracing this year’s theme: “Get up! Stand up! Show up!”

Our goal this week is dual focused in supporting the girls to learn more about First Nations Peoples’ histories, language, and culture, and to support them in considering how they can be a champions for reconciliation and change.

In learning more about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, the girls participated in a range of experiences including a K-12 Assembly, a Workshop facilitated by Aunty Ann Weldon and further in class activities. Read below a few highlights from three-year groups, with a video montage of the week to be shared on Seesaw shortly.

 

Kindergarten
Enjoying a visit from the Australian Museum, Kindergarten immersed themselves in learning about Indigenous culture and perspective. They enjoyed hearing about dreaming and the tradition of oral story telling. This workshop was the second out of a series of visits Kindergarten have had with the Australian Museum and they are looking forward to visiting the Museum in person later in the year. This week they also shared in stories written and illustrated by Bronwyn Bancroft. Exploring many of her picture books, they took inspiration from the animals and bright coloured patters in her illustrations to design a display for their classroom.

 

Year 6
Greeting each other and responding to the morning roll call in language, Year 6 have added words such as Warami (hello), Diamu (I am here) and Yanu (bye) to their vocabulary. Exploring this year’s theme of “Get up, Stand up, Show up”, Year 6 used numerous elements of the week’s activities to gather information; Primary sources including the speech they heard from Yvonne Weldon, (the 2022 NSW Aboriginal Woman of the Year, first Aboriginal person elected to the City of Sydney Council) on Monday and Wednesday and secondary sources including BTN (ABC), documentaries produced by NAIDOC as well as songs and images. Reflecting on this information, they drafted speeches to reflect how they can actively embody this these and create change.

Year 4
Tomorrow (Friday 29 July), we are very excited to welcome Josh Pyke and Justine Clarke to the school. Josh Pyke is an Australian singer song writer and author. His book Family Tree was featured in this year’s National Simultaneous Story Time and listened to by over 1.9 million children. Justine is a familiar face to the girls, having worked on Play School for many years and written many songs herself, touring and performing all over Australia. Year 4 are Showing Up this term by raising money for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Year 4 are Standing Up and the importance of indigenous language. They will be working with these two amazing Australian artists by learning to a song Josh and Justine have written in both English and Kriol, a language spoken in Northern Australia. They will then consider ways to record and perform this song, to raise money for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation

We encourage you to continue this conversation at home with your daughter, whether it be around the dinner table or even in the car, there are a number of questions you can share in together to support and build the girls thinking and learning this week.

  • Following this week’s activities, what are:
    • three things they learnt?
    • two things they found interesting?
    • one question they have?
  • What does “being Australian” mean?
  • How can we “care for country”
  • Together you could find out the Aboriginal country you live on or the traditional name of the suburb you live in, and the traditional language spoken in your area.

For older students:

  • Why is it important for both non-Indigenous and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to celebrate or commemorate days of national significance?
  • How can we celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture at home?

Didjurigura (Thank you)!

Rebecca Woodcock
Acting Head of Student Wellbeing