Gundaroo offers a wide range of academic opportunities for all students throughout the year, some of which includes:
Rostrum Public Speaking
Rostrum Australia is an association of public speaking clubs, founded on 21 July 1930. The original Rostrum club ("The Rostrum") was founded in Manchester, England, on 21 July 1923 and its first meeting was held under a yew tree at Greendale Farm near Manchester. The first meeting in Australia was held under an Angophora tree in 1930.
This makes Rostrum the longest-running public speaking organisation in the world. Each year every child in years K-6 presents a speech to an audience to develop their public speaking skills.
Premier's reading challenge
All students are encouraged to participate in the Premier's Reading Challenge. A display of books for each age group is available for loan throughout the three month period.
NSW Premier's Sporting Challenge
The flagship program of the NSW Premier's Sporting Challenge is a 10 week challenge for students and staff in public schools.
NSW Premier's Spelling Bee
The Premier's Spelling Bee was introduced in 2004 as a fun and educational way for primary school students to engage in spelling. The program includes activities to encourage all students to engage with spelling and to promote improved literacy in combination with the English K-6 Syllabus. Students in years 3-6 entered the Spelling Bee this year with four regional finalists going on to compete at Goulburn in September.
Tournament of minds
Tournament of Minds is a problem solving program for teams of students from both primary and secondary years. They are required to solve demanding, open-ended challenges from one of the following disciplines:
- Science Technology
- Engineering Mathematics
- Social Sciences
- Language Literature
Tournament of Minds is an opportunity for students with a passion for learning and problem solving to demonstrate their skills and talents in an exciting, vibrant and public way.
This year we have two enthusiastic teams entering Tournament of Minds.
Da Vinci Decathlon
The Da Vinci Decathlon is an academic competition designed to challenge and stimulate the minds of school students.
Students compete in teams of eight across 10 disciplines: engineering, mathematics and chess, code breaking, art and poetry, science, English, philosophy, creative producers, cartography and general knowledge.
A team of 5-6 students represented our school at this event.
GRIP Leadership Primary Conferences
The GRIP Student Leadership Conference is unique in that it concentrates specifically on training student leaders for their role as SCHOOL LEADERS. The style, topics, and content of this conference all focus on what the students can do RIGHT NOW. This conference is ideal for all upper primary students, especially those in their last year of primary school. Students attending do not necessarily need to hold recognised leadership positions, as part of our philosophy that will be addressed at this conference is that all upper primary students play an important leadership role in the school.
Kids Conference
The Kids' Conference brings together primary and secondary students to share innovative projects they have designed and developed. Our slogan 'kids teaching teachers' aims to highlight that we are all co-learners and students have a great contribution to make to further our knowledge.
We work to promote
students as researchers and creators of knowledge and innovation to an audience of their peers, lead educators, policy makers and the teaching community
the role of teachers as facilitators of creative, collaborative and student-led projects.
New student-led learning approaches to enquiry, exploring new and emerging technologies and novel presentation tools.