I’m so proud of your role in the NAIDOC Week Assembly! Good on you, Robbie, for reading the Welcome to Country. Congratulations to those of you who helped Ms Stockton run the assembly or who carried the flags.

Billy-Dean, I think it’s great that you helped Mr McLean present the best parts of your rap responses. People would have really enjoyed hearing what you have all been doing!

I have really enjoyed reading your ideas each week – thanks for being a part of this rap!

Lizzie Chase
Rap Coordinator

Those dreamtime stories you heard at the zoo about the turtle, snake, owl, frog and whale sound great!

Thanks for sharing what you have learned about identity, goal setting and mentors. I hope these discussions have been valuable for you to think about your dreams for the future.

I wish everyone in your class all the very best as you work towards your dreams, step by step. Together with your mentors, you can work towards your goals, if you focus on hard work and reach out when you need help.

All the best!

Lizzie Chase
Rap Coordinator

Mrs Nuttall’s Year 5 group of Aboriginal students were hoping to post to the rap yesterday, but we were so busy with rehearsals for today’s NAIDOC Week assembly.

We were very proud of Robbie, who read the Welcome to Country. Some of us helped Ms Stockton to run the assembly. Some of us carried in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island flags. One person in each class won a book and a certificate for their beautiful artwork.

Billy-Dean helped Mr McLean to present the best bits of our Identity Rap responses for the audience.

NAIDOC Week assemblies are a tradition at Penrith PS and a part of our school identity.

Year 5,
Penrith PS

Thanks for all your ideas – it also sounds as if you have been doing some fantastic extra activities! It was very valuable to listen to the speaker talking about his experiences and finding his family again – we all need to hear about the Stolen Generations.

I’ve seen the video Babakiueria as well and it is a very clever look at the Stolen Generations from a reverse perspective! I really hope you all enjoyed your zoo excursion for NAIDOC Week – thanks for being part of the rap.

All the best!

Lizzie Chase
Rap Coordinator

This wrap up is very interesting. Bianca – I agree with you that people often face the same challenges in life – whatever their cultural background is. As you say, we all face challenges and need to keep going when times get tough. Your ideas about using sports skills and advice from different people are very practical. A successful life seems to be about balancing hard work with relaxation, as you suggest.

Lilly and Sarah, I hope it has been useful to think about your dreams for the future. Cory and Miranda, I’m glad you have done some thinking about culture in general and about Aboriginal culture too. As you say, out identity is not just built from traditions, it is being created by popular culture as well!

Two important skills which you learned were writing in the third person and also listening actively. I congratulate you on these – they are pretty useful!

All the best!

Lizzie Chase
Rap Coordinator

We have had so much fun reading your ideas and your wrap up shows that your group has had some very good discussions about believing in yourselves, passing on knowledge and making positive choices. I really like your point about what to do when times are tough – look inside for strength and also reach out to a mentor.

I am really glad that you have learned more about the cultures within your class and also about Aboriginal culture. It sounds as if sharing your stories has been a valuable experience for your group – it certainly has taught the rest of us!

All the best!

Lizzie Chase
Rap Coordinator

* We spent yesterday at Taronga Zoo for the NAIDOC week celebration. We listened to dreamtime stories about animals including, turtle, snake, frog, owl, eagle and whale.
* We have talked about our identities how they are important to who we are and where we are going.
* We talked about goal setting.
* We talked about mentors and how we can be mentors.
* We watched a video called “Babakiueria”. This movie was opposite, the white people were the ones whose land was taken from them. The Aboriginal people were the ones who took over the land.

Thanks we had lots of fun,
Year 8 Richmond High

We had a guest speaker come to talk about his Stolen Generation experiences and how he located his family again.

We talked about mentors and how important they are to us and how important we can be to others.

We watched a video called “Babakiueria” this movie was about the Stolen Generations in reverse, it was funny and sad. It was disappointing to realise that people were taken from their families.

Heath is very excited about learning what a humpy is, he even got to see one yesterday at the zoo.

We went to the zoo for NAIDOC week, we heard some Aboriginal Dreaming stories, and looked at some Australian animals.

We have enjoyed this rap and talking to lots of other schools and Lizzie Chase. We have had fun talking about our cultrue with you all and hope you all have a great holiday.

Richmond High Year 7

It was great to get involved and to see our words and ideas published and to get responses, especially congratulations from the coordinators. That felt really good.

Bianca says she hasn’t had to think about these things before and so some of the ideas were a challenge to understand and explain. She has decided that different things about Aboriginal culture and beliefs can be important to different families and she believes more strongly that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are not really different when it comes to wanting to live healthy lives and deal with difficulties. Challenges are things that are hard to do and so anyone would need to try really, really hard to get through them and not give up.

Lilly and Sarah also found themselves thinking about things they hadn’t considered before, like mentors and what they wanted for their futures, and they enjoyed that.

Cory and Miranda both felt they had learned more about the idea of culture and about Aboriginal culture.

When trying to build a strong future from your culture, Bianca says:
• Look to family and older people of the culture for stories of different experiences to help you make decisions
• Work hard in school and any courses after Year 12
• Use what you learn about teamwork, commitment and reliability from sports and sports training
• Develop stress management and relaxation skills eg from yoga which also develops balance and flexibility.

Everyone agreed that cultural beliefs are important, and as they grow up with today’s popular culture so that will influence their future as well as traditional beliefs.

And what skills did they develop during the rap?
• Finding the blog and linking to resources
• Skimming over the resource material and the blogs, to find information and ideas.
• Communicating with each other and on the internet, and writing about themselves with the “third person” when drafting their ideas.
• Listening in discussion sessions and to the voices on the blog.

We thought the listening skills were really important, especially listening to others and sharing ideas, trying to put your ideas across and learning what others think. Participating in the rap was like talking to other rappers and listening to what they said. Miranda said that even though she listens in class, she might not really focus on listening, but when discussing ideas for this rap, she really listened.

Congratulations to all Identity rappers and have a great, happy and safe holiday.
Cheers & bye from Bianca, Cory, Lillian, Miranda and Sarah at Wollumbin.

This is 5/6K’s rap wrap up:

Pride in who we are is important because memories (good or bad) make up our identity. We also need to love who we are.

Passing on our cultural values to others is important because it prevents values and traditions fom dying out. We need to pass on knowledge.

Making positive life choices are important because we need to work hard to achieve high goals and to become happy and healthy.

Learning from mentors helps us guide and be guided through tough times. We also get to learn from others’ experiences.

We think that to get through tough times you should always look inside yourself for strength and also talk to someone you trust.

Some of the most valuable lessons we learnt during the rap include:
* Learning about famous people and what forms their identity
* The importance of learning about where you come from and passing this knowledge on
* Aboriginal culture.

We developed skills in:
* Reading and understanding other peoples’ stories
* Making positive choices
* Mentoring others.

Some of our favourite things about participating in the rap are:
* Finding out how multicultural our class is
* Coming up with responses as a class
* Sharing our stories with each other
* Reading the responses from other schools
* Getting personal replies from Lizzie and Maureen.

Thanks, we had lots of fun!
Glenhaven 5/6K