It has been another jam-packed term in the NLC, with students and staff banding together to fold one thousand paper cranes, battling it out in the Staff VS Students reading challenge, and lots of fun activities for book week just to name a few of the fun things going on.

The NLC collaborated with the Visual Arts and Languages Learning Areas to commemorate the 80^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima by folding one thousand paper cranes as a sign of peace and hope. The display was inspired by the novella Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes in which a young Sadako, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, folds the cranes while battling leukemia, with her friends and family coming to her support. The sad, true story continues to inspire people across the world as a reminder to take time to be mindful and remain hopeful, always looking to promote peace. The display of the cranes, along with an outline of the story and several copies of the book is available to be viewed in the NLC throughout Term 3. Thanks go to all of the students and staff, including the Japanese exchange students and the Year 7 and 8 art classes, who contributed to folding and supervising throughout this wonderful bonding experience.

The staff have been valiantly battling the mighty numbers of the student readers in the Staff Vs Students BeanStack reading challenge, but are ultimately falling a little short. The students are aided by the fact that they outnumber the staff significantly, however the reading minutes will continue to add up until the end of Term 4. Students should be reading at home as part of a relaxation routine and the benefits of reading are well studied. Is your child struggling to read? The NLC Homepage (available through SIMON) has many, many digital resources such as magazines, manga, comics and audiobooks. Perhaps spend a few moments having a look to find something they are interested in.

Book Week has wound up for another year with students enjoying activities such as daily quizzes, an Amazing Adventure Race around the school, an Escape Room experience, and a collaborative story that will be published in the student Daily Messages. In addition to this, we had two teams including the NLC Ambassadors: Year 10s Benedict Raphael Glow B09, Dehan Liyanage H03, Viyan Perera N03, Alessandro Fato N03, and Year 7s Tinaye Chimbodza L16, Thomas Cicero L11, and the Altior Year 8 group Daniel Gaffney H12, Ethan Mercadante H15, Christian Nikolovski B15, Thomas Price T18, Leo Tsimidanov L15 and Yevin Singhara Lekam Namage T19, enter the CBCA Shadow Judging competition where the groups would read a selection of shortlisted books, vote on which they thought was best, and then create a response of their own. This year we tackled the Eve Pownell non-fiction list with both our teams voting and responding with a field diary and a series of photos and words. Well done to each of the groups who spent weeks reading the books, planning and executing these wonderful responses.

The NLC collaborated with the Director of Ministry, Ellen Lock, to take part in the Edmund Rice Foundation 'Doco In A Day' competition, where several groups of Year 11 and 12 Media students had single day to plan, edit, record voiceovers and render a documentary from existing footage highlighting global issues, in this case access to education in developing countries. The groups were exposed to interviews and perspectives that they had perhaps never experienced before and put their editing skills to the test. Year 11 students Noah Jordan B05, Nicholas Carbone T01, and Joshus Roguska T01 went on to receive a Highly Commended! Their documentary can be seen HERE.