Enrichment and Extra Curricular Opportunities

Band

Oakhill Drive is proud to offer a range of high quality bands and ensembles, availale as an extracurricular option for Y3-6 students. Click here to see our band webpage.

Eco Club

The ODPS Eco Club aims to make our school more environmentally aware. They work as a team to identify environmental issues and discuss ways to imporve them in our school and local community.  Click here to read more on our Eco Club. 

Kitchen Garden

Our resident General Assistant, Trevor Bleakley, is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to gardening and this is evident in the pristine, beautiful appearance of our school grounds.  At ODPS, our Year 2 and Year 3 teachers embed the Kitchen Gardens program across all curriculum areas which enables schools to promote environmental and sustainability learning.  The program provides opportunities to grow and produce healthy food and connect students with healthy food and lifestyles.  Mr Bleakley works with many Year 2 and 3 classes to educate students on the many aspect of gardening, allowing the children to work outdoors propagating, planting, harvesting and learning about the garden.  Garden beds with a mix of flowers, fruits, vegetables and herbs can be found all around the school. Students learn how to prepare garden beds using garden scraps, compost, manure and crop rotation and watch their plants grow from seed to maturity where they then collect the seeds to begin the process again.  Students learn about pollination from insects, wind, water and even use paint brushes to pollinate or cross pollinate their crops.  Students investigate beneficial and predatory insects found in the garden and are taught how to identify and deal with diseases in their crops. When their crops are harvested they enjoy tasting their foods either cooked or raw.  With a strong focus on sustainability, our students use harvested water from our school water tanks and compost from our worm farms or compost bins to help minimise waste and focus on what we can reuse to benefit our environment. This is a magnificent, educational program enjoyed thoroughly by the students involved.   For more information about the importance of sustainable learning please visit https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/learning-across-the-curriculum/sustainability/teaching-and-learning/kitchen-gardens

Click here to view our Kitchen Garden Video

Choir

At almost every ODPS event you can enjoy the beautiful sound of one of our school choirs.  Each choir enjoys lessons during one lunchtime per week and perform at both in school and external events.  Our current choirs include:

K-2 Choir

Stage 2 Choir (Years 3 and 4)

Stage 3 Choir (Years 5 and 6)

Tournament of Minds (TOMs)

Tournament of Minds offers competitors the opportunity to work in a team of 6 to solve authentic, open-ended challenges that foster creative, divergent thinking whilst developing collaborative enterprise, excellence and teamwork.  Challenges are set in the following disciplines - The Arts, Language Literature, Social Sciences and STEM. 

ODPS offers this program to our Stage 2 and 3 students (Y3-6) providing opportunity for our High Potential and Gifted Students to be challenged and thrive.  Students are trained in critical thinking, problem solving, group work and public speaking/ presentation skills.  This culminates in a 6 week challenge being set by TOM where students must research a problem and create a solution with no assistance from their teachers or parents.  At the end of the 6 weeks they join fellow schools to compete in a short term 'impomptu' challenge as well as present their long term challenge to a team of judges.  Winners can progress to state and national competitions.

Game Changer Challenge

This design thinking challenge is open to all 2,200+ public schools across the state and centres on exploring tangible solutions for a real-world problem.  It focusses on learning new skills and unlocking powerful design thinking tools and processes, while working with leading industry thinkers and having a whole lot of fun along the way.  ODPS hold a creative thinking challenge open to all Stage 3 students that wish to apply.  From this, a team of six students are chosen.  This is a new department competition that has been running for two years. ODPS has been one of the top 7 schools to sucessfully make it to the state finals each year, achieving second place and runner up in the state finals!

Year 2 Recorder Group

For Year 2 students keen to learn an instrument ODPS runs a small recorder group.  The participating students enjoy performing at school events throughout the year.

Year 2 Art Club

ODPS Art Club is open to all Year 2 children who love art.  The club runs at lunctimes and incorporates lessons on drawing and painting. Many of our projects are entered into competions including the NSW Cultural Diversity Calendar art completion where we enter a piece of collaborative art.  We are very proud to have been successfully chosen to feature in this Calendar.

Debating

ODPS competes in the Hills Interschool Debating Competition each year.  A group of twelve students from Stage 3 are selected to participate in the competition and this is made up of six students in a competition team and six students in a training team. During their training sessions students work on improving their debating, public speaking and critical thinking skills to prepare them for the debates against other schools. Our debating teams compete impressively each year and consistently win 75% of our debates against other schools. Participation in these teams involves students giving up their lunchtimes to complete training every week. 

Public Speaking and Spelling Bee

ODPS rotates each year between a whole school public speaking competition and the Premiers Spelling Bee.  

On even years, grades 1-6 participate in a class spelling bee competition.  The top 2 spellers from each class then compete in a stage competition held in our school hall.  Parents are invited to watch their children compete.  The competition words are taken from the NSW Premiers Spelling Bee word list which the children have access to before the competition.  The winner of the Stage 2 and Stage 3 competition then progress to the regional competition with the possibility of progressing to state finals.

On odd years, all students at ODPS, K-6, participate in a public speaking program where students are mentored in the skills of speech writing and presentation / public speaking.  This culminates in a class competition where students write their own speeches and present them to the class.  The top two public speakers then compete in grade competitions, which are held in our school hall.  Parents are invited to watch their child present their speech.  Our winning public speakers from grades 3-6 then progress to the 'Hills Public Speaking Competition' where they compete against neighbouring schools.

Maths Olympiad

High achieving students can put their talent to the test by competing alongside thousands of others around Australia and NZ in this year's problem-solving competition. 

The main aims of the Maths Olympiad Program are to:

-       Introduce students to important mathematical concepts

-       Teach major strategies and develop flexibility for problem solving

-       Foster creativity and ingenuity and strengthen intuition

-       Stimulate enthusiasm and enjoyment of mathematics

-       Provide for the satisfaction, joy and thrill of meeting challenges

A selection of mathematically minded students from Stage 3 are involved in The Australasian Problem-Solving Mathematical Olympiads (APSMO). T

The Maths Games Program allows mainstream students to learn valuable problem-solving skills and challenge themselves. 

These two programs are unique in that they focus on the students' ability to solve mathematical problems in a creative manner - as opposed to simply reaching a solution using a prescribed method.​

G.A.T.E.WAYS programs

G.A.T.E.WAYS programs support highly capable students, from years 2-6, providing a range of challenging and innovative programs. Teacher nominated students attend external workshops throughout the term that focus on different areas of the curriculum. There is a strong emphasis on creativity, lateral thinking, problem solving and leadership skills. The nominated students enjoy working with like-minded students from other schools.

PSSA: PSSA (Public School Sports Association) is an inter-school competition where students are selected to represent ODPS and play weekly at various locations. We participate in the Friday Castle Hill PSSA competition. Students are able to trial for 2 of the summer or winter PSSA teams. Teachers select their students on their performance during trials and the skills they demonstrate. Each sport has a particular number of students playing on the field/court plus reserves. This limits the number of students who may be selected into a PSSA team. Successful students are offered a position within a team. We participate in some of the following sports, depending on the availability of coaches:

Summer

Junior & Senior Girls Touch Football

Junior & Senior Boys Touch Football

Junior & Senior Cricket

Senior Boys & Girls Basketball

Junior Boys and Girls T-Ball

Senior Boys and Girls Softball

Winter

Junior Netball (3 Teams)

Senior Netball (3 Teams)

Junior & Senior Newcombe Ball

Junior & Senior AFL

Junior & Senior Boys Soccer

Junior & Senior Girls Soccer

Junior students include 8, 9 and 10 years (Year 4 – Year 5 students)

Senior students include 11 and 12 years (Year 5 – Year 6 students)

Summer PSSA runs in Term 1, end of Term 3 and Term 4. Winter PSSA runs in Term 2 and 3. This is a fee incurring activity to cover registration, field or court hire and transportation.  

Knockout Competitions: NSW PSSA Knockout is a statewide competition between NSW Public Schools who enter. Teams are based on the regular PSSA team and students who have been successful in a different PSSA sport, may still be selected in a minor trial for a Knockout team. Schools go head to head in organised rounds where future draws are determined on the winner of the previous game. Teams might only play one game against another school or take it all the way to the state final.  

Clinics: Clinics are offered when a local sporting club or organisation provides a free one-off lesson. This is to promote and encourage participation of this sport outside of school.

Gala Days: Gala Days are one off day competitions, where we compete against schools in the neighbouring area. PSSA team members are usually chosen to enter the Gala Day and addition students may be asked to form a second team. We consider the following Gala Days: Paul Kelly Cup AFL, Paul Wade Soccer or Futsal, Hills Basketball, Oz Tag and Milo Cricket. Our school’s participation in Gala Days is determine by other planned school events as they take precedence within the term.

Representative Sport: Oakhill Drive Public School is part of the Beecroft Zone PSSA. We compete in 3 annual zone carnivals: swimming, cross country and athletics. Students who represent at these carnivals are selected based on the results of our school carnivals and may be required to meet qualifying times or distances. Students from the 21 schools in the zone carnival may gain a place to Sydney North Area and potentially through to State and National carnivals.

Individual Representative Sport Trials: Students who play at a representative level or Division 1, outside of school may be given opportunity to represent the school at Beecroft Zone or Area level. These are held outside of our school. We are often limited to 2 students from our school for each trial and need to make a decision based on the potential of highest selection. Trials include for boys and girls: AFL, Basketball, Cricket, Diving, Golf, Hockey, Netball, Rugby League and Rugby Union (boys only), Soccer, Softball, Tennis and Touch Football.

Premier’s Sporting Challenge: Students participate in the Premier’s Sporting Challenge to encourage involvement in fitness activities in their everyday life. This is a valuable program for the school as our participation enables Oakhill Drive Public School to receive a funding for sport equipment.