NEWSLETTER

TERM 2 REFLECTIONS

Wow – it’s halfway through the year already! Students should be feeling good about the learning they have been doing and the excellent progress they have been making. There have also been lots of opportunities for fun extra-curricular activities, such as:

·         Walk Safely to School day

·         SAPSASA Cross Country

·         National Simultaneous Storytime (Bowerbird Blues)

·         Reconciliation Week

·         Wipe Out Waste Wizard show

·         Pancake Breakfasts

·         Subway lunches

·         Hosting assemblies

·         FOG Family Night

There will be other opportunities next term, including swimming week for all students in Reception to Year 5 (see attached calendar).

Today, we farewelled Liz Kennedy for the remainder of the year. Liz will be taking leave for Terms 3 and 4 and we will all greatly miss her help in the Library and in the Front Office. The students all signed a ‘thank you’ poster for her and presented it at today’s assembly. We wish Liz all the best and look forward to her return next year.

SRC NEWS

Casual Day

The SRC have been busy this term getting class opinions about a range of things, such as how they would like to raise funds and what they would like to spend their fundraising money on. Casual Days are always very popular with the students, so they have chosen to end each term with one of these. Therefore, tomorrow will be Casual Day and the SRC will be collecting gold coin donations. They have quite a few ideas about what they would like to spend their money on, including: repainting Mootilda (the cow by the playground), painting the outside benches and buying more fruit trees and plants for the gardens.

Wheels Day

The SRC have also decided that they would like to host a Wheels Day – just for fun. Wheels Day will take place on Thursday 8th August. All students will be invited to bring their bikes or scooters and each class will have a turn ‘around the track’. Stay tuned for more details next term.

Making Meaning forum

On 17th June, our 5/6 SRC reps were invited to take part in an online Making Meaning forum. This was conducted by Sarah Bradbury from the department. These forums are conducted each term and aim to increase students' understanding of the learning process and agency and to design ways students across SA can have a greater say in our education system. There were over 1200 students participating (Yrs6-12), from about 170 schools!

The students heard a bit about the Public Education Strategy and the forum that was held in Term 1. Then they tried some challenges posed by two other schools. All students were invited to come up with the challenges for the next forum – and our kids are VERY keen to do this.

Part of the work from the Term 1 forum was to change part of the Public Education Strategy from teacher language to student-friendly language. The students had an opportunity to use an online voting system to choose which version of the wording they liked best. This was quite frustrating, as the system found it difficult to manage so many students online at once! However, our 3 kids showed great patience and resilience.

Overall, Cailey, Otto and Atticus said it was…

·         good to be involved

·         fun

·         educational

And they are keen to be involved again next time.

REPORTS

Your children will bring home their Semester 1 reports on Friday afternoon. Teachers have spent many hours writing these, so please pay close attention, particularly to the ‘areas for development’ section. Students in Years 1-6 will receive A-E grades for each subject. Reception students will receive an ‘effort’ grade only.

But what do the grades mean? The grades we assign now are not like the ‘olden days’, when students were compared to one another. Nor does it mean that they simply got 50% of the test correct. If a student achieves a ‘C’ grade, it means that they are ‘working at standard’. This means they are working exactly where they should be.

Teachers assign grades by assessing each individual student against the Achievement Standards of the Australian Curriculum for each subject. For instance, one of the English achievement standards for Reception students is: recognise the letters of the English alphabet. One of the Year 6 Maths achievement standards is: solve problems involving all four operations with whole numbers. When a student achieves a ‘C’ grade, it means they have demonstrated that they are competent against a set of achievement standards, such as these, for their year level.

In order for students to achieve a ‘B’ grade, they must demonstrate extensive knowledge and understanding of key concepts, a high level of competence in skills and processes and be able to use these skills in some new contexts. Those students who achieved ‘A’ grades were able to demonstrate a thorough knowledge and understanding of key concepts, a very high level of competence in skills and processes and were able to apply these skills in new contexts.

SCHOOL HOLIDAYS

I hope all the staff and students have a truly wonderful and relaxing break over the school holidays. I am very fortunate that I will be spending a few days down at Port Elliot with my family. I hope that everyone will have the chance to be with friends, family and loved ones and will take time to enjoy each other’s company. I look forward to seeing you all again next term and working with you all to continue to support our students’ learning and wellbeing.

Gail Holland

Principal

Hello,

Well, here we are at the end of another term. Reports are written, classrooms are being tidied and there seems to be a more relaxed atmosphere knowing that we have nearly completed another busy term. You can all be super proud of what has been achieved this term, not just in the classroom, but also within our school community. We have had a number of successful events this term and we are looking forward to planning more great things for term 3.

Our FOG group have been very active this term. We have fed many hungry mouths with pancakes at our breakfasts and we have held a couple of “Coffee Catch ups” to meet new people. The Mother’s Day stall was a great team effort to say thanks to the special ladies in our life.  There have been a couple of Uniform Pop-Up Shops to support families, our Playgroup continues to grow on Tuesdays and now we all have a supply of yummy pies. We cannot forget our Fun Family Night that we had on June 21st, that was attended by over 80 people.  The fire kept up toasty and pork rolls were so tasty!

All of these successes don’t just happen by themselves.  There has been a very enthusiastic team behind all of these events. A HUGE shout out “THANK YOU” to all the parents who have helped to make these gatherings possible.  You have cooked, shopped, packed, organized, cleaned and had lots of fun along the way – all this as well as keeping your own families running.  Well done team!