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Dear Parent/Caregivers,
Last week we celebrated Book Week with a parade of characters from our favourite books. It was great to see so many of our children involved, with a great deal of effort going into the costumes by parents and families. We thank you all for this tremendous effort.
It was also fantastic to see so many staff involved. Check out our gallery below.
Thank you to everyone for their support of our Scholastic Book Fair. The fair was an amazing success and we raised over $1000. We were able to select $1000 worth of popular books to add to our library. Sharon will be busy processing them so that the students can borrow their favourite new titles. Thanks to everyone who helped supervise and sell the books. We will continue to run a book fair each year. I know that Ms Leah will particularly enjoy using an EFTPOS machine again.
It’s been a busy few weeks including our year 5/6 classes attending Arbury Park Camp. I was able to attend the Monday night, the staff must have hand selected the dorm that I supervised because they were the first dorm asleep. It’s always great to see students in a different setting, allowing them to demonstrate their various skills, abilities and attributes. Thank you to the staff who supervised the students on camp and a special mention to Sarah G who also attended and supervised. I was impressed with the feedback from staff about the positive attitude and respectful behaviour exhibited on camp.
Other activities that our school has recently celebrated include: Science Week and the Aboriginal STEM Congress. There is more information about these events later in our newsletter.
Our staff are always striving to improve the teaching and learning programmes in our school. Recently some of our Junior Primary team have committed to ongoing training in Mathematics. We have been really focussed on developing number sense in our Junior Primary classrooms. Other classes have participated in 5 week sprints targeting specific aspects of the maths curriculum.
Our staff have also been working closely with the DfE Brightpath team. Each staff member has been able to analyse written texts that students have created and develop clear learning goals for both whole class and individuals. Our Literacy Project Officer has also been working with the staff during staff meetings around Functional Grammar and its place in the English curriculum.
After implementing a number of programmes to improve reading across the school in the past 2 years, we are now at the point of documenting our programmes and processes. A team of staff members are working closely with our partnership curriculum leaders to develop a clear Literacy Agreement.
Mr Staker has selected a team to participate in the Port SAPSASA Cross Country Carnival to be held on Tuesday 13th September. Please ensure notes are returned to the Front Office with $15 by Tuesday 6th September.
Congratulations to Matilda H who was selected in the Port SAPSASA team and will participate in the State SAPSASA Athletics carnival to be held on Thursday 22nd September.
Round 2 of 2023 Reception Enrolments offers were sent to families this week. Round 2 offers were made to families who do not reside in our local catchment area. If you are aware of any students starting in 2023 who have not enrolled, please let us know asap so that we can begin our planning.
AFL MAX Leadership Camp –Year 3 & 4
We are excited to provide the opportunity for our year 3/4 students to participate in an overnight camp at AFL MAX on Thursday 29th September to Friday 30th September. (Term 3, Week 10).
Payment for the camp is due by Wednesday 14th September.
Upcoming Diary Dates
School Closure: Monday 5th September
School Enrolment Tour: Wednesday 7th September - 9-10am
Sports Day : Friday 23rd September
End of Term: Friday 30th September at 2pm
Lunches
Please DO NOT send food to school for your child's recess or lunch that requires re-heating.
We do not have the facilities for this to be done at school nor is it the responsibility of staff.
Kind regards,
Bob
I really enjoyed the food, camp fires, the dorm rooms and lastly the activities. I really liked the instructors. I also enjoyed the hikes and that we could explore in our free time.
Khloe, Room 19
My time at camp was really fun, we started with a little bit of free time. I chose to explore, I found a stone thing that told the time, and then we did an orienteering activity where we actually had to find special words. It was a lot of fun.
My favourite part was when we made damper. We got to light the fire then use the special damper sticks and use hot ashes to cook the dough. It was a fun time!
Amber, Room 19
At camp I enjoyed the food, activity games and warm camp fires. The food was the most outstanding thing at the camp. If I could write a review I’d give Arbury Park 5 stars because the majority of the camp was amazing.
Daniel, Room 19
I think that camp to Arbury Park was one of the best places I have been. It was fun playing with my friends. I do not have a favourite part because it was all so fun. I especially liked when we hiked to Mount George and used a map to find letters and unscramble them. I now know everywhere around Arbury Park because I went exploring in my free time.
Ollie, Room 19
My time at camp was really fun. My three most favourite times at camp was when we had to make a camp fire out of a different variety of sticks and got to cook damper over the fire we created. Secondly, on the last day we hiked for three hours to Mount George. Thirdly, we made a shelter out of rope and a giant tarp. We could also use different materials that we found lying around in nature. The reason why we would make a shelter was because we pretended there was a storm coming towards us but it was only Caitlin using a water gun to spray the shelter we made. At the end nobody ended up getting wet.
Cahlim, Room 19
On Thursday and Friday of Week 4, Year 5 students Layla, Jaxon, Aneeka and MJ attended the 2022 STEM Aboriginal Learner Congress at the Adelaide Convention Centre with ACEO Kahlia Miller-Koncz and AET Jess Searle. LPPS students joined with over 600 Aboriginal students from schools across South Australia and attended some incredible workshops over the two-day congress.
Day 1 started with a Welcome to Country by Kuma Kaaru and an opening address by Corey Tutt OAM, and founder of “Deadly Science” followed by learning and participating in a contemporary dance with Adrianne Semmens and Kaine Sultan-Babij. Students then engaged in a range of workshops called “Sticky Spinifex” lead by young amazing Ceduna Area School students. Students learnt about the spinifex resin that is made out of the Spinifex plant and how it is used as an adhesive in making tools and waterproofing objects. The students designed their own shape out of pop sticks and were able to heat the resin block to use it as glue. The 2nd workshop was called “Star Lab” where the students had the opportunity to explore the solar system through story that was projected inside the mobile planetarium.
Day 2 started with a Welcome to Country by Robert Taylor followed by inspirational speeches from YASTA mentor Tamia Blackwell and Female Entrepreneur Mikaela Jade, founder of Indigital. Students then got on a bus to the Adelaide Zoo for their last workshop called “Ecosystem Engineers” where students looked at how Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander peoples use natural and processed materials for different purposes. Students explored the Adelaide Zoo to discover the animals within the zoo and then designed a safe animal trap that could be used to catch one of the animals that they saw in the zoo.
Our learners really embraced the 2022 theme “Cultural Innovators” paying homage to 60,000 plus years of Aboriginal scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians and were able to explore STEM connections to Aboriginal history and culture. What a wonderful opportunity for our students.
In Week 4 we celebrated Science Week. The Science Week Theme was 'Glass: More than Meets the Eye.' Room 8, 10 and 11 had so much fun cooking biscuits in the shape of magnifying glasses. We made the dough, kneaded it, and then moulded it into shape. Before baking, we added a hard lolly in the middle to make the 'glass.' We had so much fun making this tasty treat.
Room 14 have been exploring 2D and 3D shapes in mathematics. We have used manipulatives to support our conceptual understanding. Last week we worked in pairs to build a simple structure, which turned out not to be so simple after all. The goal was to use a range of shapes and use them in a way that would make the building strong.
From here, Miss McKay took a photo of our constructions and stuck them in our books. We were then challenged to draw a detailed and accurate sketch of our building. We then wrote a list of the shapes we used and justified our building design to the class by showing our work. We reflected on what worked and what we could change next time. This was a fun task and took collaboration, persistence and critical thinking.
I will keep this update brief as there has been lots happening with Book week along with Science week as well.
The majority of our classes are using the Trauma Aware and Informed strategies taken from the Berry Street Educational initiative. It sets a real positive inclusive start and expectation for each day for every student.
This term the students enrolled in Children’s University are busily earning their hours and looking forward to see who graduates next term at Bonython Hall in the city.
Camp was simply amazing and it was so inspiring to see the personal growth that so many of our students exhibited.
Later this term we are having a visit from the Western Districts Policing Liaison Officer to present some talks to our students. Topics will be spread across the years and will include, the role of the Police, the dangers of cyberbullying and the importance of saying no to any bullying or harassment.
Our Young Leaders are so proud of the money we raised through Crazy Day last term and we will be presenting it to the Smith Family. They go from strength to strength and this term we are running an 'Art Competition' based around the 5 keys to Success and a 'Le Fevre’s Got Talent' to unearth the hidden skills within our community.
A sheer unexpected joy was when of our school leaders, Emily Whittle came to me one morning and shared a poem she had written about room 7 and what it means to the students. I have attached it for you to read and also enjoy.
As always, thank you for your support for our school and if you would like more information please see me.
That’s all till next time.
Regards,
Bronte
On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, our Parent Group held our annual Father’s Day Stall. This provided our students with a range of affordable gifts for their loved ones in celebration of Father’s Day this Sunday. The stall is always very popular with many of our students purchasing some wonderful items. A big thank you to both Amber and Tash who make this stall possible, as well as the Young Leaders who helped out on the day.
This year, in the lead up to Sports Day, the Parent Group will be selling a range of merchandise in team colours to wear on the day. Coloured pom poms, sweat bands and fuzzy head bands will be on sale during week 9, which students can purchase and wear to Sports Day. We have these products in our 3 team colours – red, blue and yellow! Stay tuned to hear more information.
Port Adelaide Laneways Excursion
Another fantastic opportunity for our students to learn and celebrate Aboriginal history and culture!