Welcome to 2021, our students are settled in and looking forward to a great year. At the time of this Newsletter we will have just completed our Student Parent Teacher Goal Setting Interviews. This will be a chance for parents to meet with teachers with student present to discuss goals for 2021, at least the start of it. The goals are a positive way for our students to set their targets for learning in partnership with parents and teachers.

We have started the year with 41 students, pretty evenly distributed across our Foundation to Year 2, Year 3 to 5 and Year 6 to 12 classes. A variety of curriculum is being delivered on a face to face basis to all our students.

Students in the Foundation to Year 2 class apart from their core curriculum in class including English, Maths, HASS and Science will receive Design and Technology, Digital Literacy, HPE, Art, Polish and an Instrumental Music lesson, learning how to play the recorder. The Year 3 to 5 class will also receive their core curriculum of English, Maths, HASS and Science, along with HPE, whilst also receiving Art, Design and Technology, Digital Technology, Polish, while the Year 3s will join in the Instrumental Music lesson with the Foundation to Year 2s and some students will also be taking Instrumental Music lessons.

Our Year 6 to 9 students will receive lessons face to face in all areas of the curriculum, with classes in English, HASS, Maths, Science, Art, HPE, Home Ec, Health, Design and Technology and Polish up to Year 8. Once again we have two Year 12s at school this year, receiving face to face delivery in Stage 2 English, Stage 2 Workplace Practices, Stage 2 Community Studies and delivery from the Open Access College in Japanese and Digital Photography.

We have already had some whole school events and extracurricular activity. In week 2, our students went to Quorn and competed very well in the Swimming Carnival, with four of our students qualifying for the MNSEC Swimming carnival in Booleroo which was held on Tuesday February 16^th. Well done here to Madi Hately (who was also the Under 14 champion in Quorn), Jack Allen, Jaiy Hately and Rihanna McKenzie on their selections. In week 3 we had our swimming lessons as part of the Water Safety Program, students having the chance of five days of lessons to improve their form. Last Friday February 19^th our swimmers went to Leigh Creek for their swimming carnival at their 50m town pool, students competing against swimmers from Leigh Creek and Marree on the day.

The Governing Council had it’s AGM on Monday the 8^th of February with the next meeting following up on February 22^nd. The Parents and Friends had their AGM on Wednesday February 10^th, with their next meeting scheduled for Wednesday March 10^th in the Library at 2.10pm, any parents still interested in attending are welcome to come along.

I can also provide advanced notice of our other school events coming up:

• Our whole school camp will be at Erappa, 25-27th May.
• The Hawker Area School Sports Day on 21st May, Friday Week 4. Please note this change of date from term 3 in previous years.
• Book Week from 21st – 27th August, Term 3, with the Dress up Day planned for Wednesday 25^th.
• Book Fair from 30th August – 3rd September.

As other days are confirmed they will be published in Schoolzine and on our school website calendar.

As always if parents have any questions I can be contacted at the school on 86484003 or by my email at daren.oneill253@schools.sa.edu.au

Mr Daren O'Neill

Principal 

The class will also have Mrs Sharon Bates for Health and Physical Education, Mr Daren O’Neill for Design and Technology, Ailsa Green for Art, Library and Digital Technology, Mrs Lidia Szlezak for Language and Ms Kate Retelsdorf for Music.

The day starts with the students unpacking their bags, calling of the roll and their designated jobs.

First lesson is the Read, write inc. program, leading into the second lesson of Literacy of writing, grammar, hand writing, book studies, reading strategies, word investigations, rhyme and oral language. The class also reads a big book throughout the week, focussing on the vocabulary of the book, the beginning, middle and ending, characters, setting and illustrations to help student understand, predict and find meaning in what the book is about.

In Maths, the class will explore numbers, location and direction. The last half of the term will be creating and describing patterns using materials, sounds, movements, drawings and numbers.

In Science the class is examining the Earths weather, water cycle and place in the solar system. 

In Geography, we will be comparing natural and human made environments. Students identify changes in features of the landscape and describe how to care for places.

Library is on Fridays and students can borrow books at this time if they have returned previous books.

Each child will have a communication book for communication between you as a parent or care giver and the teacher.  

Please make sure your child’s hat is clearly labelled so it is easily identified by your child and not mistaken by another child.

All parents or carers are welcome to discussions with me about their child if needed, as working together works best for you, the child and us as teachers.

Thankyou 

Welcome everyone to the new school year. There are some new faces in our class and some returning ones and it’s been lovely to see them all.

We may as well go in age order and start with the small people first…

F-2 HPE

So far we have looked at balancing and catching and throwing, with lots of games and fun. The students have enjoyed the throwing and catching games the most, with some having a bit of difficulty with balancing (or maybe difficulty staying still??).

For health we are looking at the healthy eating food groups, by reading about The Very Hungry Caterpillar and analysing all the food he ate on his way to transformation.

Year 6-9

English: The beginning of term has been about revising and testing so we all know where to start from. We have completed a Cold Write, where students write on a specific subject for an allocated amount of time. They are assessed on their word choice, sentence structure, paragraphing, spelling and grammar. Students have also undertaken the Waddington’s spelling test which will allow me to sort them into spelling groups starting next week. We have also started reading our class novel Red Day by Sandy Fussell which is an Australian novel set in country New South Wales. The genre of writing we are focusing on this term is persuasive, so my apologies if your children come home with some excellent arguments!

HASS: We are starting HASS with a history unit on Ancient India. Students are learning about the Caste system, where it originated and why, and what effects it still has on people living in India today. This has been pretty eye opening for us all, and the students have been fascinated to learn about the different levels of society.

HPE: For the health component of HPE we started by viewing That Sugar Film which documents the hidden sugars all around us, often in ‘healthy’ food. We have also looked at goal setting and talked about how important goals are for our growth and wellbeing.

The PE component has been basketball. We are focusing on ball handling, dribbling and lay ups at the moment, and will move into more complex drills as the students improve. They also need a bit of a brush up on the rules and positions, which we will cover despite the complaining it causes!

Home Economics: In Home Economics we started with basic kitchen safety and hygiene and have spent some time looking closely at bacteria and how it infects our food if we allow it. Our practical sessions have been a little disrupted due to swimming carnivals falling on Fridays but we have managed to cook a couple of recipes so far. Firstly we cooked Texas ham and pineapple muffins which the students thoroughly enjoyed. After baking we analysed the taste, texture and appearance of the finished product and came up with some ideas on how it could be improved. This week we made stuffed potatoes which were all devoured in seconds.

Year 12 English:  Stage 2 English got off to a great start with some excellent work and results on the first assessment task (we got a bit of a head start on it last year).  We are now looking at the relevance of Shakespeare in modern media, which will lead to the second assessment task, a video created on book creator. From there we will be writing a comparative essay and start looking at the creative writing component of the course.

That’s all from me for the beginning of the year! If anyone wants to contact me at anytime regarding their child, or any of the content we are covering you are more than welcome to email me or contact the school.

We are going to try REALLY hard to use diaries appropriately this year (this is me also, I tend to forget!), they SHOULD be in your child’s bag every night and I would like to see them signed on Fridays.

Mrs Sharon Bates

Year 6-12 Teacher / HPE Coordinator

Science year 6-9

A "human endeavour" is one in which humans strive to achieve something of significance, or something of significance which can only be achieved via human intelligence, ingenuity, and/or willpower. It is very important for our students to develop a good understanding of how and when we as a humans achieved the technology, knowledge and the advances in our quality of life. They need to understand the role played by science and mathematics and its significance for quality of human life.

We can observe the successes of Australian scientists, who by monitoring and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic prevented massive pandemic infection rates in Australia as the quick response of our society to the instructions of scientists allowed us to avoid the tragic consequences of Covid-19. It is important that our students develop a good understanding of role that the vaccine can have in limiting this pandemic.

For the first task in Science, the Year 6 – 9 students chosen one of the past pandemic diseases like polio, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough, hepatitis B or chicken pox.  They have studied the chosen disease and explained the human struggle with this disease.  Students enjoyed this task and produced some good reports. They learnt about vaccine development and the options for the prevention of the spread of the disease.                           

Mrs Lidia Szelzak

Mathematics Science & Language Teacher