Hawker Area School eNewsletter

Welcome to Term 3 at Hawker Area School, I hope everyone has had productive holidays and have returned refreshed and ready for a new term. The term is set to be a productive one with a few school events to report on including a Pupil Free day, along with another one to report early on in Term Four. Here is a list to start with, including an early one from this week:

NAIDOC Day – August 5^th
Quorn Area School Sports Day – August 20^th
Open Day – August 28^th
Book Week – August 18^th to 22^nd
Pupil Free Day – on September 8^th to allow staff to work on our school improvement plan in the wellbeing area of impact and also the further inservicing in the SA Curriculum for Public Education.
Whole School Wellbeing Day – Thursday September 4th
Hawker Area School Sports Day – Friday September 5^th
Parent – Student – Teacher conferences which will be on Monday and Tuesday September 15^th and 16^th.

Term Four

Pupil Free Day – on Monday October 20^th to focus on Self Regulation and our Area of Impact Wellbeing.

Peter Russell has informed us of his decision to step down from teaching and SSO duties at the school due to health reasons. This has been an issue for him for a while and has reached the point where he needs a break for his own wellbeing. We thank Peter for his hard work at the school in both teaching and SSO responsibilities, he has been a valuable participant on our staff and a great supporter of the school and it’s students. Currently the school is working through the options for delivering the HPE curriculum at primary level where Peter was the teacher of our F2 and Year 36 classes.

EMS academic reports were launched at the end of last term. At this stage we have most of our parents now on board with the Community Portal through the EMS and this allows parents to also have digital access to school reports each semester. At the end of semester one we sent out hard copies of all student reports and also alerted parents through the EMS of the presence of their digital report in their portal along with a pdf copy being available in the email itself.

In addition to access to the Community Portal through the EMS parents also have access to the Frog Portal at Hawker Area School. This portal will provide parents with access to their student’s timetable and increasingly to curriculum information as well. The Frog Portal also provides parents with the opportunity to communicate directly with their student’s teachers and SSOs at the school through the messages app, providing a secure safe avenue of communication for parents and staff. This will mean for parents a fast and direct way for parents and staff to communicate. Over this term the school will be putting out further communication on the Frog Portal and also will be encouraging parents to upload the newly designed Frog Go App which can be loaded onto both iPhones and Android, providing convenient access to school information and communication.

After having another go at our presentation assembly stalled by the weather last Friday the school has taken the decision to postpone our assembly indefinitely. With a busy term coming up and classes already engaged in this term’s learning it was decided that we could look for other ways to show off the student work that would have been presented. In particular we have our Open Day and also Parent – Student – Teacher conferences which will provide further opportunities for parents to see the curriculum students have been engaged in.

NAIDOC Day was held Tuesday of this week at the school, commencing with a Welcome to Country by Karmy Coulthard and a rotation of activities for students, delivered by staff and visitors. The day included a presentation and activity delivered by Jessica McKenzie, Art and Crafts activities run by Emily Fels and Anna Oakey, Twisty making, Wood Carving and the chance to have some delicious food including Kangaroo Tail, Kangaroo soup and damper prepared by Kerri Coulthard. A great day was had by all. Many thanks to Karmy Coulthard, Anna Oakey and Polly Smart for their efforts in planning a great day.

Mr Daren O'Neill

Principal

As term 3 begins I can happily welcome 5 new students to our class. We have 4 new Foundation students starting with the mid year intake, and 1 new student joining our year 2 group. This takes our class up to 14 students, and 16-17 on Fridays. Welcome to Keira Morgan, Isla Morgan, Ben Morgan, Izzy Solly and Delilah Kerr.

We have begun the term with the theme of PETS. We have been doing lots of writing about pets from lots of different starting points. For Science/HASS we have been looking at external body coverings and sorting out our pets from our ferals! For Design Technology we have discussed, designed and made pet toys and dog treats.

We have also been lucky enough to attend the Adelaide Youth Orchestra visit. It was wonderfully loud and entertaining. I think there were a few students hoping to be part of the music class as soon as possible.

For Maths we have completed our recent study on Shapes. I hope that most students now know the difference between a rhombus and a trapezium. For the following fortnight we will be taking on a study in Number. The year 2 group will be continuing to learn helpful strategies to be used with addition and subtraction operations. They have begun learning and practicing ‘split strategy’, next they will do the same with ‘jump strategy’. Year 1s are mastering the ‘counting on’ and ‘friends of 10’ strategies and the Foundation group are practicing addition and subtraction with number 20 and below. They are also learning to count accurately to and from 20.

We have 3 handwriting lessons each week where we focus on starting points and neatness of formation. Word Study is going along very smoothly. I do want to say thank you all folks at home that are spending time with their children on practising weekly words and reading…it is really helping a lot.

Wishing everyone a brilliant term 3. I hope all of your plans and attempts at relaxation and family time come to fruition.

Kind regards,

Mrs Amanda Hilder

F-2 Teacher

A warm welcome back for Term 3, and I hope you all had a wonderful break together as a family! I do hope it was more enjoyable than mine, as I am sure you have heard from the kids, or heard me complaining about it around the place, I had some wisdom teeth removed at the end of Term 2. This being said, I do need to apologise as that would be one of the reasons that Term 2 assembly could not take place!

This term has started fast, we have hit the ground running, and I still can't believe it is already week 3! This term the students have many things to look forward to, including Lego Club (ongoing basis), Yura-Muda Day (a celebration of culture with various activities and stories), a visit from the Adelaide Orchestra, and other surprises not far around the corner.

In terms of a learning focus, we are starting to ramp up in terms of work output across the subjects. The continued focus as always for literacy is reading. I along with librarian Polly Smart are really encouraging all students to participate in the Premiers Reading Challenge. The students may read 4 free choice books, and the other 8 must come from the list located on the website. Please return the forms by the end of August.

The students this term will be creating an information text on a, celebrity, place, or animal of choice. We are developing a structured approach to the writing, with a particular focus on conventions of writing.

In Mathematics, the students each have an investigation folder whereby, much of their work done is the application of reasoning and mathematical knowledge to real-life problems.

Science we are looking at forces and implementing what we have been doing in Maths and English.

Student well-being, support, and positive classroom environment and school culture remain as a top priority for the school and me. Recent student collected data has indicated that we as a school are up, and that students are feeling overall safe and supported. This will continue to be a work in progress for myself, and I will continue to remain transparent with parents, guardians and the community to ensure best practice for the kids.

I really want to thank all of you for your ongoing support, trust, and communication. It has helped me professionally, and to feel welcome in your town!

Best Wishes,

Mr. S

Mr Daniel Spick

3-6 Teacher

I hope you enjoy the selection of photos from semester two’s visit to the Port Augusta Special School. The SWAN students were made to feel very welcome by staff and students.

We have had an exciting time so far in the swan room this term. Attendance has been excellent from our students.

We have continued to enjoy listening to stories read by famous actors each day, taking walks around the oval when the weather is fine, to build trust and friendship amongst our class and our helpers.

We have been listening to and are learning our times tables with the help of the Scratch Garden videos. We have continued to use our tone chimes and Boom Wacker’s in music.

We have circle time each day choosing a different topic as a focus and also a focus book each week.

Hope you are all keeping warm and well.

Mrs Sarah Bull

SWAN Teacher

For the last Home Ec day of Term 2, the 3-6 class decorated cupcakes with different shaped nozzles and different flavoured icings! Sugar overload!!
Frank Fels helped to make soup for the staff.

Miss Annalise Polkinghorne

Home Economics/SSO Teacher

Scholastic Book Fair will be happening at the school during Week 4 (Monday 11th to Friday 15th August). This means that Scholastic’s books will be displayed at the school library for students, parents and the community to come and browse and buy. Students can also use their School Attendance vouchers as payment or part payment.

The following week, Week 5, is Children’s Book Week which has been celebrated nationally now for 80 years. We will be encouraging lots of reading, as we do every week of course! We will also be having a dress-up parade after recess on the Thursday (21st August). Dressing-up is not compulsory, but this year it’s pretty easy if your children want to. The theme this year is Book an Adventure, so costumes could include a favourite character from a book, or simply dressed for adventure, be it on a deserted island, in outer space, under the sea, the desert, in the alps, or anywhere that an adventure is to be had!

The Premier’s Reading Challenge is now open for us to enter details of the books children are reading so they can be recognized for their efforts later in the year. Please record the books that children read at home so that we can enter that information into the system by mid-September. Not all reading material is recognized as valid for the challenge, but if in doubt we can check against the (enormous) list online. If your child hasn’t brought home a recording sheet, just write the title and author of the book/s your child has read on a piece of paper and we can enter the info to the online record. As you can imagine, it’s not possible to hear each child read 12 books when you have a class full, so it adds hugely to the tally when you record what they read each day at home. 12 picture books are going to add up quite quickly for the little ones!

Ms Polly Smart

Librarian