Filter Content
Principals Report
Welcome to our first newsletter for 2025. Things have been happening and already we have had our trip to Quorn last Friday for the Swimming Carnival and this week the visit by Hypergym. Our students who attended Quorn all put in a great effort and enjoyed themselves, special mention to Sammy Haywood who swam in many events and was a real competitor on the day. Well done also to Ada, Leo, Lily, Alice, Eden, Ryan, Liam, Rhys, Pip, Archie, Fleur, Edee, Charlotte and Frank. I would like to thank Daniel Spick, Anni Polkinghorne, Amanda Hilder, Emily Fels and the parents who came along to support, Kaila Mason and Rachael Hilder, if I have left anyone out my apologies. Enjoy the photos, some may be a repeat from Tuesday’s newsflash, but they are worth a second look.
Annual Report
The annual report will be available on our school website later this term. The tool for it’s preparation comes available from the start of February and the report needs to be submitted to System Performance at the Department for Education by May 2025. From a general perspective for interested parents the following will be noticed in the Annual Report:
- NAPLAN results will only show 1 year due to reporting changes introduced by ACARA.
- Due to our numbers of Aboriginal students a separate NAPLAN section for Aboriginal students will be included.
- 3 years of attendance data by year level will be visible.
- Parent Engagement Surveys for the last 3 years for the school will be available.
- Workforce qualification data of staff will be displayed.
Also in the report:
- A complete financial statement for Hawker Area School.
- A Governing Council Report, required under the Education and Children’s Services Act. The governing council report is a summary from the chairperson on the council’s operations, achievements and highlights for the past year.
COLA Construction Update
We have had the first visit by the management team from Weathersafe Shades and the COLA project coordinator from Ventia to the school. At the moment construction will start in early May by the earliest, going for a short period of 2 – 3 weeks. A few operational aspects of the construction are:
- During construction the entire court area will be temporarily fenced, there will be no access to staff and students.
- All delivery access will be through the gate off Chace View Tce, for minimal risk and interruption to site operations. The gate will be set up by removing a fencing panel from the current fence, in the former walk in area next to the kindy and just before the stone laundry shed.
- WeatherSafe will have their own sign in and induction process within compound.
- A temporary fence area will be constructed by Weathersafe.
Staffing at the start of 2025
After a really busy January and appointments from 2024 this is a summary of where we are for our staffing in 2025:
- Daniel Spick has joined our staff on a Special Authority to Teach, working mainly with the 36 class under the mentoring of Jan Love and with the Secondary HPE class under the mentoring of Hayley Brown.
- Annette Hill has been appointed as our Secondary English and HASS teacher with some SACE roles as well. Annette will be starting at Hawker early in Week 5.
- Peter Russell has gained his authority to teach and will be teaching five lessons to the F2 and 36 classes in the HPE area. The rest of Peter’s week will consist of SSO2 responsibilities in the SWAN class and other classes.
- Anna Oakey and Karmy Coulthard are sharing the ACEO responsibilities this year. Karmy will be here on Tuesdays and will be working with Polly Smart, our AET in delivering the Yura Muda curriculum to all three of our classes.
- As mentioned above Polly Smart has returned as our Teacher Librarian and AET.
- Anna Oakey will be our ACEO, supporting students and families on general wellbeing and attendance. She has also taken on the role of Specialist Learning Support with two of our students in Tailored Learning, where the goal is for increased engagement and career planning.
- Sarah Bull has joined our staff as our Full Time SWAN teacher, working five days a week in our SWAN class.
- Hayley Brown continues as our HPE teacher and Autism Lead until the end of Week 6 when she leaves temporarily once again.
Dates this term
Some key dates coming up this term:
- Quorn Swimming Carnival last Friday.
- Hypergym in Hawker – Monday and Tuesday this week, delivering to all our classes.
- Acquaintance Night moved to Monday March 3rd after our interruption due to COVID.
- South Australian Coordinated Practice Test, Tuesday February 25th. This is the warm up for NAPLAN testing.
- Leaders days in Adelaide – All site leaders across the state and other department staff meeting on February 27th and 28th. The Far North Leaders from our Partnership meet in Adelaide on the previous day, February 26th.
- Swimming lessons – Monday to Thursday March 3rd to 6th.
- Pupil Free Day Friday March 7th, in conjunction with staff from Leigh Creek Area School. Professional learning delivered by the SRS (Self Regulation Service).
- NAPLAN Assessments – March 12th to 24th.
- School Camp to Adelaide during Fringe – March 17th to 21st .
- Governing Council Meeting – Monday March 24th
- Cue Learning visit – March 24th – 26th.
- Parent – Student – Teacher Conferences – Monday March 31st and Tuesday April 1st.
- Friday April 11th – Final day of term.
See you at school for Acquaintance night.
Mr Daren O'Neill
Principal
Year 3-6 News Term 1, 2025
Dear Hawker Area School Community,
I know over the past few weeks I have met many of you around the school and around the community, however, I would like to formally introduce myself in this edition of our school newsletter.
First, a little bit about me. My name is Daniel Spick, and I will be the new 3-6 teacher for the 2025 year! The students already know me as Mr. S or Mr. Spick, for parents I am happy to go by Dan!
I am 33, sporty, well-travelled, and have always wanted to work with young people. I am genuinely very honoured for the opportunity to teach at Hawker Area School and will always do my best to put my best foot forward and help the students to learn, feel safe, and want to come to school!
To the entire school, particularly Mr. O’Neill, including all staff, parents, and the wider community, thank you for this opportunity. I am very keen for a positive year in the classroom, but also being involved around town, especially in the sporting landscape, so I am sure I will have plenty of opportunities to get to know everyone better.
I would also like parents to know that once my school email has been setup, I will be available for regular communication, also via school telephone outside of class contact hours. I will try to be diligent and punctual with my responses to any questions, concerns, or feedback you may have.
I believe success in the classroom comes from a wide support network and keeping everybody in the loop!
Again, thanks for making me feel so welcome to Hawker. Looking forward to a cracking year.
Kind Regards,
Mr Dan Spick
Year 3-6 Teacher
Welcome Back to the 2025 School Year!
I hope everyone had a fabulous summer break and is feeling refreshed for another exciting year!
This year, I will take on my new role as Wellbeing and Inclusion Coordinator. I will support a safe and inclusive learning environment at Hawker Area School where every student can thrive.
As the 2024 SRC Coordinator, I couldn’t be prouder of our student leaders’ efforts last year. Their positive spirit and hard work made a real impact, spreading beyond our school and into the wider community. In fact, their story was recently published by The Transcontinental newspaper! I can’t wait to see what our new SRC student leaders will achieve in 2025.
Alongside my new role, I will continue teaching Mathematics and Science this year. In Term 1, our secondary class will focus on measurement in Mathematics, exploring calculations for various shapes in both 2D and 3D planes. In Science, our senior students will delve into Chemistry, learning about chemical structures and chemical formulae.
In SACE, I am excited to continue teaching Stage 1 and 2 General Mathematics and Stage 2 Biology.
I wish everyone a positive and successful start to 2025!
Miss Sharon Lam
Mathematics / Science Teacher / SRC
Welcome back to another busy term! I will be teaching HPE for the first 6 weeks of the term before going on maternity leave… again… In these first 6 weeks, we will be covering the Keeping Safe - Child Protection Curriculum. This will likely continue after I leave. We have had such a hot start to the year but luckily, we have been able to use the community gym to play table tennis and other games in the air conditioning. In Week 3 we have the Quorn Swimming Carnival, which half the school will attend. In week 4 we have Hyper Gym travelling up from Gumeracha to run 2 days of gymnastics sessions with us. In week 6, term time swimming will finally make a return as we have been lucky enough to find a coach willing to travel to us to run the sessions. You will receive more information on swimming lessons very soon.
Hayley Brown
Health and Physical Education Teacher
Teacher Librarian: Polly Smart
The Hawker Area School Community Library is off to a great start in 2025. We continue to offer library services to the community, as well as story-time and borrowing for pre-school and kindy children. Our school students are currently learning about the joys of non-fiction texts, and how to locate topics using the Dewey Decimal System. This system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries, so it certainly does help to make libraries a gateway to the world. We are getting new books of all kinds in all the time, so there’s plenty to interest everyone. We may be only small, but we are mighty!
