Principal's Report
It has been a busy time of late with our school camp and other events coming up and continuing on. Thought I would start with a bit of a historical and also contemporary reference that has great links to Hawker and rural SA.
The Agnew Family
I received a letter from Terry Agnew, whose father Allen Agnew was principal at Hawker from 1950 – 1953. After reading the letter I gave Terry a call for a bit of a chat and he gave me permission to refer to his letter in this article. Terry mentioned that his father was passionate about the importance of education to children and he loved teaching (and learning personally) in a range of areas including science, mathematics, history, literature and geography. Hawker was one of a multitude of locations that the Agnews lived in during Allen’s teaching and leadership career. His older brother, also Allen, attended the school when his father was Principal and had fond memories of his time as a student here. The letter also included two books that have been donated to our library and were written by Terry’s son, Dr Matt Agnew, who has pursued a career in STEM. Just scanning the two books one can see they are a fantastic read for everyone from adults down to upper primary. The books are called:
“Dr Matt’s Guide to Life in Space” and “Is My Phone Reading My Mind?”
I am sure people will enjoy the read! Many thanks to Terry Agnew and his family, who now live in Western Australia.
Hawker Area School COLA
We have now reached the stage of planning approval and endorsement of the development application for our COLA. Basically this means that manufacturing of the materials is soon to commence with construction of the COLA next term. Construction is expected to commence in early May, and take just two to three weeks.
Parent Student Teacher Conferences
On Monday March 31st and Tuesday April 1st the school will be holding it’s Parent Student Teacher Conferences. These conferences will be an opportunity for Parents and Students to get feedback from their teachers (in all subject areas Primary and Secondary) on their progress so far this year. These conferences represent an opportunity for our staff to communicate to Parents and Students on student progress in the first semester, they have replaced our term one written reports and progress checks which have been used for this purpose in recent years. Student participation in these conferences is an integral requirement for the interviews to be as effective as possible, giving our teachers the opportunity to talk with both parents and students about progress and to also show evidence of student work. I encourage all parents to take the opportunity to book conferences with all teachers when the Session Keeper portal opens up on Thursday March 27th at 9am for bookings. Timeslots will run for 15 minutes and run from 3.30pm until 6pm each night. Conferences can be booked by clicking on the following link: https://hawkeras.schoolzineplus.com/view-session/7
School Camp
We had our school camp to Adelaide last week with five teachers (Emily Fels, Annette Hill, Daniel Spick, Peter Russell and myself), three SSOs (Anna Oakey, Annalise Polkinghorne and Lisa O’Neill) and three parents (Amy Wallis, Amanda Gill and Karmela Coulthard) attending, along with 22 students. Many thanks to Emily Fels in particular, who put a lot of time into the planning of the camp, since the second semester of last year. The students experienced a wide variety of activities that kept them pretty busy. Thanks also to our parents and staff for all their efforts on the camp. It was high-energy experience and everyone put in to help move things along. We have included a variety of photos in this newsletter and hope to provide a greater variety of photos for parents and students to look at by the end of this term.
SRC
Annette Hill will be our SRC teacher leader this year. The process for electing class representatives starts this week with student nominations and speeches being planned. Last year we held a school wide election which worked well with the students as they needed to speak to the whole student body before voting occurred. The process for electing students will continue on over the next couple of weeks.
Community Portal
The Community Portal has been launched this week. A short communication went out to parents initially to prepare for the access to the portal, which was followed by another communication outlining the process for accessing the portal. This was to give parents support on setting up access, bookmarking the portal etc. Access to the portal also comes with access to the FROG Portal, which is the online environment that gives parents access to teachers and a look at the work that their students are doing. The Community Portal and FROG do perform different functions for parents. Through the community portal for instance parents can:
- Access the school calendar
- See notifications sent out to parents
- Provide reasons for unexplained absences
- See data about their students including attendance, academic results and medical details
- Access the FROG portal from the EMS
- View profiles and update them
The FROG portal will also do some of these functions for parents, it is however a work in progress and parents can expect to see some changes to the FROG Portal over time.
Cue Learning Visit
Sharon and Phil Callen from Cue Learning visited the school this week. Cue Learning is the External Literacy Provider the school has worked with to provide support in the teaching and learning in this area at the school. This visit follows on the end of our Week 0 day delivered by Sharon and zoom sessions that have been held with staff who teach in the literacy area.
Dates coming up
The following dates apply to the end of this term and early term two:
- Cue Learning – March 24 – 26
- Parent – Student – Teacher Conferences – March 31 – April 1
- Last Day of Term – April 11
- Pupil Free Day with Cue Learning – May 12
- Whole School Closure for Hawker Races – June 2nd