MANOORA PRIMARY SCHOOL Newsletter

Principal: Liam Whitwell Ph. (08) 88484304

Liam.Whitwell62@schools.sa.edu.au

Dates to Remember

10th August – Special Lunch Day ORDERS DUE 5/8 11th August – Parents’ Club 9 am Monday 8th August- Governing Council 7 pm **PLEASE NOTE Change of Date** 16th August – ICAS Maths 19th August – Student Free Day 22nd – 26th August – Book Fair in Library Children’s Bookweek Theme: Australia: Story Country 30th August – Choir Magic Millions

Newsletter 12 - 3 August 2016

Dear Parents and Caregivers, Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable and relaxing holiday with family and friends. Term 3 has started well with all students coming back to school with a positive attitude towards their learning. As mentioned in our last Newsletter, staff have got the students to reflect on their Term 2 reports and have set learning goals for Term 3. I look forward to the students working towards these goals and ultimately achieving them. Term 3 is shaping up to be a very busy term, with many opportunities for the students to be involved in numerous extra-curricular activities throughout the Term. I encourage all students to be involved in as many of these as they can but to also remember that our number one focus is on the students learning and this needs to be put first.

NAPLAN- In week 5 all students in years 3, 5 and 7 will be part of the NAPLAN online trial. Again, as stated in the last newsletter, these tests are designed to test the online capability of NAPLAN and not the students. Students are being encouraged to do their best and use these tests as a learning opportunity.

CHOIR- All students that are involved in the choir this year have received a letter during week one. Please contact the school if further information is required.

REMINDER STUDENT FREE DAY - On the 19th of August (Friday week 4) there will be a Student Free Day. On that day staff will be at the Gawler Jockey club attending further training presented by Martin Westwell.

SAPSASA - Congratulations to all of the Manoora students that participated in the Basketball Hub day today at Balaklava. Further congratulations to the students that were selected from today’s trials. Good luck to the MPS students involved in the Mid North SAPSASA Netball and Football teams in Adelaide during Week four.

ZOO SNOOZE - Early in Term 4 Banksia Class are lucky enough to have the opportunity to have a class camp and be involved in the Zoo Snooze program. Families should have received a letter about this camp and if there are any issues please do not hesitate to ring the school.

ICAS MATHS AND ENGLISH- These competitions will take place between Week 2 and 4 this Term. Good luck to all students that have nominated to take part in these.

SRC - has been very proactive this Term with them already running a Table Tennis tournament, and they have planned a mini Olympics over the next couple of weeks. It has been great to see all SRC members embrace their roles and provide opportunities for the students to participate in during lunch time. They also have numerous ideas for later on in Term 3 and 4.

AUDITS - Over the next 2 weeks as a part of the Leading Numeracy Improvement at Manoora Primary School, we are going to be conducting 3 audits in regards to beliefs and attitudes around numeracy. One of these Audits is attached to the back of this newsletter and we are asking community members to take some time and fill it out honestly. If we could have all responses back by the 19th of August it would be greatly appreciated. Parents and caregivers will receive a copy of this Audit via their child’s communication bag this week.

REPORTS - As our report format was changed this year, if there is any feedback about this change it would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Liam

PARENTS’ CLUB NEWS Welcome back to Term 3, it looks to be a busy one once again. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, 11th August, 9 am at the school. Everyone is welcome to attend. A reminder who is on Special Lunches this term: Week 3 – Laura and Lauren (Order forms attached today, and are due back Friday) Week 7 – Chris and Mary-Anne Thankyou to those who continue to keep our freezer stocked for Thursday lunches. We will continue with Soup and Bread rolls on even weeks. Those rostered on for the first half of the Term include: Week 2 – Chris Palmer – Chicken Noodle Soup Week 4 – Mary-Anne Schwartz – Zucchini/Veg Soup Week 6 – Belinda Nichols

A note from our Pastoral Care Worker

Term 3 is well and truly under way. From what the students have told me it sounds as though all families

had a fun and refreshing holiday break.

Play is the Way has continued this term in the Banksia Class. Our theme at the moment is ‘Being Brave’

unwrapping topics like ‘fair and unfair’, ‘perseverance’, ‘being scared but brave at the same time’ and

‘attitude’. The students have contributed well in discussions and enjoyed the variety of games that helps

them put their learning into practice. You may like to talk with your child about these topics at home.

You may have already heard on the grapevine that Lee and I are delighted to be expecting a baby in

January. Due to my pregnancy, I have decided to finish my work here at Manoora Primary School. It is

with sadness that I will leave a job where I have worked with such a great team and supportive school

community. At this stage it looks as though I will be finishing up week 5 this term.

You most certainly will still see me around from time to time.

Thank you for all your support during my time at Manoora Primary School.

Kristy Cunningham

Banksia Class News Welcome back to Term 3! Our class has been

working hard and building on our excellent effort

from semester one. We would like to extend a

very big thank you to a special group of parents

who have been coming in weekly to listen to

reading. Our very grateful thanks to Sarah

Eckermann (Rainbow Reading), Mary-Anne

Schwartz, Rachel Willmott, Judy Hollamby, Donna

Quick, Lauren Philp and Abby Schwartz (Class

Reading). We have introduced an exciting

‘Oxford Word Challenge’ into our class this term

for younger students, run by Mary-Anne Schwartz

and Laura Allen. They have been putting

students through their paces with sight word

recognition and fun activities, so essential to

reading and fluency.

In Maths this term R-2s have been looking at

Calendars; identifying days of the week, number

of days in each month, order of months and

seasons. Older students have been working on

Place Value and partitioning numbers (breaking

into thousands, hundreds, tens, units).

Daily Guided Reading lessons are for reading and

responding to reading. Our class has been

working on the reading skills of ‘visualisation’ and

‘summarising’ this week. Our ‘Rowan of Rin’

group have created dioramas of their favourite

part of the novel, and have summarised what is

happening in their picture, using their new

cursive penmanship for Year 3s.

Students have come back enthusiastic and ready for a busy term.

Chicken Run Grant

Well done to Sasha and Caleb who represented the School at the presentation of Grants at the Waterloo Wind Farm. They spoke confidently about how we are going to construct the Chicken Coop and how having chickens will help us be more sustainable at School and also add to the vegetable garden and composting we already do. The grant was for 1000 dollars so this will be added to the 400 we also received from the Natural Resource Management Board. Vegetable Garden The garden looks amazing thanks to the rain, and children have been munching their way through the snow peas as they emerge. We have some enormous cauliflowers that we will be using in our cooking this term. Maths We are studying three dimensional shapes and are using the Google Sketch up Architecture program to

construct three dimensional shapes that we are able to rotate and view from all directions. We sketched

the Church and from all sides then used Google Sketchup to construct the exact drawing of the Church.

Prisms, both rectangular and square were the main shapes constructed then triangular prisms for the roof.

Feel free to come and view your child’s Church design, they look amazing! We are also looking at

Transformations, reflections and rotations and the Cartesian Plane.

YELS Group Healthy Soils YELS Group Leaders organised a wonderful workshop yesterday involving the whole School and students

participated in activities about erosion, composition of soil, PH Testing and Food Webs. Children rotated

around to the four sessions and the YELS Leaders led the learning activities. Well done to Caleb, Georgina,

Heidi and Jesse for being so organised and running such a fabulous afternoon to share their learning about

Healthy Soils.

Poetry Competition

We have all written a poem about a native animal for the Max Fatchen Poetry Competition. Here is

Georgina’s poem about a Koala.

The Koala As the sun awakes it pokes its head over the horizon,

making the sky turn fuchsia. High up in the fork on an old gum tree sleeps a ball of fluff. An animal with fur of smoky grey and ears a pale rose pink.

Small stumpy arms and legs stretching as far as they could go. A mouth like a dark tunnel that never ends.

The sun is high now winking though the trees.

Sun so bright, making it hard to sleep.

Two big, black eyes still and stern blinking and winking then finally stop. With a nose as dark as night, claws sharp as spears.

Leisurely he clambered looking for some leaves.

Crunching leaves noisily. Sticky eucalyptus leaves, he sucks out all the juice.

The sap as sticky as honey from a hive. Eye lids closing, as slowly as snow falling.

In the fork of the old gum tree sleeps a teddy bear with fur of smoky grey.

Stop your chain saws, the bush is under threat. Georgina Eckermann Year - 7

Table Tennis

Well done to Tyla and Sasha who have organised a whole School Table Tennis Competition. It has been a

fabulous way to start the term.

Riverton Primary School will be celebrating their 150th year of providing

public education on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th November 2016.

On the Saturday evening there will be a ‘cocktail event’ at the Town Hall.

On Sunday 13th we are hosting an ‘open school and concert’ at the school. This will include open classrooms, official opening of the time

capsule buried 50 years ago. We are having displays of old school photos and other historical artefacts.

Past students and staff are most welcome.

For further information contact Riverton Primary School.