LONG STREET PRIMARY SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Term 2 2021 | Week 6

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News from the Principal

Last week Governing Council met for their 1st meeting after the AGM. This meeting was well represented with a variety of school projects being approved and ready to be sent out to contractors. Lighting and interior painting will be a long term project and will more than likely take up the rest of the school year as the jobs have to be staggered to ensure the availability of contractors. I will keep you informed of where we are up to as the jobs are awarded and finalised.

At our recent pupil free day we spent the day working with a Literacy expert in the area of reading Improvement. This sits in line with our schools Site Improvement Plan to improve reading levels for all children. The program is called Acadience and allows staff the opportunity to identify the reading skills students need to work on to improve their reading levels. It is a very quick process to identify the skills that an individual may be lacking. From here staff develop targeted strategies which they implement at an individual level. The aim is to fine tune teacher practice and be really strategic around what learning opportunities we provide our students. Staff have a number of assignments to complete before the end of term before the targeted work begins.

Staff are busily pulling together Semester 1 reports ready for distribution in week 10. This is a highly demanding job and I thank and acknowledge staff for their work during this time.

The Year 6/ 7 shirts and jumpers are here and are being worn proudly by staff and students. There (as always) were a few minor hiccups in getting them to the students but I would like to thank you all for your patience. Special thanks to Raylene and Mrs O’Neil for organising them.

Bryan Rotherham

Principal

 

Senior Leader

Well, who can believe it is already the end of Week 6?  We have completed the second round of Read, Write Inc testing and have seen steady growth across Rooms 1-6.  Our RWI leaders are doing a fabulous job and our students are working hard to be successful, it is fantastic to see the enthusiasm and pride in their faces when they pass levels and identify for themselves the success they are having.

In Week 8 Mrs O’Neil, Mr Masters and myself will be beginning our training in the Berry Street Education Model.  This approach is based on trauma-informed learning and the science of well-being.  It will assist us to work with our staff to better understand the impact trauma has on our children and to consider the effects of vicarious trauma.  It uses a multidisciplinary approach that highlights the role of the teacher in a trauma-informed classroom, and to their relationship with their class members.  We are all looking forward to this course and look forward to sharing our learning with our colleagues.

Jodie Turpin

Senior Leader

Student Wellbeing Leader News

On Friday the 4th of June we had PJ, Onesie and Crazy Hair Day. This was a huge success with both students and staff and we as a school raised $164.30 for the Royal Flying Doctors Service.

Here is a little about what a crucial service the Royal Flying Doctors play in keeping our community safe.

“At the Royal Flying Doctor Service in South Australia & Northern Territory (Central Operations), every day we assist around 100 patients, be it an aeromedical evacuation, a GP and Community Health Nurse clinic, a telehealth call, a mental health or oral health clinic, or a child's immunisation. From our four aeromedical bases at Darwin, Alice Springs, Port Augusta, and Adelaide, and our health services staffed by Remote Area Nurses in Marree, Andamooka and Marla, RFDS Central Operations assists over 50,000 patients every year - that's one patient every 20 minutes!”

Becc O’Neil 


Wellbeing Leader

Diary Dates

June/July


JUNE
Monday 14thQueens Birthday Public Holiday
Friday 18th

Girl's Basketball

Friday 25thHockey
JULY
Friday 2nd

End of Term

2.10pm Finish

Monday 19thFirst Day of Term 3

What's Happening in ........

Room 7

This semester our class has been using the STEM room to look at the beginning of coding and how it influences our society. We have been looking at how we give instructions to microchips and robots to make them do certain actions. We started out by using Bee Bots and working in pairs to experiment with them on how to sync them to follow certain paths.  We then made maps that we coded into the Bee Bots to see if they could find the treasure on the map.

All students had great fun experimenting with the Bee Bots and using trial and error and math predictions to make judgements on the path and directions needed to be successful.

Next, we moved into using Spheros.  Spheros are another type of robot that you can program or use freestyle. We explored the Sphero and its functions and all the available options it has.

After a session of play-based learning we then began to look at coding and what block coding is about. Block-based coding is dragging and dropping coding instruction “blocks” to construct options for the Sphero to do. Coding is computational thinking and we have been exploring this slowly through our STEM lessons.

Our class has enjoyed learning from many perspectives on the amazing ways of coding.

Around our School

Basketball Winners

PJ/Onesie/Crazy Hair Day

Community Informaton