Alawa Primary School Newsletter

Wow, Week 4 already and we hit the formal NAPLAN testing period for students in Years 3 and 5 this week. We are super proud of them all for the efforts and their commitment to doing their best.

Super huge thanks to all those who came long to the Farm Working Bee the other day - many hands make light work and Ms Conder and Farmer Bob were so appreciative of all the support.

Our planning groups are in full swing preparing for the following events:

• Rainbow Run - check out the coloured headbands popping up around the school [Ms Bernardino tells me already over $1500 pledged in donations]
• Trivia Night - first for us and sure to be loads of adult fun led by Steph Cockfield
• Sports Day - the oval is being marked out and we are all getting excited and starting our house team chants etc at Bootcamp.

Please be sure to keep informed through our regular communication about these events.

One of the highlights in my days at Alawa are when students share their work with me. Lately I have been inundated by persuasive texts trying to convince me of many things including:

• A campaign to clean up the school by Amelie in Year 1
• A request for the students in 2 Ward to leave their shoes off after Bootcamp on Wednesdays till recess
• A request for extra play time at recess for 4/5 France from Natalia
• A request for a class pet
• Request for icey poles from the cherubs in 1 McHatten
• Request to add the 'Parrot' cheer back to the applause wheel by Lestari and Paige.

It is clear to see what our writing focus is at the moment!

Have a terrific week and hope to see you around the school, 

 Sandy Cartwright [Principal of the Best School in the Multiverse]

Last Friday Ash Heard from Year 4/5 France shared this poem with me:

Ms Cartwright

Mindful

Smart

Cool

Amazing

Respectful

Terrific

Wonderful

Right

Intelligent

Good at being a Principal

Horrific

Trendy

PS Not to sure about the 'horrific' but Ash assured me it was meant in a nice way!

During my time in primary classrooms over the past two weeks  I have also been clarifying / exploring with the classes the differences between the Alawa School Values and the ALLE tools for learning. We have all agreed on the following:

• The values are things we do / be / show
• The Tools are things we use.

Further information about our Assessment Capable Learner can be found on our website:

https://www.alawaprimary.nt.edu.au/learning/assessment-capable-learner

Sandy Cartwright

This week forms are available for students in Years 4-6 to register their interest in participating in the regional Soccer Gala Day to be held on Friday 21st May. We have registered to have 2 teams involved on the day and busses are funded through our Casuarina Education Precinct Sport in Schools program which the school contributes to financially.

Forms and money are to be handed in at the front office by Friday 14th May at the latest and will be date and time stamped.

The final team will be selected by Monday 17th May according to the following criteria:

• order in which the form was handed in
• payment of the $8 levy
• recent behaviour in class and the playground
• recent attendance and arrival at time for school.

Any students who pay the levy but are not selected for the teams will have their money reimbursed.

Sandy Cartwright

Last week our Senior Student Commissioners participated in a Go Live session, connecting virtually with over 100 student commissioners from other schools and our partners including Summer Howarth, Tanya Vaughan and Amanda Bickerstaff.  

Our 15 Student Commissioners from Years 5 and 6 joined with Mrs Baines, Ms Katie and myself to explore the impact they can have on school improvement and delve more deeply into data sets to narrow the focus for our investigation this year. They discussed the ways they can communicate with their families and peers to share their messages as well as unpack the Big Ideas they are investigating.

Huge thanks to all the families who supported the school swimming program recently for Preschool - Year 2. As always we do an internal review to inform our future program and we are also seeking any feedback from you as

parents / carers.

If you have any thoughts regarding the program please send them through via email

alawa.school@education.nt.gov.au

Hello everyone and welcome to Week 4,

Fun time reading with our little buddies

It was wonderful to spend several hours in Preschool last week and have Year 2 Bernardino join us. The ‘big kids’ thrived as little teachers, enjoying sharing books and playing outside.

Our Mother’s Day stall was a huge success. Thankyou everyone for your support and to the SRC for your work in making the gifts and selling our products. A special thankyou also to Yenni Kroger for making many of the gifts...especially the last minute extras to ensure we didn’t run out.

NAPLAN

As you are aware our Year 3 and 5 students will be completing their NAPLAN assessments this week. The conditions will be exactly the same as the practice tests so the students are all familiar with the process. The students will be assessed on Writing, Reading, Numeracy and Language Conventions. The tests will be spread out over 2 weeks. Just a reminder to encourage your children to eat and sleep well and drink plenty of water and do the best they can

 It was lovely getting to know many families at our working bee. Thanks for all your help.

Have a lovely week.

Genevieve Donohue, [Assistant Principal]

A HUGE turn out for our Alawa Farm Working Bee on Saturday, fantastic to see so many families joining in to help out. Lots of work was done with the farm looking fantastic and ready for the beautiful dry season. 

A huge effort trimming, tidying up the side fence line, weeding garden beds, mulching and cleaning the chicken areas.

A big thank you to all the families that were able to attend:

Alawa Preschool has acquired some fertilised chicken eggs and we have been counting down for three weeks as the chickens are due to hatch today [day 21 of their life cycle].

We borrowed a fancy incubator from the farm and the children have been observing the eggs inside while being very careful not to knock the table or press ANY buttons. Children have also been learning all about the life cycle of a chicken through big books, stories and exploration the investigation area where the eggs are also housed. With the teacher’s guidance preschool children have used a torch to look through the eggs and see if they can see and embryo inside. We are all so excited to meet the little chicks when they finally emerge from their eggs.

We have also been talking about other animals that start out life in an egg; including caterpillars. Over the next fortnight, and as part of our book explorer program, we will be reading the classic Eric Carle book ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’. There is so much learning to take place through exploration of the Caterpillar to butterfly life cycle and this magical story that has been a favourite for generations.

We hope you have a wonderful week 

Alice, Emma, Kelly and Flor  [Preschool Team]

Students at Alawa receive raffle tickets [house points] for their attitude and behavior in the playground and out the front of the school at the end of the day, as well as having a go at the weekly quiz. These are then counted on a Friday along with the points from the activity after recess on Friday where we count the students in full uniform, wearing house shirts etc.  At the end of each term we also include the points earnt through the recycling project and water bottle checks.

In Week 3 of Term 2 Goyder is ahead of Finnis and Manton. 

Finnis is still the lead for the year!

Muster is held at Alawa after each recess and lunch break - this gives us an opportunity for everyone to settle from playtime, share any celebrations and work on consistency of messages and expectation.

Each day we allocate class points during Muster time recognizing those students who were ready and waiting to go back to class calmly and quietly after break times. The winning class from each 3 weeks will receive ice-blocks from Ms Cartwright and get to choose 5 songs that will play before our bells for the following 3 weeks.

In Week 3 Term 2, the class with the most points was... Transition Lane!

The winning class for Weeks 1-3 was... Year 2 Ward!!!

Twice a week we tally up all students water bottles and students receive a house point for each one brought in. 

In Week 3 of Term 2 Finnis is ahead of Goyder and Manton!

In the lead for Term 2 we have Goyder with 177 points!!

Just Right Books

You may have heard your child coming home and talking about how they have chosen a book to read that is a Just Right Book. These are books that they can read and comprehend [understand the meaning of] but are challenging enough that they will stretch themselves and learn new vocabulary.

Choosing a Just Right Book

Questions to ask when choosing a Just Right Book for home include: Does it look interesting? Does it fit your purpose? Can you understand it? Do you know most of the words?

One strategy you can use to help you choose a Just Right Book is the Five Finger Rule. The steps to this rule are as follows:

• When your child finds a book he wants to read, have them flip to a page in the middle of the book. [One with the same amount of text as the other pages.]
• Ask your child to read the page — out loud so you can help.
• From a closed fist, hold up a finger each time your child misses a word. They can do this on their own eventually.

0-1 Fingers—Too Easy

2-3 Fingers—Just Right

4-5 Fingers—Too Hard

You can use the bookmark found at the following link to help you choose a Just Right Book

https://tinyurl.com/Just-Right-Bookmark

Sacha Evans [ Library & ICT Manager]

Part of the Alawa’s journey this year is to develop an inquiry based learning model that is to be shared throughout the school. Mr Henderson, Mrs Baines and Miss Hammond have just completed some amazing learning about the inquiry process.

Part of this process is to get students wondering…….

The team developed a competition for staff to create imaginative ‘I Wonder’ photos which each teacher shared with their students to get them to start wondering and inquiring!

The students in Year 5/6 Hammond had the following wonderings about this photo…..

Jakobie and Lachlan: ‘We wonder if the teacher is giving surgery on the bear, all the students are too busy playing with their toys and not working.’

Blair and Harper: ‘We wonder if the bear was assassinated and they had to perform surgery on the bear. Mr Henderson is trying to block the camera. We think the white bear is just about to eat their lunch.’

Erin and Mia: ‘We wonder if it’s a secret room in a Build a Bear factory where the bears are implanted with hearing devices.’

Afaf: ‘I wonder if Mr Henderson and Mrs Ward covered the wall with danger tape so they could steal the diamonds from the teddy bears.’

Evangelina: ‘I wonder if this is a prank they are pulling on Ms Cartwright?’

Zoe: ‘I wonder if this is an alternate universe and they have completely changed characters?’

What do you wonder???

We are currently looking into purchasing long sleeved polos for students to wear as part of their day to day school uniform.  Cost per shirt is $40.00 

We are looking for those families that think they would like to purchase to advise us via email to Ms Tamra at tamra.caruana@education.nt.gov.au 

If we receive enough interest we will take to council next meeting for discussion. Please have your response back by Friday 14th May. 

Our Mission— is to provide the Alawa School community with delicious healthy meals and snacks and to create meaningful links to our kitchen garden program.

LUNCHTIME SPECIALS: Weeks 4-6

Wednesday – Spaghetti Bolognaise *V option available or Chicken wings and fried rice

Thursday– Spaghetti Bolognaise *V option available or Homemade Beef Burgers

Friday –Homemade Pizza. Roasted vegetable or Hawaiian 

[Serve $3.00 or large serve $5.50 Spaghetti, Gluten Free Spaghetti $6.50]

A reminder that our school Cafe is open Wednesday to Friday ONLY. Closed on Monday and Tuesdays. 

Order online at www.quickcliq.com.au  

Last Friday we had a great time! We are loving seeing all our friends again and exploring preschool. This week we really enjoyed the wooden doll house and creating all sorts of interesting scenarios at the house! We also go busy with the felt boards, puzzles, books, and drawing. Much to the children’s delight, this week we made scones. Measuring, counting, mixing, rubbing, and tasting – it was so much fun! It was a stunning dry season morning, so we spent most of it outside in the preschool yard, digging in the sand pit, riding the bikes and scooters and painting. There are so many activities outside, we especially enjoy climbing, jumping on the trampoline and the water play table.  For morning tea, we shared our scones with our parents and indulged in jam and cream. They were delicious. 

Join us for another fun week of Playgroup next Friday

Miss Maria [Playgroup Coordinator]

We will be holding a Professional Development Day for staff on Tuesday June 15th.  Professional development days are used by schools to improve the skills of our teachers, school leaders and school administrative support staff. They also allow us the time to continue working on our School Improvement agenda. Students are not to attend school on this day and we have once again arranged Brat Pack to be available for child minding [at your own cost] for those in need.

Please contact Brat Pack direct to secure your child’s place.—8927 2546 or thebratpack@bigpond.com

* Please note that Jingili OSCH will not be operating that day.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact the office on 8997 7666 during school hours.