Alawa Primary School Newsletter

Well here we are now in the second half of the term already!

It was terrific to see so many families come along to the Meet n Greet last week and spend time exploring, connecting and chatting. One of our greatest assets at Alawa is our vibrant, positive school community who shine through at events such as this. 

Annual Report

At the School Council AGM following the Meet n Greet I shared the 2020 Annual Report. This is also available on our website for anyone who would like to have a look.

2020 Annual Report

Volunteers - Greatly appreciated

It has been fantastic to see parents / carers coming back into our school and volunteering in the classrooms, the farm and the kitchen program. Your children certainly love having you spend time at school with them and the staff are appreciative of the extra support and engagement. Remember if you would like to volunteer you can register through our website or call the front office.

Volunteer Registration

Volunteer Policy

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

Hello everyone, 

NAPLAN is an annual national assessment of all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. All students will be assessed online in language conventions [spelling, grammar and punctuation], writing, reading and numeracy. There will be coordinated practice tests later this month and the official testing will take place in early May.

Whilst we value the information that this testing gives us about our students’ learning we acknowledge that NAPLAN tests are one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process. They do not replace the extensive ongoing assessments made by teachers about each student’s performance.

A parent information leaflet will be sent home about the testing closer to the time. If you have any concerns with regards to your child sitting the tests please feel free to come and talk to either Sandy or myself this week. For more information please see the online site.     

Public demonstration site (nap.edu.au)

English Expo – a reminder that our English expo night is next week. Please come along and gain some fantastic tips and resources to support you with you childs/children and their learning at home.

Genevieve Donohue, Assistant Principal

Hello Alawa Families,

Preschool children have been busy investigating ‘life in the Preschool Garden’. After reading a big book on worms (which captivated ALL the children) we have been finding these useful little creatures everywhere! Children have been re-reading the book and wanting to learn more about the minibeasts that inhabit our garden. We are building upon this interest throughout our preschool program. 

The preschool area is also rich in beautiful plants, such as the heliconias that flourish just outside the kitchen window. We arranged some of these flowers and set up a provocation of paints, pastels and long strips of paper; inviting the children to draw and paint what they saw. The results were stunning and our colourful heliconia paintings have joined our garden mural which adorns the preschool room wall.

Thank you to all the families who came along to our Meet n Greet evening last Wednesday evening. It was lovely to see Families having a look around our beautiful preschool and also exploring Alawa Primary School learning spaces.

Have a top week!

Alice, Emma, Kelly and Flor. 

The Woolworths Land Care grant is now open and we would like to apply for funding to cover a small Bee Hive for our farm.

We have sourced a hive that has little manual labour attached with an auto flow harvest system which will limit the need for staff or students to be in extended close contact.

We would like to invite parents and carers to contact us before Friday 12th March with any questions or concerns so we can gauge if this is a project that we can move forward with.

Please feel free to contact Ms Tamra on 8997 7666 or email tamra.caruana@education.nt.gov.au

Our annual Meet, Greet n Eat was once again a huge success with lots of happy smiling family and friends exploring the school.

This event plays an important role in bringing together our Alawa School community and staff and students look forward to it each year.

If you were unable to attend tonight we welcome parents and carers to contact the school at your convenience and make a time to come in and meet your child’s teacher.

Congratulations to our 2 winners from the night Primary Years winner - Shudin and Early Years winner - Yianni!

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 5 of Term 1 Finnis is ahead of Goyder and Manton. 

Goyder is still in 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 5 Term 1, the class with the most points was... Year 5/6 Lotherington!

This semester farm class activities:

• Transition Lane and Connelly: Veggie seeds and weeds, animal care, pollination and weather changes.
• Year 1 Jeffery and McHatten: Kitchen and café garden, animal care, Indonesian and art and crafts.
• Year 2 Bernardino and Ward: Harvest, Indonesian, animal care and arts and craft.
• Year 3 Hughes and 3/4 Baines: Tree supports and garden frames, vegetable garden and animal care.
• Year 4/5 France and Henderson: Native Garden and bush tucker, Animal care and vegetable garden.
• Year 5/6 Lotherington: Aquaponics, garden and animal care.

• Year 5/6 Hammond: Market Stall, garden and animal care.

The students are doing a fantastic job in keeping the farm and animals fed, watered and maintained and have loved the cooler weather during lesson times. Fingers crossed the rain keeps coming as everything has flourished over the last few months. 

Linda Conder, Farm Teacher 

It was wonderful to meet so many of you on Wednesday night last week and to see so many smiling faces. You are most welcome to come into the library after school with your child to find a Just Right Book to take home to read.

If you have any magazines laying around unwanted (they do not have to be current) that I can put out in the library and be used in the classrooms for reading they would be greatly appreciated. Topics can include things like Nature, 4WD, Camping, Fishing, Recipes, Food, Home/House, Garden and Cars.

Thank you to all of those who have been returning overdue books. If you happen to see one of these titles on your shelf which belongs to the school please send it in.

1.       Ella and Olivia : Cupcake Catastrophe  LEXILE 440 Quiz

2.       Ghost Town:  LEXILE 350 Quiz

3.       Pearl #5 : The Brave Unicorn

Sacha Evans, Library & ICT Manager

This week we toured the ICT room to familiarise ourselves with the equipment and the responsibilities the Tek Ninjas have each day.

The Tek Ninjas have also been entered into the Bebras Challenge which is an international Computational Thinking Challenge for students in years 3 to 12 run by CSIRO Digital Careers. Aligned to the Curriculum the skills the students will be using with this challenge include Decomposition, Pattern Recognition, Abstraction, Modelling and Simulation, Algorithms and Evaluation. Having had a go at some of the challenge questions this week it looks to be a lot of fun. 

A consent form with more information about your child’s participation will be sent home today, please have this returned by Friday.

Sacha Evans, Tek Ninja Co-Ordinator

In Year 1 McHatten, we have been learning about the past, present and future. We have spent some time talking about history and the past.

We are using photos of ourselves from the past and comparing them to us in the present. We are writing sentences about how we have changed. It has been a lot of fun sharing stories about our past with the class. I wonder how we will be different in the future.

Its the last week of after school Tenpin bowling this week and Coach Terry has done a wonderful job with the students attending. They have learnt the proper technique of bowling and have had a lot of fun practising with the mobile bowling lanes. They have really improved their skills so look out families when you next go bowling!

It is also the last week of  lunch time Table Tennis this week, we have had coach David back again this term and the students quite enjoy a game with him or Miss Nellie.

Gymnastics will be starting in Week 7 at lunch time Thursday with Territory Gymnastics Academy returning to coach the students. This was very popular last year and it is first in first served so students ensure you are there as soon as the play bell goes to get a spot as we only have 30 spaces available.

Cheers,

Nellie, Sporting in Schools Coordinator

Last Friday students from Years 5/6 attended the Touch Gala day.

Students reported back........

"On Friday the 5th of March Alawa Primary School went to Marrara Stadium to participate in the Touch Football Gala Day. We were split into boys and girls and versed other schools across the Darwin Region. We had a great time competing, I even ended up getting 4 tries which, I was very amazed by"

Niluh Jackson Year 5

"I liked Gala day because we got to play lots of touch games. I liked playing against other teams from around the Darwin Region. Some of the games were hard and some weren’t."

Jake Cox Year 5

"The Gala day was fun and enjoying and all the kids worked hard and played well. The boys and girls were in different pools, The boys in pool A and the girls in pool B.

The boys played great and came out with 4 wins and 1 loss. The girls on the other hand played great coming out with 1 win, 2 losses and 2 draws. But unfortunately none of the teams got a flag. The girls were playing in a round robin which is when there is no finals"

Dayvon, Chevayo and Adrian, Year  6 

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: Week 6

Wednesday – Spaghetti Bolognaise *V option available or Chicken and noodle.

Thursday – Spaghetti Bolognaise *V option available or  Whole baked potatoes with savoury mince, coleslaw, cheese and sour cream.

Friday – Bacon and egg pie

[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  

It was a wonderful morning at Playgroup last Friday. We had so much fun playing house outdoors with tea sets, dressing and feeding babies and washing dishes. We love the sand pit and play equipment too. We are wonderful climbers, even the smallest amongst us!

Indoors we enjoyed creating scenes with the insect figurines; there were so many amazing insects to handle and explore. We love to construct and were very busy this week building scenes in the doll house. As always, we all had fun with the playdough. We also visited the Farm this week. Some of us bought our kitchen scraps which we happily fed to the chickens and ducks. We also visited the fish and studied and petted Turtey and visited Baaaar-barraaaa and the baby goats. At morning teatime, we shared some delicious biscuits. Yum!

Miss Maria, Playgroup Coordinator

LIMITED TIME offer from Entertainment!

Support the Alawa Primary School Farm by purchasing your Entertainment membership.....and for a short time only, you receive a bonus JB HI-FI or Woolworths eGift Card.

Entertainment Memberships are instantly available, valid for a year and gladly accepted at numerous local venues and online.

Check out Entertainment online: https://au.entdigital.net/orderbooks/91168Z2

The Alawa school farm receives 20% of the purchase price.

Please watch out for any new and important updates required to be sent out via email from Ms Cartwright and in our Covid updates section in the newsletter each week.  Please note that birthday cakes etc can still not be brought in to school to share amongst students. 

Our bubblers are open and available for students to use so please ensure they have a water bottle to fill up each day. 

Refer to Northern Territory Government Coronavirus website for the latest COVID-19 Hotspots issued in the NT: https://coronavirus.nt.gov.au/travel/quarantine/hotspots-covid-19