Primary School Newsletter Issue No. 2 23 February 2018alamandacollege.vic.edu.au › wp-content › uploads › 2018 › 04 › ... · 2018-04-16 · PB 1 Primary School Newsletter

PB 1

Primary School Newsletter Issue No. 2 23 February 2018

Dear Families,

Let us discuss the use of phones in schools. At this point, in our technology-based evolution, phones can both be viewed as useful and distracting. Some research reveals that students using cellphones during

class may affect more than just their individual academic performance, student cellphone use may actually have a negative impact on the entire class and the quality of teaching.

It was found that students also continued to use their phones even when they are aware of the negative side effects of cellphone usage in the classrooms. In 2017, we (Alamanda College), started to discuss these issues with our students and over times, after many YouTube clips, discussions and at times some more punitive actions, I am pleased to report to the community that our student use of mobile phones during class time (for texting, social media, gaming) has markedly decreased.

This is not to say that phones are not at times an issue, but generally I can say mostly the students are far more respectful of themselves, friends and staff while at school.

I strongly encourage all parents to monitor their children’s use of technology in the home. An eye-opening YouTube clip called Being Thirteen is worth watching as it opens up a rich conversation to be held with all young people focused on a phenomena called ‘online persona’.

To this end we are inviting parents across to the school to attend a brief conversation with staff about this issue. Please see attached invitation. I look forward to catching up with parents on March 21st and 22nd.

Dare to be wise,

Lyn Jobson Principal Alamanda College

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Alamanda College

Address: 86-100 Alamanda Blvd

Point Cook PO Box 6606, Point Cook

VIC 3030

Telephone: 03-8376 5200

Email: alamanda.k9@edumail.

vic.gov.au

IMPORTANT DATESPublic HolidayMonday, 12 March

PYP NightThursday, 22 March

School PhotosMonday, 26 MarchTuesday, 27 MarchWednesday, 28 March

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2018 School Council Election Process & Timeline

Notice of Election and Call for Nominations (in newsletter and on window)

Monday, 26 February

Close of Nominations Monday, 5 March

Nominations displayed at school and, if number of nominations equals number of vacancies, declare results

Wednesday, 7 March

Ballot Paper distributed if more nominations than vacancies are received in either or both categories

Monday, 12 March

Closing of Ballot Monday, 19 March

Counting of votes and declaration of the poll Monday, 26 March

Results announced to the community

Wednesday, 28 March (on window) and in next newsletter

FIRST COUNCIL MEETING Thursday, 19 April @ 6.00pm

End of Term 1 Thursday 29th March

Term End – Parent Term End – Staff Raman Doegar Michael Hick Andre Louhanapessy Jackie Daniali Lalithasri Ramu Camille Willats Helen Welsh Jaymee Stigwood



Monday, 26 February



Wednesday, 7 March


Monday, 12 March










Monday, 26 February



Wednesday, 7 March


Monday, 12 March








TIMETABLE A

1A - Jessi Bennett1B - Dani Vagg1C - Andrea Taliano1D - Tegan Ma1E - Brad Smith

2A - Mark Crossett2B - Jessica Cook2C - Hannah Droege2D - Liane Gomes2E - Jai Hayes

3A - Kristin Vanden Houte-Smit3B - Megan Saunders3C - Brooke Danaher

4A - Kate Franco 4B - Ashleigh Palmington4C - Shannon Sebek

5A - Ashlea Childs5B - Michael Nicolaides5C - Sue Vandermeer

6A - Heidi Spies6B - Patrick Nelson

TIMETABLE B

1F - Olivia Cameron1G - Alana Bisinella1H - Aimee Smart1I - Jade Farrar

2G - Jessica Stellini2H - Erin Beardsley2I - Allison Gatt2J - Samuel Wight

3D - Alanna Askew3E - Louise Wylaz3F - Jess Mastroianni3G - Teegan Brown

4D - David McGill 4E - Rachael Cunningham4F - Jaqui Decker4G - Melissa Fragiotta

5D - Kate Francis5E - Deanna Kotvski5F - Sam Bates

6C - Tiffany Baldaccino6D - Matt Dean6E - Danielle Colling

TIMETABLE C

1J - Kirsty Richardson1K - Afrodity Petkovski1L - Georgia Skeen1M - Beau Lepp1N - Erik Stewart

2F - Milica Nenadic2K - Jaymee Stigwood2L - Emily Adamek2M - Laura Hawes2N - Molly Elford

3H - Ellie Sunderman 3I - Suzi Koneski3J - Fiona Pritchard3K - Lauren Fleetwood/ Chloe Curwood

4H - Lara Stephens4I - Irena Filipovic4J - Lauren McDonald

5G - Alex Romaniw5H - Sarah Grenfell5I - Kristin David

6F - Leisa Hockley6G - Callum Hickson

2018 ALAMANDA COLLEGE SCHOOL STAFF

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News from Prep

In Prep, we are so excited to be underway with our first Unit of Inquiry for 2018. Our Central Idea ‘Living things may adapt to changing environments’ has encouraged wonderment and awe amongst our youngest cohort of students. Throughout ‘The Burrow’ students and their teachers have actively inquired into various environments whilst beginning to explore living and non-living features that exist in these natural spaces. Student voice and wonderings are used to drive teaching and learning, which in turn ensures students are engaged and excited about their learning journey. Throughout the classrooms, you may experience life under the sea by observing some detailed underwater murals or even find yourself exploring elements of the rainforest! Students are encouraged to observe short documentaries, to spark their thoughts. Teachers are beginning to use the prompts ‘See’, ‘Think’ and ‘Wonder’ to encourage deep thinking and language skills. We encourage parents and families to ask their students about some of the environments and the living creatures that inhabit these spaces! We are looking forward to see where this Unit Of Inquiry takes our students!

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News from Year 1

Year One students have settled in beautifully to a new learning environment this term, and are exhibiting Learner Profile Attributes as they broaden their social circles. We have been busy developing our Essential Agreements using the Learner Profile and have begun to explore a new Unit of Inquiry, guided by the Central Idea of ‘Awareness of our characteristics, abilities and interests informs our learning and development’. This Unit of Inquiry is under the Transdisciplinary Theme of ‘Who We Are’ and follows the Lines of Inquiry ‘Physical, social and emotional characteristics’, ‘Similarities and differences between ourselves and others’ and ‘Personal abilities and interests’. During the tuning in stage of the Unit of Inquiry, students have began to breakdown the vocabulary within the central idea, such as defining the terms of ‘awareness’ and ‘characteristics’. Students in 1I have defined awareness and characteristics as: “A characteristic is what someone might look like” - Gloria “It is something about what our body looks like, such as our hair being blonde and our eyes being brown” - Kenneth “Awareness is about listening, smelling, tasting, seeing and touching things around us” - Hallowed In 1G we have been identifying what makes an ideal learner. “A good learner is caring, sits nicely and listens” - Jeslyn L “A good learner is someone who is creative, they think of new ideas and are risk takers” - Ishaq “A good learner is someone who is principled, has a go and is a thinker” - Riya

Students have also been involved in various activities such as labelling the characteristics of book characters, identifying what makes an ideal learner and collecting data about their class using tally marks. Over the next few weeks we will begin writing our own narratives, creating poems and exploring measurement. We have begun to explore a range of poetry types, such as list poems, about our characteristics, interests and abilities. Students will begin to look at the stages of creating narratives. They have been enjoying listening to and reading a range of texts and discussing the characters in these stories During our daily numeracy sessions we are focusing on expanding our place value knowledge, gaining a deeper understanding of number facts and identifying patterns that exist in the numbers we experiment with. We are also gathering and displaying data in the form of tallies, bar graphs and pictographs by asking questions related to our characteristics, abilities and interests, such as ‘What is your hair colour?’

It was lovely to meet with families during our Get to Know You Interviews last week. We truly appreciated the opportunity to spend time finding out more information about your child and setting some goals for the year ahead. Can we please ask that students are bringing their take home books and iPads to school every day and that iPads are fully charged. If your child hasn’t returned their Writer’s Notebook to class, we kindly ask that it is returned as soon as you can do so. Thank you to everyone who has donated a box of tissues to your child’s class. We look forward to the remainder of this term with a knowledgeable Year One cohort! Timetable B teachers: Aimee Smart, Alana Bisinella, Olivia Cameron and Jade Farrar

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Alamanda College

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL’S SUMMARY

Year 1/Prep DepartmentI would like to continue to extend a very warm and friendly welcome to all the new Prep Families who have just recently joined the Alamanda Prep School Community. The Prep team continues to grow with new enrolments. I would like to wish you all the very best

and look forward to supporting you and your child as they begin their learning journey at Alamanda College.

Primary Years Programme EveningAlamanda K-9 College will be hosting their annual PYP evening on Thursday 22nd of March. The Prep and grade one children will welcome their parents, relatives and friends in to their classrooms to demonstrate their understanding of the PYP Learner Profile or Attitude.

The learner profile describes the dispositions and responsibilities that go beyond just academic success and represents the qualities of striving towards developing an International person.

The profile aims to develop learners who are:• Inquirers- having a natural curiosity to learn.• Knowledgeable-exploring themes which have global

relevance and importance• Thinkers- exercising initiative in applying thinking skills

critically and creatively. • Communicators- expressing ideas and information

confidently in different languages.• Principled- having a sound grasp of the principles of moral

reasoning.• Open-minded- respecting the views, values and traditions

of other individuals and cultures• Caring- showing sensitivity towards the needs and feelings

of others.• Risk-takers/Courageous- approaching unfamiliar situations

with confidence • Balanced- understanding the importance of physical,

mental and personal wellbeing. • Reflective- giving thoughtful consideration to their own

learning.

The IB-PYP Attitudes are a vital focus in the development of positive attitudes towards people, the environment, and learning. These are the day to day attitudes we use: appreciation, commitment, confidence, cooperation, creativity, curiosity, empathy, enthusiasm, independence, integrity, respect, and tolerance.

Appreciation: They strive to appreciate the wonder and beauty of the world and its people.

Commitment: They strive to be committed to their learning, preserving and showing self-discipline and responsibility.

Confidence: They feel confident in their ability as learners, having the courage to take risks, apply what they have

Partners in Education,

Carmen SaccoPrep/Grade One Assistant Principal

learned and make appropriate decisions.Co-operation They strive to cooperate, collaborate, and

lead or follow as the situation demands.Creativity: They strive to be creative and imaginative in their

thinking and in their approach to problems and dilemmas.

Curiosity: They understand that is important to be curious about the nature of learning and the world, its people and cultures.

Empathy: They strive to imaginatively project themselves into another’s situation, in order to understand his/her thoughts, reasoning and emotions

Enthusiasm: They show an understanding of the enjoyment of learning.

Independence: They think and act independently, make their own judgments based on reasoned principles and are able to defend their judgments.

Integrity: They understand the importance of having integrity and a firm sense of fairness and honesty.

Respect: They work to respect themselves, others and the world around them.

Tolerance: They work towards feeling sensitivity towards differences and diversity in the world and being responsive to the needs of others.

After your child’s classroom event, you are cordially invited to join in the activities around the school promoting an evening of community and fun. The school choir, art displays, food vans and the opportunity to view the performances of other grade levels.

School AssemblyThe grade one children will attend assembly each week in the “Great Space” at the following times:

Thursday 8.40-9.40am - 1H , 1I, 1J, 1K, 1L, 1M, 1N, 1 HFriday 8.40-9.40am - 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E, 1F, 1G

All parents and carers are welcome to come and join our celebration.

The Prep children will begin to attend assembly at the beginning of Term 2.

HatsAlamanda College is a Sun Smart School and it is a requirement for all children to be wearing their school hat in Terms 1 and 4. Please ensure that your child has an Alamanda school hat to wear when they go outdoors for play and outdoor classes. It would be most helpful if you label your child’s hat should it become lost.

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News from Year 2

All teachers in Grade 2 would like to thank the parents and students who attended the ‘Get to Know You’ interviews last week. It was fantastic to discuss the goals that you and your children have set for their learning journey in 2018. In 2C, students have shown great enthusiasm when investigating number sequences by skip counting. Students identified their strengths and areas for improvement when choosing their first skip counting goal. Sybella from 2C liked working on her goal of skip counting by hundreds past 1000 by making her own place value chart. Jerry mentioned that his goal helps him to challenge himself in maths. In goal groups, students are supporting one another to work towards achieving their goals by striving for speed and accuracy. Students have been developing their own questions about our world to guide our inquiry focuses for the upcoming year. Each class collated their questions by identifying similarities which helped to group them into common themes. We recently joined together as a Grade 2 cohort to share each classes experiences within this activity. The

students noticed that as a Grade 2 cohort, we had lots of questions about space, animals and the human body! So our students spoke, and we listened! We are first inquiring into the Transdisciplinary Theme ‘Who We Are’, through the central idea of ‘The effective interactions between human body systems contribute to health and survival’. Our first ‘tuning in’ activity of the inquiry involved students tracing around their bodies on butcher’s paper and drawing anything already they know about the human body by accessing their prior knowledge. Students also used their current vocabulary to label each body part.

On Wednesday, the students of 2K and 2L used the school’s microscopes to take a closer look at the structure of hair. Students were able to compare human hair and some animal hair. The students decided to display their thinking in the form of a table, where they wrote descriptions of what their saw and illustrations to support their findings. Sarah from 2K noticed that when she looked at the brown hair in the microscope it was a brighter colour and all the hair was kind of see through. The Grade 2 teachers are looking forward to hearing more wonderings from our students regarding what body parts or systems they would like to inquire into further!

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News from Year 3

It surprises us very year to see time go so quickly throughout the year. And the beginning of this year is proving to be busy and full of engaging learning experiences for our Year Three students.

Students are well settled into their classroom routines and with confidence have made some great friends. They have been building their class Essential Agreement in co-operative groups and with their teachers.

Students were very confident when sharing their wonderings with the year three cohort and demonstrated

enthusiasm when they needed to vote for the unit they were most passionate for. Building our student voice has been an informative experience for teachers as well as the students. Through this process, the Year Threes concluded that our first Unit of inquiry will be under the transdisciplinary theme, ‘How we Organise Ourselves.’

Our central idea is: Extreme natural events can impact humans and the environment.

Students on Timetable A have also been working on collecting data

and analysing this data. They will then evaluate the best possible way to present their data for others to interpret.

Students on Timbale C have been working on 3D shapes and using their perspective to view shapes in different ways.

All students in year three have been participating in Book Clubs and have been working on setting their personal learning goals. What a great start to the school year.

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Alamanda College


“Getting to Know You”Many parents took the opportunity to sit with their child’s teacher and share their understandings of their child and their goals for the 2018 school year. The teachers are also getting to know your child during the first weeks of school and other opportunities will be made to share your child’s learning progress within the classroom. All teachers value the knowledge you have about your child, their particular interests and passions as this knowledge helps the teacher to engage with your child. This was an initial meeting to establish home-school partnerships that I am sure will develop further over the year. Thank you for your attendance.

Start and End of the School day.Students and teachers in the Year 2 and 3 Mini-school have been so flexible as they adapt to their new classroom placement on the Alamanda College grounds. The builder’s fences will be dismantled shortly and students will be able to develop ‘short-cuts’ to their classrooms. Please encourage your child in Years 2 and 3 to attempt to walk to and from their classroom to their designated drop off or after school meeting points, this would ease the current congestion happening along the pathways. We do understand that maintaining contact with your child’s teacher is important and the classroom teachers do welcome discussions with parents, perhaps returning to the classroom after meeting your child might be an option to assist with the current congestion.

A reminder: to keep Thursday, March 22 from 4:00pm – 7:00pm free, to attend Alamanda College’s International Baccalaureate, Primary Years Programme Launch for 2018. This evening is an opportunity for the children to share their understandings with you and an opportunity for you to see Alamanda K-9 College at work and play.

Regards,Helen Welsh

Assistant PrincipalYear 2 and 3 Mini-School

School AssemblyThe children will attend Year 2 – 6 Assembly with their timetable grouping, each week in the “Great Space.” Assemblies start next week.

Timetable A–Tuesday at 8:40am including 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E and 3A, 3B, 3C.

Timetable B – Wednesday 8:40am including 2G, 2H, 2I, 2J and 3D, 3E, 3F, 3G.

Timetable C – Monday 12:00 noon (NB change) including 2F, 2K, 2L, 2M, 2N and 3H, 3I, 3J, 3K.

Parents and carers are welcome to attend. The School Assembly is an opportunity to focus on the effort and achievements of the students as they develop their Learner Profile and Attitudes. Each week two classes make a short presentation during the Assembly to share a learning highlight from their classroom. This provides the students with an opportunity to further develop their oral presentation skills and to listen to and ask questions about topics of interest, developing student voice. All children receive daily recognition for their effort and the awards at Assembly form part of this recognition.

CurriculumThe children and teachers have been focusing on “Learning to Learn” in the first four weeks of this term. The children have been exploring their strengths as learners and have been forming their class essential agreement as they develop as a community of learners. The teachers have further developed the students’ understandings of having a ‘growth mindset’ and how persistence and practise contribute to learning. Learning goals are being defined in reading, writing and numeracy.

The students have identified questions or wonderings they have about the world and have developed their first Transdisciplinary Themes and Central ideas. The Year 2 and 3 teachers have provided more details in this newsletter. The students are very excited to be investigating their chosen Units of Inquiry.

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News from Year 4

Believe it or not it is Week 4 already, nearly halfway through Term 1. The children continue to settle in to school life confidently. In classes we are beginning to set writing goals for ourselves and many children have been creatively planting writing seeds to be developed into personal writing pieces helping them to achieve these goals.

For our Unit of Inquiry, the children have been writing personal and world questions which were taken to a planning day for the teachers where they planned an inquiry unit based around this student voice.

Just a reminder that Labour Day is fast approaching, 12th March, as is the PYP community evening, Thursday 22nd March. If your child is on Timetable A please make sure they have handed in their dietary requirement forms.

Ameesha and Gabrielle have been creatively planting seeds and are beginning to set goals for themselves, they successfully made informed decisions about how they will know they have met those goals.

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News from Year 5

Unit of InquiryOver the past few weeks the Year 5 students have been working collaboratively in their respective classes preparing a presentation around the ‘Big Ideas’ and Key Concepts that they would like to inquire into. This process involved the students unpacking each of the 6 Transdisciplinary Themes and collaboratively coming up with questions that they found interesting to them. Thursday of last week saw the Year 5 cohort gather together in the Great Space where each class had representatives that shared their class questions/Big Ideas and Key Concepts that they favoured. At the end of each class presentation, the students voted for which topic they favoured. This was a positive experience for both teachers and students as this gave a wonderful insight to the interests of the students. Moving forward from here will see the students along with the teachers create the Central Idea with the Lines of Inquiry. Very exciting times ahead :).

Preparing for NaplanNAPLAN is primarily a Problem-Solving and Understanding test. In order to answer the questions on NAPLAN students don’t just need content, they need to transfer that content to a non-routine question. Often the questions fit the following types: multistep, working back-to-front, completing gaps or non-standard equations and non-standard questions about a range of topics such as fractions, shapes and place value. Very few of the questions can be solved using straight application of an algorithm or formula. They require interpretation and the ability to work out solutions to questions that are unrehearsed.

NAPLAN requires students to have dealt with their misconceptions and formed deep understanding of the concepts. If you look through the answers in multiple choice questions you will find that many of them contain common student misconceptions. Students who have not had the opportunity to confront and self-correct these misconceptions tend to be caught out when the questions are not in a routine format and they are required to think for themselves.

Teachers are using the students ZPD data to provide tasks that are differentiated to their specific needs along with running focus groups within the classroom.

Currently the Naplan Focus for the Term is: Unit of Inquiry (Writing) – Persuasive TextsUnit of Inquiry (Reading) – Interpreting Naplan Magazines / Questions Unit of Inquiry (Maths) – Number

HomeworkThis week the students will begin receiving their homework. Homework will be NO new concepts but rather a revision of the items covered during class workshops.

Homework will be handed out on a Monday and due back the following Wednesday. This gives the children ample amount of time to complete the set tasks.

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News from Year 6

The Grade 6 students have officially settled into the 2018 school year, and have been actively participating in many exciting ventures to support and develop their personal learning. Promoting student voice and agency has been our main focus for the start of this year, and students have been included in the planning process for our Units of Inquiry. On transition day in 2017, teachers gathered student wonderings about themselves and the world, and used these questions as a starting point for future learning in 2018. Students across the cohort sorted these questions, and unpacked the transdisciplinary themes in order to understand the ‘big idea’ behind each of their questions. Furthermore, students were also able to align the key concepts with each of their ‘big ideas’ so as to really articulate the learning journey they want to go on. Each of these ‘big ideas’ where shared to the whole grade 6 cohort, and students

were given the opportunity to vote on their favourite ‘big ideas’. From here, the teachers have been able to plan out a unit of inquiry based around the ‘big idea’ of leadership, under the Central Idea ‘Leaders can promote of deny freedom’. This is a great place for students in grade 6 to start, as they better understand who they are, and make connections between global leadership and their own responsibilities as a grade 6 leader at Alamanda College.

This week, the grade 6 students attended an excursion to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), as a part of their 2018 Art inquiry. Students explore interactive art installations that connected with the senses, and were able to apply a questioning lens when exploring the motivations of the artist in creating their piece. Students were respectful, open-minded, and enthusiastic on this excursion,

representing our school with pride!

As a starting point for our robotics program in grade 6, students have been learning how to code with Python. We have been using the Code Club online program which walks students through different coding pathways, and allows then to learn the language of Python. As students develop their skills using Python, they will translate their new knowledge towards the Humanoid robots which is a grade 6 specific robotic technology.

We would like to remind families that students can purchase a grade 6 polo shirt, which can be worn on Wednesdays and Fridays. Notes have gone home, and are due back by the 13th of March. We also have some exciting camps on offer this year, which we are hoping to see many students attend!

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Alamanda College


Thanks to all parents who attended the ‘Get to Know You’ interviews. It was great to see so many parents taking the time to meet with the teacher and discuss their child’s academic, social and physical learning goals for 2018.

During the ‘Learning to Learn’ period, students and teachers have been working together to build relationships, identify their learning styles, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in all subject areas. This information enables students to adopt “powerful” learning strategies and self-regulating/goal setting strategies to enable them to reflect on their academic performance. We use Western Australian First Steps Developmental Continua to map out a student’s entry points in Literacy, and the Numeracy Continuum in Mathematics. All students have their own continua, and are beginning to use these to highlight areas they believe they need to work on. Students record their own goals and identify ways they can achieve their objectives. The teacher then gathers and reviews each student’s goals on a regular basis and plans the learning experiences based on the child’s individual needs. Once the student has achieved the objective, they evaluate how effectively their strategies have helped them meet their academic goals and adjust strategies accordingly. They also confer with their teacher to identify their achievements and areas that they need to further improve on. The evidence of their learning is then displayed in their portfolio. Following on from the Learning to Learn, we will commence our first inquiry units for 2018.

As you may be aware, this year at Alamanda, much of our time is taken up with getting the school ready for the forthcoming PYP accreditation. One of the tasks that we have undertaken is to review our current Programme of Inquiry. This has been a major but a welcoming disruption for us all. To better prepare us for this forthcoming event, we have Marcia Behrenbruch who is a renowned Development

and Recognition Manager working with us two days a week. Marcia has extensive experience in primary and secondary education. She has lived and worked in Canada, the Netherlands, Western Australia, Vietnam, Singapore and Victoria, Australia. She was the IB Regional Development and Recognition manager for Australasia. Her previous roles also included Head of School Services in Singapore and Head of Professional Development for the PYP. Marcia has a BSc from University of British Columbia, a Bachelor and Master’s in Education from Monash University in Australia and completed her doctorate the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Marcia has ignited a flurry of emotions amongst teachers as she asks probing questions about the units of inquiry, making teachers wonder about the significance and challenges of units for the students. We are all very excited to have Marcia working with us and hope to absorb her experience and knowledge to further develop our understanding of the Primary Years Program and the IB philosophy.

This week I was fortunate enough to attend an Art excursion to the NGV exhibition with the Year 6’s. We visited the NGV Triennial exhibition featuring artists and designers from many countries. We were fascinated to see the world of art and design, across cultures, scales, geographies and perspectives. We explored cutting edge technologies, architecture, animation, performance, painting, drawing, fashion design, tapestry and sculpture. We also had an opportunity to look at the world in its past, present and future through the eyes of some of the most creative minds working today. Overall the children were very well behaved and enjoyed an informative day out.

Kind regards,

Jackie DanialiYears 4, 5 & 6 Assistant Principal

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Specialist Subjects

P.E. News

The Year Ones have begun their inquiry into Indigenous Australian culture through theatre.

We have been using the stories “How the birds got their colours” and “Why the Koala has a stumpy tail” to research how to tell a narrative story, and what lessons these stories might be teaching us. The students have shown a great interest in understanding Indigenous culture, and an excitement with performing different Australian animals. It has been a great start to the year for the students, and I look forward to seeing the students continue to be open-minded and courageous with their learning.

Drama News

This year Alamanda College is involved in the ‘Coles Sports for Schools’ program. Students and their families are encouraged to collect as many vouchers as possible and place these in the collection boxes in the front foyer and at the office. Remember, the more vouches we collect, the more sports gear our school will receive!

The P.E team, with the help of Mrs. Pritchard, have been putting students in Grades 4,5 and 6 through their paces at the Aquapulse Swimming centre in preparation for the swimming trials next Tuesday, February 27th. Students will have already received notes to attend these trials. Students will have the opportunity to qualify for a position in the Alamanda swimming squad, competing against other schools in the Point Cook district on March 7th. We encourage students to continue their hard work and wish all students good luck with the upcoming trials and district carnival.

Grade 5 and 6 classes this week began their SEPEP competitions. Students compete as part of a team in a variety of different sports as they assume different roles and responsibilities that make sport possible in the local community. We encourage students to come prepared for all PE lessons with correct uniform, a hat and a drink bottle.

Thanks, PE team.

It was great to see all of the excited students talk about the Chinese New Year and practise some Chinese New Year greetings. In the Chinese calendar 2018 is the Year of the Dog. The Chinese New Year celebration commenced on Friday 16th February and will continue for 15 days until the 2nd March. To welcome the Chinese New Year, our background Chinese language users created Spring-happiness poems and greetings for classroom display. They also applied Chinese paper cutting skills and calligraphy to create beautiful and creative Spring Festival posters.

Our Grade Two students are inquiring into the story behind the Chinese New Year. They explored the common ways

LOTE News

that Chinese people celebrate the Chinese New Year and understood the significance of receiving red envelopes during the Chinese New Year. In groups, students worked together to identify the typical pictures, patterns, and Chinese words on red envelopes. They are very excited to create their own red envelopes that represent good luck and best wishes.

Grade Four students are inquiring into the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China. They enjoyed learning about the interesting facts and stories of the ancient Chinese buildings and constructions and shared their knowledge by creating an information poster. They will be working

collaboratively to create a part of the Great Wall using a template provided.

We are proud of our students’ effort and achievements and we look forward to seeing them keep developing their language skills and confidence in the weeks to come.

Kind regards,Languages Team

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Food Technology News

Specialist Subjects

Well it has been an exciting and chal-lenging start to Food Tech this year. The students are excited about designing their own food and are really getting creative.

The grade 1s and 2s made lemonade scones – the recipes can be food on student Seesaw accounts. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed mixing and get-ting all sticky – and we all showed re-spect by thoroughly cleaning our work stations afterwards. I have posted the standard recipe for lemonade scones,

but if you are dairy free, I substituted coconut cream, and if you are gluten free, I substituted gluten free self raising flour, in both cases the recipe worked out well and the feedback was positive from teachers that sampled left overs. The scones helped energise us through our long week of ‘Get to know you’ in-terviews.

The grade 3s and 4s, spent a week designing their smoothies. While the 5s and 6s were designing their shakes. The students had great discussions as

they inquired about their friends’ di-etary requirements before researching a suitable recipe. Some students were risk takes by designing their own recipe instead of using an existing recipe. Next week we will reflect on the success of our drinks and set goals on improving the design process and balancing fla-vours, ingredients and textures before embarking on our next design.

Niki SylaidosFood Tech Specialist 1-6Acting Learning Specialist

Documents

Primary School Newsletter Issue No. 2 23 February 2018alamandacollege.vic.edu.au › wp-content › uploads › 2018 › 04 › ... · 2018-04-16 · PB 1 Primary School Newsletter