Noarlunga Downs P-7 School

Welcome to term 4 of what has been a crazy year.  It has been pleasing to see that even with all the challenges, our focus has stayed on improving the learning for our students. The high standards has meant notable improvement has been made across the school and especially in reading.  93% of our year 2 students met the Standard of Educational Achievement in the September data collection.  Well done to everyone, as it really is a team effort to ensure this happens. 

We have a number of staff changes this term.  We welcome Cameron and Codi as SSOs in the special class, room 7 and 10.  After a long wait we have finally been able to employ a new Aboriginal Community Education Officer and Wayne Summers has taken on this position.  Michael Sboro has won the deputy position for term 4 and so will be staying with us in that capacity.  I would like to thank Michael for stepping in for me at short notice last term due to my illness and for the support given to our school whilst I gradually returned to work.

In sad news for us, however joy for another school, Melissa Matto has been successful in winning a wellbeing position at another school for 2021, so this will be Mel’s last term at Noarlunga Downs.  Mel has been a wonderful asset to our school and she will be missed however we wish her all the very best for the future.

I would like to thank parents for the honest feedback that we received last year regarding the issues caused for families with the stress and expense of book week costumes.  It allowed us to change what we do and focus more on the books and it has been a wonderful success with the students being incredibly excited about creating their costumes and focusing on the book they have chosen and the theme for the year. The parade was a huge success and it was wonderful to see so many parents attend.

Rachael Courtney

Principal

 In room 7 we have been taking the opportunity to celebrate book week in a variety of ways. On Thursday we hosted a book tasting, where each student was able to “taste” a variety of genres of books. The class was turned into a restaurant setting and the teachers transformed into chefs for the day. This book tasting enhanced our reading opportunities and assisted us in broadening our reading choices. We then had to review each book giving it a rating out of 10. It was a very enjoyable experience.

Room 7 used our art techniques to create egg cup portraits of our book week character from our class chosen book “We’re stuck!”.  We used the egg cups to help our pictures look 3 dimensional and used paints and drawing techniques to add the finishing touches.