Alawa Primary School Newsletter

Week 9

Principal Updates

 Wow what a busy week we have just had....as we enter the final weeks of Term 2.

Masterchef

Another fantastic opportunity for children's in Years 4,5 and 6 co-ordinated by the very talented and creative Mrs Sullivan. See further for details and celebrations and the reveal of the very secret special judge. Congratulations to the team from Year 4/5 Griffin who took out the top prize for the event: Alexandra, Jaxon, Jackson and Caspar. A second Masterchef will be offered later in the year.

Sports Day

Our annual Sports Day was a blast as always and so much colour and fun and energetic activity. Great team spirit and sportsmanship displayed. 

Congratulations FINNIS!

And of course to the staff team who won for the FIRST time ever The Alawa Cup - very impressive persistence Mr Lawrence!

Huge thanks to our organising team:

Jen WhiteJed HendersonAna Bernardino
Jarrad LawrenceNathan WilsonRos Solien
Tammy Zairis Tamra Caruana

Extra special thanks as well to our parent volunteers for the morning setup as well as at the events during the day.

Kane TaylorJohn RonayneDaryl Lehmann
Andrew WedelFelicity WedelErica Garcia
Morgan VidinsAndrew LehmannRandall Cook
Michael NegreteClaire KeilyMary Finlay-Doney

Maths Symposium

A small group of our older students were invited to attend the annual Maths Symposium for students in Years 5 and 6 across the work of schools who all follow the Meaningful Maths Approach. Jesse, Ameliah and Hien Thuc have let me know they really enjoyed the challenges and opportunity to connect with students from the other schools who also thrive on extending their mathematical thinking and reasoning. Thanks to Ms Katie for driving them to and from the event.

Launch of Friends of Sport Scholarship Program

What an honour it was for 4 of our very lucky students to be invited to Parliament house last week to attend the launch of the Friends of School Sport NT scholarship fund. Caspar, Will, Georgia and Miguel did an excellent job of representing our school and showcasing our Alawa School values. This is a fantastic initiative set up by the Friends of School Sport NT to help students financially across the Territory and enable more children to attend advanced sporting programs. Special thanks to Mr Randall Cook for allowing Alawa Primary School to take part in helping to promote this opportunity to our community.

Click here to see video staring some of our super star students!

Progress Reports

Tuesday next week reports will be emailed home to all families. Additionally for students Years 3-6 they will also have their reports emailed to them. Please take the time to review with your child and make contact with your child's class teacher if you have any queries or concerns. 

Note: For those children going on camp their reports will be emailed out Monday 20th.

Upcoming events

Thursday this week a group of our Year 6 students head to Dripstone Middle to engage in the Young Achievers program Day 2 and then Friday 17th of our very talented students head to the regional Track and Field Carnival with Ms White and Ms Katie

Next week great excitement as our Year 5 and 6'sa head off to camp in Katherine with Mr Henderson, Mrs Baines, Ms Bates and Ms Katie + some very supportive parents.

Alawa Harvest Cooking program

Have you booked in for your child if they are in Years 3-6? Fantastic holiday fun.

Cheers & have a terrific week,

Sandy Cartwright [Principal]

Assistant Principal pdate

Welcome to Week 9!

What a fantastic day at our Sports Carnival last week. It was great to have families here for this great day. The students showed great sportsmanship and participated enthusiastically in all events. 

As you are aware, on Tuesday our staff participated in a Professional Learning Day. I wish to thank our community for their support in allowing us to have these days and the work. It was a very productive day where we further developed our knowledge of effectively using Data to inform our teaching practices, our school improvement review as well as deepening our understanding of our pedagogical approach of Inquiry Learning and the teaching of spelling. Our admin staff participated in Cyber Awareness and CPR workshop.

Our Preschool team and Committee is busily preparing for our Bikeathon next week. We are looking forward to a fantastic day of some fun with our family and friends as the children ride around the track.

Our Preschool team has ordered many new books and are having a clean out of the shelves. We will be having a table set up in the quadrangle area with our books that we are clearing out. This will occur today and tomorrow as well and Monday and Tuesday next week. We would love a gold coin donation for these books so we can buy more new ones for our library. The SRC will be assisting with these sales.

Have a lovely second last week before our holidays.

Gen Donohue [Assistant Principal]

Have you read the newsletter this week: A quick question

I will sneak a little quiz question into the newsletter each week. If you are a student and know the answer send me an email to have the opportunity to earn 20 bonus house points.

Week 9 question: Who won the Alawa Cup on Sports Day this year?

Sandy Cartwright [Principal]

Year 5/6 Camp: Payment Reminders

If any families are having issues please contact Ms Cartwright to arrange a payment plan ASAP.

Payment Date

Amount due each date

Total over time

Monday 2nd May

$75

$75

Monday 16th May

$75

$150

Monday 30th May

$75

$225

Monday 13th June

$75

$300

Events calendar

Friday 17th June

Darwin Region Track & Field Carnival

Last Playgroup for the Term

All day

9:30am 

Monday 20th JuneSchool Council meeting5:30pm-7pm
Tuesday 21th-Thursday 23rd JuneYear 5/6 Camp to Katherine3 days
Tuesday 21st JuneReports to go homeThrough the day via email 
Wednesday 22nd JunePreschool Bike-a-thon8:30am-10:30am
Friday 24th June

Assembly hosted by Year 3/4 Bernardino [NAIDOC]

Last day of Term 

8:40am

All day


Bonus House Point and accessory day
Tuesday 28th-Thursday 30th JuneAlawa Harvest Holiday Cooking program9am-12pm
Sunday 31st JulyDeckchair cinema fundraising night - Minions - Rise of the Gru6:30pm 
Monday 18th JulyStaff back at school - professional learning day
Tuesday 19th JulySchool resumes for studentsAll day

Age Champion winners- Sports day 10th June

Congratulations to our age champion winners:

9 year old girl winner - Eileen Amarant

9 year old boy winner - Billy Geddes

9 year old girl runner up- Paige Bullen

9 year old boy runner up- Xavier Cockfield

10 year old girl winner - Shannon Gleeson

10 year old boy winner - Leonitus May-Presley

10 year old girl runner up- Ava Mansell

10 year old boy runner up- Findlay Russell & Mathias Wilson

11 year old girl winner - Gisele Roe

11 year old boy winner - Matthias Tuaine

11 year old girl runner up- Ameliah Howard

11 year old boy runner up- Tate Martin

12 year old girl winner - Felicity Wedel

12 year old boy winner - Jesse Davey

12 year old girl runner up- Niluh Jackson

12 year old boy runner up- Ash Heard

Class Points

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 week we allocate class points during Muster time recognising 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.

The class with the most points in Week 8 of Term 2 was....Year 1 Wilson with 132 points!!!

House Points

Students at Alawa receive raffle tickets [house points] for their attitude and behaviour in the playground and out the front of the school at the end of the day. These are then counted on a Friday along with the points for 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 7 of Term 2 Goyder was ahead of Manton and Finnis  with 3985 points!!! 

In the lead for the year we still have Finnis with 50456 points!!!

Attendance

Primary School Average for Week 8 Term 2: 86.02%

It is terrific having all our families back with us at school.

The class with the highest attendance for Week 8: Year 4/5 Lawrence with 96.25%!!!

In the lead for the term...Year 3 Block with 91.99%!!! Amazing job!!!

Lates

Arriving late for school has a significant impact on your child’s learning and engagement in the education program.

There were 22 late arrivals in Transition—Year 6 in Week 8 Term 2!

For Week 8 the classes with the least lates were: Preschool Red Group, 2 Riley-Smith and 4/5 Lawrence with 0 lates each!!!

In the lead for the term we have....Preschool Red Group with 0 lates! 

Recycling

Alawa Recycling is not only an important part of our fundraising activities here at Alawa with all proceeds going directly back into the farm, but also a vital step in helping us achieve the goal of creating a more sustainable farm and garden program.

Items can be deposited into the house bags in the back car park and  each item earns a point for each house. 

Kitchen news

A few busy weeks in kitchen.

On our trip to the UK we made delicious batches of scones. There was a choice of plain, fruit or savoury with all of them turning out really well. We also visited Spanish cuisine making a tortilla de patatas or potato omelette. We used lots of eggs and herbs from the farm and enjoyed making and eating these a lot.  5/6 Henderson has an extra kitchen lesson to make up for one missed earlier in the term so had a double week of making Spanish Omelettes as well as Moroccan roasted vegetables with couscous. We have been busily selling rosella jam and Ms Elsa’s ice cream and sorbets through the front office.

In the last few cooking lessons of the term, we will be visiting our final cuisine of Aussie and making meat and vegetable pies.

Tina Sullivan [Kitchen Teacher] 

Masterchef

The second Alawa Masterchef was held last week in the Alawa Primary Kitchen. There were 5 teams of 4 students who has three mystery ingredients of eggplant, basil and beef mince to make a delicious dish. They had 15 minutes to plan and 60 minutes to cook. The finished dishes included wontons, moussaka, dumpling noodle soup, stir fry and spaghetti bolognaise. The quality of cooking was fantastic and all teams did really well.

The judges, Ms Ros, Mr Smith, the school captain Jesse and special guest judge Mr Jimmy Shu from Hanuman assessed the meals on creativity, taste, presentation and use of ingredients. The winning team was the youngest team consisting of year 4’s, Jaxon, Jackson, Alexandra and Caspar with their delicious Thai style stir fry. All teams were commended on their cooking skills and creativity.

Mr Jimmy Shu delighted everyone with an invitation for all the contestants, Judges and the Kitchen Teacher Ms Sullivan and Assistant Ms Elsa to dinner and cooking lesson at Hanuman.

A big thanks to Ms Sullivan with the assistance of Ms Elsa for putting together such a fantastic night of cooking and fun!

Preschool news

 

The sandpit is a central feature of the outdoor learning environment at Preschool. Many children head straight to the sandpit as soon and they arrive and are ready to explore. The sandpit is where you see teamwork and cooperation in action as children work together in the mud kitchen, building sandcastles, creating rivers, and making roads.

A wooden balance beam added to the sandpit last week soon became a bridge. A small group then worked together to create a river under the bridge. Lots of volunteers came to help fill the river and test that they could safely cross the bridge without getting wet. Another day a child noticed the different patterns our shoes made in the sand. Through further investigation he learnt that our feet are all different sizes and there are such unique patterns to be found on each pair of shoes. The sandpit is a hub of learning and discovery!

Emma Connelly, Emma Churchman, Kelly and Flor [Preschool Team]

Library news

Have you read - The First Scientists: Deadly Inventions and Innovations from Australia’s First Peoples Written by Corey Tutt and Illustrated by Blak Douglas? This book has been shortlisted in the CBCA Book of the Year Eve Pownall Award category.

 

Blurb - Have you ever wondered what the stars can tell us? Did you know the seasons can be predicted just by looking at subtle changes in nature? Maybe you have wondered about the origins of glue or if forensic science is possible without a crime scene investigation. Australia's First peoples have the longest continuing culture on Earth and their innovation will amaze you as you leaf through the pages of this book, learning fascinating facts and discovering the answers to life's questions.

In reading through this book I found out a cool fact, did you know that stars appear to twinkle due to the presence of wind? The Meriam people of the Torres Strait knew there would be a change in seasons from hot and muggy to wet when the stars twinkled fast. This was due to the shift in the direction of the trade winds. This book is packed full of interesting and cool facts presented on brightly coloured pages in small chunks – no more than a page to each of the inventions and innovations presented. It has a map of the different language/social/nation groups found in Australia and where a particular group is mentioned in relation to an innovation or invention there is a small map of Australia with a locating point on it for that group. Written for 7-12 year olds it is easy to read, engaging and a fantastic introduction to the contribution of First Nation people to various scientific fields.

Miss Sacha [Library and ICT Manager]

Playgroup news



This week will be our last session of Playgroup for Term 2, Friday 17th June.

Please join us from 9:30am in the Preschool for lots of fun and games. $4 per child covers a snack for your child and tea or coffee for parents/carers. 

Playgroup will start up again Friday 29th July.

Miss Maria [Playgroup Co-Ordinator] 

Cafe

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. We will do our best to ensure we order the same products as advertised but occasionally have to change due to stock availability.

Cafe Specials Weeks 6-10

LUNCHTIME SPECIALS:

Available every day lunch only:

- mini beef burgers  $3.50

- spaghetti bolognaise small serve $3.50 or large serve $5.50 /Gluten Free Spaghetti $6.50 [Wed and Thu only]

Wednesday – Homemade Sushi, tuna and corn or chicken and avocado -  $5.50

Thursday – Shepherds pie - Large size $5.50, Small $3.50

Friday – Homemade Sausage roll- One size $3.50

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

Order online at www.quickcliq.com.au

Community notices