Alawa Primary School Newsletter

Week 9 and the term is slipping by way toooo quickly!

Thanks for all the messages and support for Ms Tamra last week. I am pleased to report she is doing Ok and back at school again this week [part time] after her recent round of treatment.

We continue to review and draft class lists and these will be available Tuesday 13th December at the end of the school day. PLEASE keep in mind the following:

• these are DRAFT lists and subject to change if required
• we share these for our school community - PHOTOS are NOT to be taken of the lists as they contain other student names, other than your own child.

Class letters would by now have come home with reminders of events, activities etc and also details of the class parties which will be held Tuesday 13th December [Transition to Year 6]. Any concerns or queries, please liaise directly with your child's class teacher.

Staffing Updates 2023

As is always the case at this time of year, we are finalising staffing for 2023. At this stage I can advise a few further changes:

• Mrs Leanne Griffin who joined us at the start of this year is transferring over to Bakewell Primary
• Ms Tess Bullock who joined us mid way through 2021 is transferring over to Bakewell Primary
• Ms Alice Milne who took some leave to be closer to family in 2022 has decided to remain in Victoria for 2023
• Mrs Holly Chamberlain is transferring to us from Wulagi as an Early Years teacher
• Ms Terri-Lee Evans is transferring to us from Mamaurni School as a Primary Years teacher
• Mrs Rachel Barnett is joining us after many years working in schools down south and across the NT as our Special Education Teacher
• Ms Sarah Hunter who has worked at our school as class support and [who has completed teaching placements in our rooms last year and again this year] is now fully qualified and will be joining us as an Early Year's teacher
• Ms Linda Conder who has been our Science teacher and then our Farm teacher for the past 5 years is also moving on. Mrs Bron Cleary [already at the school] is excited to take on the opportunity to lead our Farm with Farmer Bob for 2023. She also looks forward to bringing her amazing art talents to the learning space along with her enthusiasm for all things technology
• Ms Angela Henschke will be changing roles and taking on the role of Teacher-in-Charge of the Preschool working alongside Emma Churchman and Kelly Crawford.
• We are still finalising the recruitment for the Transition teacher to work alongside Kate Hughes.

We also say farewell and a huge thanks to a number of our support staff this year:

• Ms Maria who has co-ordinated our PlayGroup for the past 5 years is handing over for 2023
• Mr Troy is moving on to new adventures
• Ms Poppy is focussing more on her tertiary study to be a teacher
• Ms Kudzai is focussing on her tertiary studies for nursing.

We have already recruited for new people to join us in 2023 and will introduce you to our new team members in the first few weeks through the newsletter.

Looking forward to seeing you around the school and many of you at our special graduations this week [Preschool Wednesday evening and Year 6 Thursday evening],

Have a fab week

Sandy Cartwright [Principal]

Hello everyone and welcome to Week 9!

Wow, not long to go now and still so many exciting events to happen. As you are aware our Graduations are on this week. This includes our older children in Year 6 as well as our youngest in Preschool. All students will be moving on to another stage in their lives and we wish them all the best. We also have our end of year assembly next week. We look forward to recognising our students who have won awards as well as people who have contributed to making Alawa a fantastic school and community.

Instrumental Musicians

This Friday will be the last sessions for our Instrumental Lessons. Please stay tuned as we hope to arrange our students to demonstrate their abilities in front of our year 3-6 students some time next week. A reminder that if your children would like to be involved next year please get in contact with the school or straight to NT School of Music

Support Staff

Many of our support staff will be finishing up this week. I would like to express my appreciation to these wonderful people who work tirelessly with our teachers to support, not only students with additional needs but also the rest of our students. Have a well-earned break.

I would like to once again thank Maria for her role in coordinating Playgroup and I would like to  welcome onboard our new Playgroup leader for next year Ms Erin Holden-[Neiva and Ellies Mum].

Have a great week,

Genevieve Donohue  [Assistant Principal]

At Alawa we offer a very small Before School Supervision service to support families with early morning starts at work.

I would like to remind parents of the following:

• A staff member will be available for before school supervision from 7:30am – 8am in the Preschool - NOT prior to 7:30am
• Parents must walk the students in and sign them in with the staff member if they are Year 2 and younger

Please ensure all payments are up to date as access to the service cannot be offered in 2023 if any outstanding money is not paid in full by Thursday 15th December.

Sandy Cartwright [Principal]

This Friday we will celebrate our LAST bonus house points day for the year. 

We encourage students and staff to join in to earn bonus points for their house by wearing accessories in their house colours over school uniform. 

Please note:

• all items must be WORN as an accessory, not carried in addition
• PICTURES of pets and teddies only - not to be brought in
• Pictures are to be received by midday on Friday 9th December

If you have any questions or concerns please contact the front office on 8997 7666. All photos can be emailed to alawa.school@education.nt.gov.au 

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.  Students also can earn house points for having a go at the weekly quiz which is emailed out Monday mornings by Ms Cartwright. These points 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 8 of Term 4 Goyder was ahead of Finnis and Manton with 2705 points!

In the lead for the year we still have Finnis with 98207 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 expectations.

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 4 was....Transition Hughes with 114 points!!!

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

There were 41 late arrivals in Transition—Year 6 in Week 8 Term 4!

For Week 8 the classes with the least lates were: Preschool Blue, Transition Henschke and 2 Riley-Smith with 0 lates each!!!

In the lead this term...Year 2 Riley-Smith with 5 late arrivals!!!

Year 4/5 Griffin have been learning about poetry and figurative language in our writing time.  We started off with Haiku poetry and learnt about personification.  Each of our poems were published on a leaf for our tree or a raincloud to go above it, and our “Poetree” started to take shape. We wrote some autobiographical poetry and then moved on to poetry about emotions to practice writing figurative language.

Meanwhile we have read a class novel called The Word Snoop by Ursula Dubosarsky.  We have enjoyed finding out about palindromes and anagrams.  We solved puzzles as we read the book and discovered why English language has a lot of silent letters, as well as lots of other interesting things.  We found out how and why English language has been shaped and changed by other languages like French, Greek and Latin.  We discovered the influence that people like William Shakespeare and William the Conqueror had on English.

We have experimented with some coding and poetry.  First, we had to use images, music and colour to match a poem’s ‘mood’.  Then we wrote our own poetry and used coding to create animation.

Our final poetry writing is titled ‘100% Me’ and has been a real challenge to write a poem describing ourselves using percentages.  Our percentage poem had to use rhythm, so we did a lot of syllable counting.  The math was not just making sure everything added up to 100%.  We also created a pie chart, so we had to convert our percentages into 360 degrees and measure out our degrees with a protractor.  We think the results are pretty impressive.

Wow, I can’t believe the school holidays and Christmas are nearly here. As always the Palmerston and Darwin City Libraries will be running holiday programs with activities you can access for free. The Palmerston Library has a number of activities already available starting off with their Christmas Craft Week running from the 19th to the 23rd of November 10am – 11:30am check out https://palmerston.nt.gov.au/community/community-services/events-and-activities/christmas-craft-week for more information. Fantastic workshop opportunities for January including Plaster Craft, Self Portraits, Legoland Master Build, Learn to DJ, Circus Workshop, Slimetime and much more can be found on the City of Palmerston Library Facebook page. Darwin City has put out the Fun in the Parks program which will be running in January https://tinyurl.com/Darwin-City-Holiday-Program which includes woodwork, scrapbooking and other activities. Keep an eye out to see what else may be happening in your local library over the coming school holidays.

With only a week and a half to go all library books are now due back to the library. I will be sending out notices again this Friday. Please have a good look around the house for any Library books and if you are unable to find a book please let me know as occasionally books manage to sneak past the returns and hide back on the shelf in the Library.

Have a great week and Happy Reading 😊

Miss Sacha [Library and ICT Manager]

We had such a fun Friday at Playgroup last week and we packed so much into our two hours together!! We started by playing indoors in the Preschool Red Room and we met more new friends and their families which was wonderful. We love posting letters and cards to each other, the mailbox was full at the end of Playgroup! 

This week we shared in a Preschool activity and decorated our very own Christmas Trees too! Gluing, cutting and pasting, adding lots of colour and sparkle! Then we helped Miss Maria bake scones.This is always one of our favourite activities! After that we visited the Farm!! We loved feeding the goats, exploring the chicken run and watching the ducklings with their proud parents. Our scones were delicious and we devoured them and finished our session outdoors exploring the Preschool yard. 

Please note this Friday is the last Playgroup for 2022!! We have had so much fun this year and we cannot wait for another year of Playgroup in 2023. We'll restart as always in the second week of Term 1 (10 February 2023).  The exciting news is that there will be a new Playgroup Facilitator and I am sure I will pop in from time to time to say hello too.

It's been such an honour to spend time with the wonderful families in our Alawa School Community and for us all to have a space to explore, grow and most importantly to engage in child led play. Have a wonderful Festive Season.

Miss Maria [Playgroup Coordinator] 

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.

Available every day lunch only:

- mini beef burgers $4.50

- spaghetti bolognaise small serve $4.50 or large serve $6.50 /Gluten Free Spaghetti $6.50 [Wed & Thu only]

Wednesday – Fresh meat pies - $6.50

Thursday – Chicken fried rice - Large size $6.50, Small $4.50

Friday – Pasta Carbonara - Large size $6.50, Small $4.50

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

Order online at www.quickcliq.com.au