Reynella Primary School Grapevine

We finally made it to the end of what has been a term like no other! COVID made its presence well and truly felt at Reynella PS affecting students and their families as well as many staff. In what has been a tumultuous term, it has been heartening to see the kindness, compassion and care that the students showed to one another during their time at school.

Keeping up with the ever changing directions as set out by SA Health and the Department for Education has been challenging and we thank our school community whole heartedly for their support in following the advice and are greatly appreciative that you have kept us informed of COVID cases in families.

We also need to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of our staff who have shown remarkable flexibility and professionalism in maintaining a relentless focus on teaching and learning. However, COVID has significantly impacted our ability to come together as a community and the continual revolving door of staff and students has challenged our ability to maintain continuity of learning.

Unfortunately we are uncertain about the impact COVID will have on our school in term 2 and beyond. In consulting with Governing Council we have decided to once again postpone our pupil free day that was going to take place on Monday May 2 and push it all the way to Monday September 5, which is the week of the Royal Adelaide Show. The planned pupil free day in week 6, Friday June 10 will go ahead regardless. Hopefully the holidays will prove to be the circuit breaker we need and we will all be able to start fresh right from the beginning of the term.

Parent teacher interviews are an integral strategy to support each child to be successful at school. They are an opportunity to discover more about your child’s academic, emotional and social progress, and share information about your child with their teachers. Our goal is the same as yours – to help students thrive academically, socially and emotionally and develop into well-rounded young adults. We will be forging ahead with parent teacher interviews in weeks 2 and 3 of term 2; with different options for you to choose from. More information below and on Skoolbag.

We sincerely thank you all for your continuing support as we navigate these difficult times and hope that you have a wonderful holiday – hopefully COVID free – and look forward to seeing you all next term; Monday May 2

The year 1s in B2 have participated in a number of hands-on learning activities across the curriculum, but particularly in Mathematics. With Mrs Patterson, we have been exploring Measurement and comparing the length of objects using informal units. One activity saw us explore the school’s natural environment looking for different items to collect, measure and compare. We ordered our items from shortest to tallest and measured them using unifix cubes. 

We’ve also been exploring biological science and have grown some seeds. We have linked this with our mathematics learning by measuring how tall the plants are growing and looking at how long the roots are.

We’ve been doing work around Number and Place Value with Mrs Clarke, and are focussed on developing our automaticity with number facts - knowing them automatically. We have been learning about programs in Mathematics, and how by manipulating numbers in order, we can find all the possible solutions to a problem.

We’ve loved playing games to cement our mathematical understanding and improve our number fluency - our current favourite game is “Get out of my house”.

What do we like about Maths?

"I like doing plussing and equalling" - Eva

"I like how you figure out how like 5 + 7 and 100 + 1000000. I like how you know and learn numbers" - Jacob

"I like learning about numbers and different stuff every day. And also doing maths". - Eli

"I like adding big numbers together" - Elias

"I like learning in maths and I like when we were measuring stuff" - Sophia

"I like when we learn 1 + 5 and we learnt 1 + 10" - Matilda

"How the teachers tell us what to do and the people who like to learn, learn how to do stuff "- Leo

"I liked when we do the sheets" - Jake and Miley

"I like how we do maths like 5 - 2 and 2 - 6" - Nash

"I like when we do maths outside" - Winter

"I liked learning about seeds and watching them grow day by day and watch which are the tallest" - Makenna

"I like maths because maths helps you learn more things so you can be the top student" - Maggie

"I like trying" - Mitchell

"I like when we did the measuring with Mrs Patterson" - Indy

"I like Maths because it’s fun" - Stefan

Friday week 9 the year five and sixes went on an excursion to Port Noarlunga for their first year of aquatics. After a short bus ride the five classes walked down onto the beach, were split into groups and got changed into swim suits ready to begin.

Roughly 150 students they had three activities to do which were:  snorkelling, surfing and kayaking . The year fives also did a quick safety session were they learnt how to put life jackets on.

Snorkelling

Both year levels did snorkelling. To start off, the year fives paddled out to the little reef hardly off the shore. This was a great place to get started and most found it easy to float about looking at all the little fish.  Soon the group was ready; they had their “training”.

Time for the big reef where you couldn't touch the ground We were out much further and feeling nervous about it to . Eventually, the first person of the small group pushed off; apprehensive at first then the other people pushed off nervously . While they were swimming around some instructors found a star fish and crabs. 

Quickly the group found how amazing and easy it was to float. There was no effort in it, especially when there were so many distractions like the stunning fish ranging from something that would fit in your hand to something the length of an adults arm!  It was purely amazing, "an amazing experience”.

Kayaking

After a recess break some of the year sixes went to go down to the Onkaparinga River to do kayaking.  It was about a 5 minute walk down to the river and they had to wear crocs that didn’t fit. Before everyone got all the gear on, we had to go through the rules and how to paddle. Firstly they put on  water shoes then get the right life jacket.  The year sixes then headed out and put kayaks down near the shore before getting into the water and paddling over to the other side of the bridge, then paddling back to shore . This was not as easy as it sounded as the wind was blowing harder and harder.

Surfing

Before the group could even think about going in the water, they had to make the 800 metre walk to Southport. Some of the year sixes got a boogie board and went into their group and learnt how to ride one and catch a wave. The others went through the same process but with a surfboard. After about 5 or 10 minutes learning how to surf, they all went into the water and tried to catch some waves.  Some people thought that it was very hard at the start when they didn't really know how to do it but then they got used to it and were having so much fun.  Eventually students were standing up and riding the waves. It was all electric and super fun once you used to it.

Overall, the year fives and sixes loved aquatic.  I bet the year fives will be excited for next year.

ALDINGA REEF

F1 and F2 have been learning about biology and how you classify living things.

Cormac- "I enjoyed looking at everything at the reef and all the creatures. When Luke told the story about Gary and Billy he explained that molluscs are not all the same. Some are gastropods [meat eaters] and others are bivalves [vegetarians]. Sadly, in the story Gary the gastropod ate Billy the bivalve."

Annabella- "he told us another story about how he went to dinner with a star fish and its stomach came out of its body and grabbed the steak it was eating!! Someone said ‘Yuk! Stop!’ but that’s how they eat. Izabella thought that it was a gross story."

Harlan enjoyed finding animals on the reef and digging holes with his friends to make a marine park.

Parker enjoyed seeing the dolphins, making structures and looking for shells. Mia found a crab and some mud skippers on the reef.

Evie worked in her group to create a rock structure.

Aria learnt that some shells have holes caused by gastropods.

We saw dolphins, crabs and mud skippers on the reef and built mini marine parks from what we found on the beach. Luke and Georgia from Active Education taught us a lot of new things. It was awesome.

By F1 and F2

World's Greatest Shave

To date, Cooper has raised $3,140. He set out with a goal of $1000 which he reached within 24 hours! His fundraising will fund research for a blood cancer for a full week. 

Coopers motivation behind shaving his luscious long blonde locks, was because sadly he lost his uncle in January of this year to Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Coopers Uncle Anthony fought hard against the disease for 12 months, but unfortunately the treatment wore his body down until it couldn’t fight any more. Anthony knew that Cooper was planning to do this in his honour, and we know he would be so proud of his efforts. 

Well done Cooper, your Reynella family is so proud, you are doing amazing things!

Citizenship Day 2022

Our whole school assembly was run by the Wellbeing and Citizenship Action Teams, to create kindness and respect around the school. In the assembly we talked about citizenship, our school pledge and announced the winners of our poetry competition. The winners were Olive (B1), Claira (D6), Madi (F4) and Lucas (F3). Well done!

In classrooms students participated in different activities over the day. Everyone who was in class made colourful kindness notes and wrist bands. The kindness notes were made to go on the kindness wall to spread joy and happiness all around the school. The wrist bands were to show orange all around the school and also show the pledge to one another.

At recess and lunch we did some amazing and fun activities to celebrate Citizenship Day. We did music, dancing, bubbles and chalk drawings. When we were using chalk, we wrote about what Citizenship Day means to us and some nice things to say to one another.

Why did we celebrate Citizenship Day and what does it mean?

On Citizenship Day we take the opportunity to show kindness and respect to the different cultures of our land. It gives us a chance to be inclusive of others and connect with each other. The reason why we did Citizenship Day is because we need to include one another and respect each other's cultures.

Written by Aliyah (F1) and Annalise from the Wellbeing Action Team

Excursion F1 & F2 - Aldinga Reef

Netball team information