Crafers Primary School

Hi all

Friday 6th March is our first pupil free day for 2020. The focus is the development of writing (narrative) across the school.

Humans are storytellers. It’s how we share our history, our cultures and connect as communities. Music, drama and art are great examples of how storytelling has shaped us as a society.

Our family narratives are full of twists and turns with interesting characters and situations, challenges and triumphs that are richly retold at the dinner table. Many cultures, including the oldest living culture in the world, our Indigenous peoples, have described their stories in song, dance and symbolic art over eons, continuing today.

The transference of oral storytelling traditions into the written form, as we currently know it, only really came to be about 6000 years ago. As a new way of recording the spoken word through symbols we have had to learn how to use our ancient cognitive structures to adapt to a relatively new process. This is why the act of writing relies on specific, sustained and repeated instruction. In many ways reading and writing are unnatural acts for our prehistoric cognitive frameworks.

Yet what amazing brains we have.

At Crafers Primary School one of our priorities is the development of the art of writing across the school.

This Friday our focus is the moderation of writing samples from all year levels. In teams teachers will analyse samples, review progress and dig deeper into why one writing sample is more successful than another. This moderation process will build our shared understanding of what it is that students are doing well and what it is that they will need to do next to achieve successful learning outcomes in writing.

Our focus at this stage is narrative and as the project develops we will branch off into other writing genre such as recount and persuasive.

We look forward to sharing more with you about our priority work in reading, writing and numeracy as it progresses.

School drop off

A reminder that staff supervision at school does not commence until 8.30am. For families who need to drop off at school earlier than that please use our Out of School Hours Care (OSHC) service. I appreciate your support in maintaining the safety and supervision of all of our students.

Regards

Garry

On Thursday 27 February, Crafers Primary competed in the annual ‘Courier Cup’ SAPSASA Swimming Championships at the Mountain Pool in Mount Barker. Eighteen students represented our school in the 10 to 13 year old age divisions in various individual and team events.

It was a rather cold start to the morning but this did not deter our students. Their enthusiasm, determination and encouragement for each other was inspiring. They all gave it their best and they did a fantastic job representing our school. I was extremely proud of their team spirit and the good sportsmanship demonstrated by all.

For those people that are unfamiliar with this carnival, the biggest race on the day is the Courier Cup and it is for the fastest 100 meter freestyle swimmer overall. The winner receives the Courier Cup and the fastest swimmer of the opposite gender receives the Thompson Cup. This year Kieran Collings made it into the finals of this event, which is a huge achievement as only five swimmers can make it through. This has been a personal goal for Kieran for the past two years and finally, all his dedication to training and hard work paid off. Kieran had an amazing swim and he was awarded the Thompson Cup.

Overall, we had a brilliant day. All the students left exhausted but they had smiles on their faces as they gave it their best. We had a number of students placing (1st, 2nd or 3rd) in their respective events while others achieved personal bests. Although we did not have any of our relay teams making finals this year, we still had an extremely successful day. Crafers finished 3rd overall in the Hills District which is the highest placing we have ever had. Previously, we have only placed as high as 5th so this is a massive achievement by the whole team.

Thank you to all the parents, grandparents and friends that came out to support our students. They certainly appreciated your cheers. In addition, I need to say a huge thank you to the parents that assisted in the lead up to the event at trials and trainings and to the parents that volunteered to be a chairperson on the day. These events cannot happen without your help and support.

An extra congratulations needs to be given to the students who have been selected to represent the Hills District Team at the SAPSASA State Swimming Carnival at the Marion Swimming Centre later in the term. These students will be notified shorty.

Victoria Gaetjens

A big thank you to all the parents who have volunteered to join the committee as parent representatives of their child's class. Any other volunteers are more than welcome to join. 

We look forward to organising the Easter raffle as our first fundraiser of the year, with more details to come.

Please feel free to contact Cara, the Parent Committee representative on the Governing Council at caraoost@gmail.com if you have any questions.