OPENING DOORS TO UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES Golden Grove Primary School NEWSLETTER OUR VALUES RESPONSIBILITY-EMPATHY-SELF WORTH-PERSONAL EXCELLENCE-COLLABORATION-TRUST Term 2 Week 2, 7th May 2015 Inside this issue Principal News Sports News Award Winners GGPS Disco School Captain Update Coming events Dear Parents, Welcome back to school for Term 2. This term we welcome seven new students to our school. Welcome to Nathan, Charlotte, Kleo, Soren, Mattias, Damian and Brock. We also welcome Ms Priscilla Harris to our staff team. Priscilla was appointed following the retirement of Mrs Jan Griffin at the end of Term 1 and will teach in Homebase 25 Wed-Fri for the remainder of the year. We wish our new students and Priscilla a happy and productive time at our school. 08/05/15 Mother’s Day Stall Assembly - HB 5 11/05/15 Governing Council Meeting 7pm 12/05/15 -14/05/15 ANZAC DAY CEREMONY Congratulations to Homebase 1 students, Mrs Nicholas and Kerry Mayes for the wonderful Anzac Day assembly presented on the last day of Term 1. We had an extensive list of invited guests who joined us to mark the centenary of the Anzac landing and to honour people who have served Australia in the past and those currently serving. NAPLAN Yrs 3, 5 & 7 15/05/15 SAPSASA Cross Country 18/05/15 SAPSASA Boys Soccer 19/05/15 ICAS Computer Competition 22/05/15 School Disco Principal Wendy Moore NAPLAN TESTING On Tuesday 12, Wednesday 13 and Thursday 14 May, students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will take part in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy, or NAPLAN, as it is commonly known. Skills that will be tested include: reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation, and numeracy. These tests are done here at school and are considered part of the curriculum. It is important for you and your child to know that NAPLAN is not a pass/fail test. It simply looks at what level students are achieving in literacy and numeracy against National Standards and compared with student peers throughout Australia. NAPLAN cannot be studied for and students are not expected to do so. The best way you can help your child prepare for NAPLAN is to let them know that it is just a routine part of their school program, and to urge them to do the best they can on the day. 140 Bicentennial Drive Golden Grove 5125 Phone: 8289 3137 Fax: 8289 3138 Email: dl.1848_info@schools. sa.edu.au Website: www.goldengps.sa.edu.au SMS: 0416 906 270 Later in the year we will send parents an individual student NAPLAN report that you can use to view and monitor how your child is progressing. All students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are expected to participate in NAPLAN testing. If you would like to discuss your child’s participation or withdraw your child for personal or philosophical reasons, please contact Wendy Moore or Barbie Rankin (Office). More information is available on the NAPLAN website. www.nap.edu.au Kind regards, Wendy Moore Sports News SAPSASA Athletics Carnival Congratulations to all Athletics students who attended the carnival at Pertaringa Oval on 27th March. Our team competed exceptionally well with 56% of students finishing in the top three. Special congratulations to Emilaya Ellis who recorded a District record for the Long Jump and to Emilaya, Sarah Fry, James Upton and James White who won a first ribbon in their respective event(s). Thank you to the many parents who helped with transport and supported the students during the day. Little Athletics National Championships Emilaya Ellis recently represented SA in the National Little Athletics Championships in WA. She was most successful in the Triple Jump coming 4th and jumping a personal best by 3cm. In fact, there was only 10cm between first place and fourth place. Emilaya also made the 200m final (coming 8th) and she came 8th in the Long Jump. These are huge achievements Emilaya . Congratulations! School Captain Update During Term 1, much of our time was taken up helping to organise our very successful Sports Day. We particularly enjoyed learning and practising the warm up, leading our teams in the march, watching and cheering for our teams in the sprints and organising the Middle School students into teams for their team games (we enjoyed bossing them around). This term we are planning to try to build stronger connections with the younger students (Reception) in our school. We are going to start by planning a fitness circuit for them which we will run on a Friday after assembly. We really hope they will enjoy it and that they will get to know us better. We are also going to be sharing some information about our World Vision Sponsor child and we are planning a gold coin donation “dress up” later in the term. Abbey, Piper, Emilaya, Sam, Jacob, Austin, Daniel, Alana, Daniel and Hollly. During the recent school holidays, a number of our Performing Arts students represented our school at 3 different performances. On Tuesday 14th April, twenty of our Primary Voices students sang at The Stables Woolworths opening ceremony. After only a short amount of practice time, the students were exceptional. They were extremely professional and performed to a high standard. As reward for their work, Woolworths donated $1,000 to our school which will be used to support students going on tour in 2016. 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the ANZACs and as such, the Festival of Music has a number of songs recognising this event. On Saturday 25th April, six of our Senior Voices students joined with students from five other neighbouring schools to perform a series of songs at the Tea Tree Gully dawn service. These students did our school proud even at the insanely early hour of 5:45am. It was truly a life experience these students will never forget. Later that day, thirteen of our Senior Voices students also performed ANZAC Day songs in Rundle Mall. They were joined by students from many different SA public schools to attempt a flash mob singing. Although the flash mob was not as successful as first planned, the students did a great job at representing our school. Thank you to all the parents for their support through these performances. Michael McConnochie During 2014, we began using Edmodo as an online communication tool between teachers, parents and students. Some classes posted information about and photos of the learning that was happening in the class. Others used it as a discussion forum for students to ask questions of and share with each other homework and other learning. Newsletters and term overviews were also shared using Edmodo. Our specialist teachers created their own groups to allow choirs, bands, sports teams and students involved in specific programs to share information also. With Edmodo, anything that students see, you as parents can access by logging on using your unique parent code. To make the ongoing use of Edmodo easier to manage as a school, we have just completed a re-registration process for students and are now ready for parents to log on and join the Homebase groups. Please find your child’s logon details in their communication book/diary along with your parent code. Use this code to register as a parent at www.edmodo.com or if you have registered previously, logon and opt to join a new group using this code. We look forward to extending the use of Edmodo and sharing some fabulous learning with you. The event will be well supervised and, for safety reasons, parents are asked to drop their children at the gate near the canteen and then return to pick them up from the hall 15 minutes prior to the end of the disco. Golden Grove Primary School Award Winners This weeks awards were given for all our School Values