4 April 2018

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

On the 8th April eighteen students, accompanied by Matt Griffiths and Megan Novillos, will be flying to Sydney for a five day visit to the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility at Lucas Heights. The visit has been arranged as part of an outreach program by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. The itinerary for this hands-on science and technology experience offers our students the opportunity to actively engage with leading Australian tradespeople, engineers and researchers. On behalf of the students and staff I would like to express thanks to Joe Pilz whose passion and commitment has been instrumental in securing this unique learning opportunity for the students of Quorn Area School.

Next week we will be farewelling Graham Nicholson who is retiring from DECD after over thirty years of service in the public education sector. Graham has been a mainstay of Quorn Area School for over fourteen years and on behalf of the students, staff and community I would like to offer him best wishes for his retirement. Mike Unger will be taking leave during Term Two and I am pleased to inform the community that we will be welcoming Fiona Black back to our school. I am confident that Fiona will provide our Y5/6 students with richly rewarding learning opportunities during Mike’s absence.

Reports will be arriving home next week and they will give detailed information on your child’s progress. Please take the time to go through the report with your child and discuss both their progress and future goals. If you have any concerns about the report, please do not hesitate to contact the teacher directly to discuss the issue.

Andrew Gilsenan-Reed

Milkshake and Hotdog Day - Wednesday

Middle School Report

I am pleased to say that there is some amazing learning happening across the Middle School. I would like to share with you some of the in depth learning tasks that students are undertaking with our enthusiastic teachers in the Middle School. It is clear that the learning tasks relate directly to the Australian Curriculum, which allows our students to be meeting the standards that are expected on a National level. Students have been exposed to a number of uses of technology throughout their classes to keep the engagement level high. Teachers are currently incorporating the DAPMAP system as a way to keep students up to date with their learning assessments and lesson expectations. Teachers and students are also utilizing our new interactive boards to further extend student engagement and interest.

Miss Novillos - English/History

For Year 7 English, students have been developing their persuasive writing and speech skills in preparation for their debate presentations. Activities such as constructing an opinion, writing and actively participating in informal class debates required students to utilize persuasive techniques. Assessments and activities were designed to equip students with the ability to raise strong arguments both for and against, ready for their official debates. As their final assessment, a total of six debate teams (3 affirmative and 3 negative teams) were created to argue their side of their chosen topic over three rounds. The first round of debates was held on Thursday 29th March, the second and third rounds will be conducted this week. We will be changing the classroom layout to setup a formal debate structure. Students are excited to have this opportunity to showcase their persuasive skills.

Our Year 7/8 History classes have focused on a unit about the history of Ancient China. Students have enjoyed studying Ancient China’s influence and impact in the past and to this present day. We mainly explored its geography in-depth and studied its dynasties. However, they were given the freedom to explore other aspects of Ancient Chinese culture in their tasks. It will be interesting to see the students PowerPoint presentations and what they have chosen to do their inquiry task on.

In Year 8 Economics and Business, students have demonstrated their understanding of turning ideas into business and the processes of pursuing entrepreneurship. They have conveyed their understanding through a PowerPoint showcasing their selected successful entrepreneur’s experiences and stories of successful entrepreneurs.

Year 9/10 History students explored and examined concepts about Human Rights and further investigated this by focusing on the Civil Rights Movement within the US and Australian context. Through research and evidence-based inquiry tasks, students found it interesting to discover the struggles minority groups had to endure to fight for their rights and freedoms. Students enhanced their ethical and intercultural understanding capabilities by producing a human rights poster which allowed them to choose a case study. They have also enjoyed exercising their creativity as they are in the process of finalizing their newspaper articles reporting on their chosen civil rights event.

Megan Novillos

Mr. Forkert - English/Media Arts:

They’re a bit late for the Winter Olympics, but the Year 8 English class have been studying the film Cool Running’s, a movie about the now legendary bobsled team from the tiny island of Jamaica. Students have been asked to write a journal entry from the perspective of one of the characters. In the process they have had to profile the films protagonists Derice, Sanka and Yul to fully understand them. They’ll even be learning a little Jamaican slang in the process!

Meanwhile the 7/8’s have been learning about logo design in Media Arts. By studying the story behind some of the world’s most iconic logos, they have discovered how colours and shapes are used to attract consumers. For example: Did you know that McDonald’s use the colours red and yellow because they make us hungry? The class are now creating their own logos using the knowledge they have gained, we can’t wait to see what they come up with!

Brad Forkert

Sarah Bury
Middle School Coordinator

Primary Post

Week 10 already! We have been super busy but time flies when you are having fun. Recently on Friday 23rd March students participated in Ride Safely To School Day. Students met at the Train Station and safely made their way to school together. Two Foundation students decorated their wheels and travelled to school in style. Both received a voucher for a Milkshake at the Quandong Café for their ‘Decorative Wheels’.

Apologies for the technology

During a recent Primary assembly, despite the best efforts to prepare, the technology failed us. If you would like to watch the video that was played at the assembly, check out the link below.

Congratulations to all award winners.

The following assemblies will be held at the following times:

Easter Bunny

Guess who found us on Thursday? Easter Bunny was found hopping around in the front garden and was able to draw our Easter raffle. Congratulations to Jaxson Brown. Easter Bunny also left us a few surprises. We went looking high and low, through the playground and in the garden.

CLASSROOM LEARNING

FOUNDATION SCIENCE & SOUNDS

1/2 ‘OR’ WORDS

3/4 EXPERIMENTS

5/6 NARRATIVES

Monday Morning Coffee

We Need You

We are looking for active, fun loving, mums, dads, carers and relatives to join us to continue to provide our children with a safe, challenging, inspiring and fun school environment.

Come along to our Volunteer RAN Training: Thursday 3rd May 2018 (Week 1 Term 2), to ensure you have the necessary requirements to begin working with the school. We look forward to seeing you.

Aspiring to Inspire

Monique Carcuro
Primary School Coordinator

Subject Report

Sports

MNSEC Athletics

On Tuesday 20th March a group of students from Quorn and Hawker travelled to Jamestown for the annual MNSEC Athletics Carnival. Once again all of our selected students made themselves available and put in great efforts during day. Unfortunately we suffered a few minor injuries throughout the day which impacted our ability to fill our relay teams to full strength but it will be something that we will look to fix next year.

We placed 5th overall which, didn’t match up to our MNSEC Swimming glory, but it was a solid effort from our students. A massive congratulations goes to Tayla Finlay who was awarded Champion Female Athlete on the day. This is a big achievement and the first time I have seen one of our students win it during my time at QAS.

Finally congratulations to the students that have been selected and are available for SSSA Athletics in Adelaide next Thursday including Emily Eckert, Jack Hancock, Bailey Stirling and Codin Maison. A number of other students were selected but are unable to make it due to other commitments.

Thanks to all the parents for their continued support of our sporting endeavours at QAS.

SAPSASA Swimming

On Friday 23rd of March, Joel Finlay, Mackenzie Chapman, Madison Hately and Cheyanne Meyer had the opportunity to represent Quorn Primary School at the 2018 SAPSASA Swimming Championships Country in Adelaide for Northern Districts.

Overall, the team had a successful day, with four swimmers making finals, two medals won and many personal bests achieved.

Joel swam well in all three of his events, including achieving a personal best in his Breaststroke and Freestyle and making the final in the 50m Freestyle. He also swam the freestyle leg of the boys Medley Relay.

Mackenzie also achieved some great times, achieving a personal best in the 50m Butterfly, breaking under the minute for the first time. She also shaved a second and a half off her Backstroke time, whilst swimming in the girls Medley Relay. She also swam the 12yr old girls Freestyle relay.

Madison swam very well for her first SAPSASA carnival, achieving a 5 second personal best in the 50m Freestyle and giving the 50m Butterfly a crack. She also swam in two relays on the day.

Cheyanne also swam really well, contributing to two Freestyle relays and getting a taste of the SAPSASA experience.

Well done all swimmers on a successful day!

Library

Easter Storytime

Story time children had a great time looking for Easter eggs in the garden after a visit from Easter Bunny. We didn't see Easter Bunny but we did see his ears at the window, he must have been watching us making our Easter baskets .Thank you to Mia, Kayla and Madison who helped him hide the eggs as he is so busy at this time of the year and needed extra help as we had over 25 children enjoy the morning.