23 February 2021 Week 5 Term 1
Principal's Report
Dear parents and caregivers,
COVID UPDATE
With the easing of restrictions across South Australia, Linden Park Primary School will opening up our school to parents and volunteers in a number of ways.
We still need to ensure we follow safe Covid practices however including signing in using the State Government QR codes which are displayed around the school and maintaining safe hygiene and social distancing protocols.
We are delighted to be able to reconnect with our community with the guidelines below and we will continue to review our practices as the year progresses.
- Volunteers : We will reintroduce parent volunteers into the buildings to listen to reading and support teachers and students. Your child’s teacher will let you know details to ensure that all volunteers are on a scheduled basis and sign in using the school QR codes. QR code sheets will be display at all building entrances.
- Parents attending assemblies: In order to maintain adequate social distancing we will extend an invitation to parents of the classes that are presenting that week. Your child’s teacher will let you know when this is happening.
- Excursions: We will continue to allow parents on excursions, if needed, to assist with student supervision. Volunteers need to ensure the school has a copy of their RAN training - see SZapp for details.
- Swimming Carnival: Burnside Pool has a 750 person capacity, so parents will be able to attend as spectators. We will have our own COVID Marshall on site and we would appreciate your co-operation in maintaining social distancing guidelines.
- Parent Teacher Interviews: Parent, student and teacher face to face interviews will occur towards the end of the term. Details to follow shortly.
- Musical: Great news - we will be holding our bi-annual school musical in Term 3 . Planning is underway and students have already attended auditions and are busy learning lines. This event will be again held at the Norwood Town Hall and we will be guided by the regulations at that time.
- Governing Council: Meetings have recommenced face to face and parents will be invited to join sub committees in the near future.
Thank you all for your support over the past 12 months and we have appreciated your co-operation in helping us maintain a safe environment for all of our students.
GOVERNING COUNCIL AGM
We held our LPPS Governing Council AGM on Monday night and tabled the LPPS 2020 annual report. A copy of this will be available for parents on our school website shortly. The report gives a brief outline of our achievements for the past year.
I would like to thank our 2020 Governing Councillors for their exceptional service to the school and for those members who are leaving, we wish you all the best. Our 2021 Governing Council members are: Amy Bredon, Rachel Conway, Kate Hannemann, Susie Inat (Chair), Carolyn Lam (Deputy Chair), Chris Li, Gemma Morath, Melanie Sandery, Anokhi Parikh, Trent Schroeter, Emily Sidwell, Kate Stock, John Wang and Jie Zhu.
Reporting to the Governing Council are five subcommittees: Finance, Student Learning, Sports, Campus Development and Community & Fundraising. Any parent from the school community is welcome to join one or more of the sub-committees (Finance is by invitation only). Chairs of these committees will be sending details out in the near future.
We have now finalised our 2021 Student Free and Show days. Our first scheduled Student Free Day was held on Wednesday 20th January and was focussed around curriculum planning. The next two days will be held on Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd of July, where staff will be participating in Primary Years Programme training run through the International Baccalaureate. The final pupil free day will be held in term 4 on Monday 8th November. The school closure day – for a day of local significance, will be held on Friday 10th September, this day coincides with the Royal Adelaide Show.
ROAD SAFETY
Please take extra care on Hay & Highfield roads during the school drop off and pick up. We have had many reports of dangerous driving near the children's crossings. Attached below is the Burnside Flyer detailing parking around schools and we urge all parents to read it carefully.
Deb O'Neill, Principal
Year 7 Camp
During week four, one hundred and nine Year 7 students, Deb O’Neill, Rachel Pontifex and Year 7 teaching staff attended a three day student leadership camp at Adare, Victor Harbor. Organised into seven tribes, the Beyond Limits camp facilitators, guided the students through a range of outdoor problem solving activities that focused on developing collaboration and leadership skills. These included kayaking, mountain bike riding, beach games, flying kiwi, outdoor games, raft making and boogie boarding. Students carried water in buckets with holes, designed and constructed pipe-ways to transport water, cooled off body boarding at the beach, kayaked along Hindmarsh River, and some students learnt how to ride a bike.
Success relied heavily on team collaboration and we are very proud of the way in which team members supported and encouraged each other. This camp was an integral part of the term one programme where our students apply for leadership roles within the school and consider the characteristics of effective leaders.
Year 1 & Year 2 Swimming
In Week 3 our Year 1 and Year 2 students participated in their swimming program at the Adelaide Aquatic Centre. The children engaged in a broad range of activities including using kick boards and noodles, learning how to tread water, star floats, collecting items from under the water, duck diving, swimming with life jackets, pool safety and water rescue procedures. We would like to thank all the wonderful parent volunteers who assisted on the excursion and helped in the classrooms on their return!
Library News
It is great to have students back in the library after the long holidays. These first few weeks, Caroline Wilson and Andrea Kipperman, the teacher librarians, have been conducting orientation sessions for all classes. This week we are introducing students to our library inquiry for 2021. Our inquiry question is: What strategies can we use during library borrowing to enhance reading for pleasure? We are asking students for their ideas so we can integrate the strategies they come up with along with the actions we are excited to implement. We will share more with families throughout the year as we go through the inquiry cycle.
We have finally been able to get all family email addresses into our library management system so will be emailing overdue notices to everyone. We are quite pleased about this as it will allow us to go paperless. We send out individual overdue notices a few times a term.
We will be introducing students to the 2021 Premier’s Reading Challenge this week. Reception classes do this as a whole class so parents do not need to keep track of books. Year 1 students will get a letter home with the student reading record, introducing the Challenge to families.
Student Wellbeing News
Teaching Personal and Social capabilities at Linden Park Primary School
The four components of Emotional Intelligence, according to Daniel Goleman, author of his bestselling book ‘Working with Emotional Intelligence’, are listed below. The Department for Education have adapted the titles and use these components as our Personal and Social Capabilities. A continuum of these capabilities has been developed to guide our teachers in understanding the personal and social development of students.
Daniel Goleman’s components to Emotional Intelligence | Department for Education Personal and Social Capabilities |
Self-Awareness | Self-Awareness |
Self-Regulation | Self-Management |
Empathy | Social-Awareness |
Social Skills | Social-Management |
Being an International Baccalaureate school, it is a requirement that our teachers continuously refer to the attributes of the Learner Profile with our students. The 10 attributes being; risk taker, communicator, inquirer, principled, thinker, knowledgeable, balanced, open minded, reflective and caring. These attributes are what IB schools want our students to aspire to develop as a global citizen. Each term this year, the staff will be focussing on practical teaching strategies to develop skills in each one of these capabilities and strong links will be made to the attributes of the Learner Profile.
Our hope is, through developing social and personal capabilities with the students and continuously reflecting on the attributes of the Learner Profile, our students will find it easier to manage themselves, relate to others, develop resilience and a sense of self-worth, resolve conflict, engage in teamwork and feel positive about themselves and the world around them. If these things can happen then our students will feel a sense of success at school and their learning outcomes will improve.
Term One | Term Two | Term Three | Term Four | |
Personal and Social Capability | Self-Awareness | Self-Management | Social-Awareness | Social-Management |
Attributes of the Learner Profile | Reflective, thinker, knowledgeable, balanced, caring | Balanced, Principled, Communicator, Risk taker | Open-minded, knowledgeable, reflective, caring | Caring, communicator, inquirer, risk taker |
In our next newsletter I will write about what some of the strategies our teachers are using to develop Self-Awareness with our students and also what could be some great strategies to use at home.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or queries. rachel.pontifex604@schools.sa.edu.au
Rachel Pontifex, Student Wellbeing Leader
Sports News
Congratulations to Myles in Year 5 who won the silver medal in Under 11 Boys State Pentathlon (100m, 800m, 80m hurdles, long jump, shot put) on Sunday in the Little Athletics State Combined Event Championships at Mile End Stadium.
Community Notices
