We’ve had a busy start to Term 4.  Teachers hit the ground running with a Professional Learning Day on the Friday of Week 1. We began by taking a dive into the new Department for Education, Children and Young People and reviewing our School Improvement Priorities and celebrating our achievements so far and planned for how we could accomplish the ‘not yet’ targets. We also embarked on our new whole school wellbeing intiative Grow Your Mind (GYM).  GYM is an australian teaching and learning platform that provides engaging, evidenced-based positive mental health strategies for educators, children and families. Grow Your Mind is an award winning social and emotional wellbeing program for schools and homes. Grounded in four key pillars of research: positive psychology, public health, social and emotional learning + neuroscience. It's really great and we look forward to sharing it with you. To find out more visit Grow Your Mind - Awareness of mental health through education

This week, I’ve spent some time with the P-6 students who have participated in Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) across the school in Reading, Numeracy, Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation and Writing. I have been so impressed with the student’s patience and growth.  Well done, everyone!

Today we celebrated our first Pre-Kinder session with our 2023 students and families.  The students were very excited and enjoyed the opportunity to meet their 2023 Kindergarten teacher/s Mrs Wood and Miss Anna Heath.  Miss Heath is relocating from Riverside Primary School to Swansea Primary School in 2023 and we are looking forward to her expertise on staff.  Welcome, Anna!

This week, our Education Facilities Attendant, Wayne announced his resignation and will sadly be leaving us at the end of the 2022 school year.  We wish Wayne all the very best with his new chapter and will miss him dearly.  This position will be advertised in the coming weeks.

Keep well,

Kristy Hay

Principal

The middle primary class has delighted in participating in a money/garden inquiry this fortnight.  After the sale of our veggie boxes at the end of last term, we were delighted to have collected a number of notes and coins in our little jar.  We gathered together and determined the best way to count this money.  Once counted, we realised that we had collected $77.55!  The next big decision was what we needed for our garden so a veggie and fruit brainstorm followed.  Corn was very popular, as were cucumbers!  Our adventure took us to the hardware shop, where we chose seeds, seedlings and found that we could even purchase a blueberry bush!  Following this, we’ve spent time looking at different Australian currency, both old and new, going shopping with our catalogues and working out different ways to show the total amount spent using concrete materials and addition algorithms. Our seeds have now been planted, so look out for future newsletters to see our new babies growing!

Joining recent learning about the Australian Gold Rush, and finding out about blacksmithing and precious gems in our class novel, the upper primary class have begun an investigation into rocks, minerals, metals and crystals.

Our inquiry questions are varied, but we are keen to seek answers to our queries.

Here are some examples of our 'wonderings'....

I wonder why there is not a lot of gold - why is it rare? How is gold formed in nature?

How are rocks made?  How was the Earth formed?

How does agate get it's detailed patterns?

How big can crystals get? How many types of crystals are there? Where in the world can you find the most crystals?

If everything is made from stardust, what force makes it come together to make new objects?

What is coal and where does it come from? 

We have begun investigating the answer to one of the questions - "Can crystals be made by people or do they only occur in nature?"  

Turns out, we can create or 'grow' crystals! So...the alum crystal growing competition has begun!  Teams are working together to grow the biggest and perefctly formed crystal made from alum (aluminium potassium sulfate dodecahydrate).

On Thursday during practical science lessons we found out about dissolvability (or solubility), and how to make solutions (mixtures made from dissolved substances in water).  Tests were designed to work out if mystery substances were soluble.  Dissolvable substances included different types of sugar and salt, while flour and pepper were non-soluble.

This knowledge helped students to make saturated alum solutions for starting the crystal growing process. Good luck teams!

Photos of teams designing their investigation and demonstrating school values of Respect and Aspiration...

What a wonderful start we've had to our woodwork sessions this term!  Grade 3's have now become a part of our after school sessions.  Our new pencil box projects are well on the way and we will return to our boardwalk project later on in the term.  

Thank you so much to all our teachers. We are so grateful for your continual commitment and hard work. Thank you for educating our students and helping them to reach their goals and plan their futures.

Swansea Primary School has been successful in being selected as part of the School Lunch Project in 2023.  Watch this space for updates.

Just so you know, our Term Dates document for 2023 is now live on our website. It's a great resource to print off and stick up on your fridge. Go grab yourself a copy now!