Newsletter 21 May

From the Principal

Anna Barratt joined the Springfield Gardens teaching team at the beginning of this term as our EAL teacher. While Anna is new to our school, she has a wealth of experience supporting students for whom English is an additional language (EAL). Anna will be at Springfield five days a fortnight and will support students in classrooms during Playberry and in other curriculum areas.

Springfield Gardens has maintained a long association with families new to Australia and Tasmania often being the first port of call for many families. Families come from a variety of backgrounds, including migrant and refugee situations with varying skills in English. You might be surprised to know that we have students from India, Nepal and Afghanistan just to name a few.

You can imagine the difficulties EAL students experience coming from a different country let alone being required to learn a whole new language, as well as make friends. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be using the newsletter to build a greater understanding of where our EAL students come from and the languages they speak. We will also be building into our school experience opportunities for EAL families to share their language and culture with us.

As a school we would also like to access this incredible resource as a learning opportunity. Understanding different cultures, celebrating diversity and building empathy and tolerance for the beliefs and traditions of others makes us a much stronger, inclusive society.

I can’t wait to hear more from our EAL students, find out about their experiences and even – just maybe – learn a few words of a different language. Please encourage your children to share openly and respectful as we learn together.

Nadine Davey.

Important Reminders

• 1/2 Fullers Bookshop excursion Wednesday 28 May please return permission forms asap.
• Leavers top deposits are due by Friday 30 May.
• Winter Sports Friday 30 May vs Austins Ferry (away game). 
• Interschool Cross Country Monday 2 June for select students.
• Winter Sports Friday 13 June vs Goodwood (home game). 
• Book Club due Friday 20 June (issue 4).
• Swimming & Water Safety commences Monday 23 June. Please ensure permission forms are returned. 
• Winter Sports Friday 27 June vs Moonah (home game).
• Last day of Term 2 Friday 4 July.

Cross Country

Well done to all the year 3-6 students who participated in our school cross country. The top 6 boys and girls from each grade will be representing out school at the interschool cross country carnival on Monday June 2^ at Bayview High School. These students will be receiving notices with information about the carnival.

Jack Jumpers

On Thursday 15 May the Jack Jumpers and the Jack Jumpers mascot named Jack visited our school. Every class had a chance to meet them and do some activities.

These are the activities they did with the Grade 5/6 classes. The first activity we did was a game called In and Out. In and out is a game where everyone lines up behind a line and someone in front of the group says either in or out and if they say in you have to jump in but if they say out you have to jump out. If they say in and you jump out, then you are out and if they say out and you jump in you are also out. When there are three people left everyone who is out has to line up behind the person who they think will win. Then when one person gets out and there are two people left the person who got out and the people who were behind them line up behind another person. When another person gets out the people behind the loser has to do five-star jumps.

 Then we learnt how to dribble properly, and we got into groups of five. In our groups of five we did a few relays. In the first relay one person at a time had to dribble up the court and back then the next person went. In the second relay one person at a time had to dribble up the court and when they got to the end had to do five body wraps which is where you wrap the ball around your body and then dribbled back for the next person to go. In the third relay one person dribbled up the court and had to roll the ball down their back and catch it before it hit the ground three times and then dribbled back.

 After the relays we learnt how to shoot properly and then we played a game of golden child which is a game where there are two teams, one running team and one shooting team. In the running team one person at a time ran around the court once and tried to get to the end. If they got to the end, then the next person would run. At the end the golden child who is the person who runs last runs and everyone they pass who is out is allowed to stand up and run with the golden child. If they get to the end that team wins but if the golden child gets out that team loses. In the shooting team everyone has to try and get a goal. If they get a goal the person running has to stop running and the next person runs. If they get to the end, they are safe. When the golden child runs everyone has to try and get a goal. If they don’t the running team wins. If they do get a goal when the golden child is running, then the shooting team wins and then we swapped teams. At the end the two people running the clinic and Jack gave a prize out each. Two of them had a head band and one of them had a deck of cards.

- written by Carlee

Join the JackJumpers at their school holiday programs in Moonah! As a thanks for their fun day at Springfield Gardens Primary, the JackJumpers are happy to share a discount code exclusively to your community. Use code “THANKS25” when selecting tickets to receive a 10% discount to their school holiday programs. Sign up here!

Friday Fun

Last term one of our Fun Friday groups built an ant farm and diorama.

Our Banded Sugar Ant Queen finally produced enough workers and was ready to move into her new home. The group leader, Saul Jacobson, brought our queen and approximately 15 workers into school last Friday. There was great excitement as tempting snacks of sugar water, honey and chopped up meal worms were put in their new home to tempt them to move from their crowded test tube.

By Monday the Queen had moved into her new home with most of the workers. Five workers remained behind to look after her eggs and pupae.

1/2 Poke

Recently, 1/2P have been learning the concept of counting on when working with numbers. We begin with a number within 20, such as 10, roll a dice and add it on without having to count the first number. We’ve been using arrays to write numbers up to the total amount. For example, we might begin with 10 and roll 6. We write numbers 11-16 on our array and write the total answer as an addition sum.

                                                                                         10 + 6 = 16

Part of the grade one and grade two maths curriculum requires students to have the skills to add and subtract numbers with one and two digit numbers. 

3/4 Pears

This term in 3/4P, we’ve been diving into information report writing and our focus has been all about penguins! We have been busy researching facts, organising our ideas and learning how to structure an information report.

To help us understand the key features we explored a sample piece about koalas and found the key features such as subheadings and topic sentences.

We then applied what we learnt to our penguin posters! It has been wonderful to see our creativity come to life through our writing and our presentation.

5/6 Grech

Grade 5/6 Grech started this term by creating some individual learning goals that we hope to achieve by the end of the term. Some popular examples of these goals include reaching a certain amount of reading nights, learning our Times Tables, improving handwriting (including learning cursive writing), and sharing in an assembly. These goals are now displayed on students’ desks so that we are easily able to check in on how we are going.

We have continued our history unit about the establishment of colonies around Australia. Each student has been creating a poster or PowerPoint presentation about life for a convict at Port Arthur. We have also continued our work with multiplication and division, with a focus on products, factors, multiples and prime numbers. Our other maths unit has involved calculating the perimeter and area of shapes. In Science, we have completed our unit on states of matter and are now beginning to explore how animals grow and survive in particular habitats.

During week 2, we were lucky to have a Kitchen & Garden lesson with Kate and Perry. Some students worked in the garden, while others made Pumpkin Soup. Another group created a collage that demonstrated how the garden changes throughout the year, using things found in the garden.

In week 3, our class joined our buddy class (1/2P) to work on our bee pictures, ready to add to our whole school display being created in the hallway for World Bee Day. We had a great time helping and getting to know our buddies better.