18 August 2017

Newsletter Articles

PRINCIPAL’S REPORT

Hello Parents, Carers and Friends

I have so much exciting news to share with you this week! Firstly, we were successful to gaining a grant of $230,000 to re-develop the girls and boys toilets in the Prep – Grade 2 area. We are hopeful that with this grant we will also be able to get the adult toilets in the Open Area re-developed as well as the staff toilets near the office. All of our toilets have been below standard for some time and I am glad that the Department of Education has recognized this need through the provision of a grant.

I am sure that our students, staff and parents would all have some ideas as to things we should consider when designing the new toilets. Please let us know if you have ideas, for example, toilets in many schools now have the basin and toilet in the cubicle, rather than a large shared space for basins. You might like to see hand-dryers instead of paper towels. What will make these toilets safe, clean and respectful for the students and the adults? One way you could express any ideas you have is to email our school: Risdon.vale.primary@education.tas.gov.au.

We hope to have the toilets redeveloped over the Summer, ready for 2018.

New play equipment

This week new play equipment is being built in the Prep-Grade 2 area and it is almost built and it is almost ready for the children to play on. Rob Schmidt is now shoveling the ‘soft fall’ so that there is a soft surface to land on in case you fall off. Thank you to Rob and the people helping him we can to wait to play on it.

Student report and photos by Ebonie Jenkins and Mason Burr

The School Association members are working very hard towards the school fair on Friday August 25th. If you are able to volunteer to help out over the next week or on the night, please let the office know or see Tamara or Katie. It’s a huge community event and this year is going to be enormous!!!

Debating for our two Grade 5/6 teams is being held at Risdon Vale Primary School next week, Thursday August 24th. The first debate is at 4pm and the second one is at 4.30pm. Please come over to support our debating teams. They have excellent speeches and perform at a very high standard.

The Education Act became active as of July 10 this year. The first focus area for us as a school is attendance. Family holidays during term time are no longer automatically an authorised absence. If you are considering a holiday outside of the 11 weeks of official holiday time, please contact the school to speak with me. I am pleased to say that attendance for this week has improved from 89% - 90%.

These current statistics for this year’s attendance should be 93% of students here every day – preferably 100% every day.

Thank you so much for your ongoing support for our work together. Our new website is yet another way we can share our journey with the world, and promote the ways in which our school is educating for the social, emotion, and academic needs of every child. We have high expectations for every child and every adult in our community. We treat each other with respect, with an aim that our children will learn in safe and supportive environments.

Kinds regards, Libby

HIGH 5 CERTIFICATES PRESENTED AT ASSEMBLY ON 7TH AUGUST 2017

HIGH 5 CERTIFICATES PRESENTED AT ASSEMBLY ON 14TH AUGUST 2017

GREENIES PRESENTED AT Assembly August 7th

News from the library

Premier’s Reading Challenge

Congratulations to all students who took part in this important challenge. Please give Ms Rigney or your class teacher your completed recording sheets with at least 10 book titles recorded. You have a chance of winning some prizes.

Book Fair

Our annual book Fair will be held in the Library during Book Week next week, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It will also be opened during the School Fair. All students will have completed a wish list of books they would like to purchase. While there is no obligation to purchase these every book sold will contribute to the commission the school receives. We hope to see you there.

Book Week competition

Students will be given the opportunity to vote for their favourite shortlisted book. A random draw will provide one child from each class $10 to spend at our Book Fair. Winners will be announced on Monday 21st August.

Book Week Assembly

A special assembly to celebrate Book Week will be held on Thursday 24th starting at 11:45. Teachers and students are working on presentations about books they have been reading in class. Students will be advised if any costume is required. Parents are very welcome to attend.

Cooking with Anna

In cooking we cook a lot of yummy food and it is delicious. We cook cheese muffins, coleslaw and stir-fry. We have lots of fun with Anna in the cooking room. Sometimes we will have a lot of vegetables and fruit. Anna also teaches us skills that we have not learnt in the kitchen. We all hope that she will stay at this school for a long time.

By Ebonie Jenkins

Spiced carrot pancakes

Equipment: chopping boards, knives, large pot, mixing bowl, mixing spoon, measuring jug, measuring spoons, plate, spatulas x 2, frypan, serving plate

5 tablespoons plain flour
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon curry powder
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
2 spring onions, finely chopped
3 eggs
6 medium size carrots, peeled and grated
1 teaspoon salt and 10 twists of pepper
4 tablespoons sunflower oil for frying fritters

Dipping sauce

1/4 cup sweet chilli sauce
1/2 tablespoon lime juice

Method

1. Combine flour, cumin, curry powder, garlic, parsley and spring onions in a large bowl. Add eggs and mix well to combine.
2. Coarsely grate carrots. ***Use your hands to squeeze out as much excess moisture as possible.
3. Add carrots to egg mixture. Season with salt and pepper and mix well.
4. Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon of batter per pancake to frying pan. Flatten slightly with a spatula.
5. Cook pancakes in batches for 5 minutes each side, or until golden and cooked through. Place pancakes on a wire rack to cool slightly.
6. Put pancakes on a baking tray and keep warm in the oven until serving.
7. Serve hot with dipping sauce.

Dipping sauce: Combine sweet chilli sauce and lime juice in a small bowl and mix well.

Wattleseed carrot biscuits

Equipment: measuring scales, grater, small bowl to soften butter in, large mixing bowl, mixing spoon, measuring cups, measuring spoons, baking trays, spray oil

125 g butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup grated carrot, firmly packed into cup
1 ½ cups plain flour
ONLY ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon wattle seed powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoon milk, approximately

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Spray oil on the baking trays.
2. Melt butter in the microwave until just softened.
3. In a large bowl beat butter, sugar and egg with an electric mixer until combined.
4. Stir in carrot, vanilla essence, flour, bi carb of soda, oats and cinnamon. Add enough milk to make a firm dough.
5. heaped teaspoons of mixture into balls. Place balls 5cm apart on trays; flatten slightly with a fork.
6. Bake biscuits for 15 minutes or until golden; cool on trays.

Word of the Week

Student

A student is a person who is learning something. Students can be children, teenagers, or adults who are going to school, but it may also be other people who are learning, such as in college or university. Another word for student is pupil. Usually, students will learn from a teacher or a lecturer if at university.

An article on being a student:

On Being a Student

An ex-president of a college with an enrolment of several thousand, was asked how many students the school had. He quipped "Oh, perhaps a dozen." He was making a joke that is as old as the hills. The president of a large corporation used it when he was asked by a reporter (during a strike) how many workers there were in his plant. One of my teachers used to remind us that to be a student meant more than merely being a pupil.

Times change. The definition of "student" once was "one who studies something". Today it can mean merely "one who attends a school, college or university". This modern definition doesn't even suggest that the person does more than "attend". College and university professors still use the first definition, and schools have ways (such as course requirements, exams and grades) to attempt to ensure that those who attend will also study and learn something.

So what distinguishes a student? What makes the student stand out from the rest of the class? The four As: attitude, academic skills, awareness, and accomplishment, certainly are a large part of it, and a student who has them will be very likely to earn As:

• Attitude is primarily a genuine desire to learn, and the willingness to do hard intellectual work to achieve understanding. It is also shown by how well you apply yourself even to subjects in which you have little interest, and how much you can achieve even when a professor's style isn't to your liking.
• Academic skills include ability to read with comprehension, intelligent use of resources (including library and internet resources), logical and mathematical skills, efficient study habits, and the ability to communicate clearly and fluently when speaking and writing.
• Awareness of what's going on in the world around you, and the habit of intelligently relating that to your academic courses. For example, when taking a course in political science, you should relate what you are learning in class to what's happening on the national and world political scene. When taking a science course, you should relate scientific principles to phenomena you observe in everyday life, and go out of your way to find applications and examples of science in the real world.
• Accomplishment is demonstrated by successful application of understanding. The evidence of that includes:

1. Correct and confident application of what you've learned to new problems and challenges,
2. clear and effective communication of your understanding through speaking and writing, and
3. Possession of a base of information, skills and understanding sufficient to allow you to continue your education outside of the classroom, throughout your life.

All of these add up to a fifth A: ability, a word frequently used above. One goal of education is to achieve the ability to apply one's knowledge in new, creative, and correct ways. Abilities are not entirely innate; some are achievable through dedicated and focused effort.

Other symptoms and qualities of a good student include:

1. Self-discipline. The successful student has learned to budget time and use it efficiently, and will do whatever needs to be done, when it must be done, whether or not one feels like it at the time.
2. Initiative. In short: doing things without being told. The student doesn't wait for assignments to read ahead in the textbook, or to seek out and study related books to gain understanding. The good student does more problems or exercises than assigned, and does them even when none are assigned. The good student working in a science laboratory does not merely follow instructions (though that is an important skill) but looks for opportunities to discover new things, try new things, and find better methods. When an opportunity arises to do a project outside of class, the good student jumps at the chance and doesn't even ask whether it will earn extra credit.
3. Breadth of interests. College provides a great opportunity to broaden your interests and explore new things. You may never again have available to you such a convenient and comprehensive library, well-equipped laboratories, and such diverse and inexpensive cultural events and academic activities. Much education can occur outside of class, if you seek it. But if you confine yourself to the things you've always done, avoiding anything new and unfamiliar, you will have squandered a valuable opportunity.
4. An open mind is a mind receptive to examination of new ideas and facts. Having an open mind does not mean that one jumps on the bandwagon of every new fad. A better characterization of an open mind is one that is willing to dispassionately and rationally analyse new ideas, weighing them objectively against established knowledge and the facts at hand.
5. A critical habit of mind. Education is more than the acquisition of information. It includes the ability to acquire new information, critically evaluate that information, and correctly and effectively use it. With so many information sources at our disposal in this computer age we are awash in information, and in danger of information overload. But much of that information is fraudulent, worthless, incomplete, or just plain wrong. It has always been so. Probably 90% of the books in any library could be lost with no harm to human knowledge. On the internet, that figure may be as high as 99%. But it's not always easy to determine just which books are worth keeping. We are assaulted through every medium by folks trying to sell us something (with impressive claims of its value), to persuade us to accept some political or social idea, to convert us to some religion or philosophy, or to convince us of the value of some medical panacea. Most of this is humbug. One of the values of a good education is the ability to see through false claims, unfounded assertions and outright deceptions. By this criterion, education has largely been a failure, for many people who have college degrees are still suckers for snake-oil and perpetual-motion-machine peddlers.
6. Perceptiveness. The more you learn, the more perceptive you become. You can, as necessary, "read between the lines." You no longer need everything spelled out; you can fill in missing details. You aren't dependent on being shown; you can puzzle things out for yourself. You perceive quickly what a writer or speaker means, without misinterpreting. You learn to seek the intended meaning of what you read or hear rather than trying to impose your own preconceived meaning. You can see through complexity to the heart of a matter. You are able to distinguish the important from the trivial in a serious discussion.
7. Objectivity. Most of us begin our education with an "egocentric" view, expecting everything to have some relevance to our needs or desires. We even impose such interpretations on things we learn, and avoid learning some things because they don't seem important at the time. Education can broaden that view, encouraging us to set our egos aside and objectively evaluate facts and interpretations. We find out that mere unsupported personal opinions have no value in an academic discussion. We learn to recognize the validity of facts and ideas that we may not like. We learn that other people and other cultures may interpret things differently, and that fact is not a-priori evidence that they are wrong. We learn that the world does not revolve around us, and the universe cares not at all whether we exist, or what we do. Education can give us humility.
8. Humility. However much we learn, we must realize there's a lot more to be learned, and that some of what one `knows' may turn out to be wrong. For this reason intellectual arrogance is unbecoming an educated person. Knowing lots of things is good, but knowing the limitations of one's knowledge is essential to using it properly. Many of the classic errors of history were made by people over-confidently going beyond what they knew and understood.

Work to be educated, not merely trained. Do not be satisfied with memorized facts and the conclusions and opinions of others. Ask yourself how the facts were obtained, how conclusions were drawn from them, and how those conclusions were tested. Test your knowledge by frequently asking yourself: "Do you understand all you know about it?

Simanek, Donald E. 1997, 2017. On being a student.

Famous Quotes:

One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
– Mark Twain

“If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.”
– Nora Roberts

“The worst thing a kid can say about homework is that it is too hard. The worst thing a kid can say about a game is it's too easy.”
― Henry Jenkins

3RD TERM AFTER SCHOOL ACTIVITIES HAVE STARTED

The first session with Table Tennis was enjoyed by students on Wednesday afternoon.

NATIONAL TREE PLANTING DAY

INFORMATION FROM THE SCHOOL OFFICE

School Banking

Remember your School Banking Day is on Tuesday’s

SCHOOL ASSOCIATION NEWS

Only 7 sleeps till our Fair and Fireworks night.

This will be even greater than last years with all the variety of activities happening.

Please support your classes with donations towards their stalls.

We are still looking for volunteers to help out on the night. Can you give 1 hour or more please let us know.

You will of received a raffle book this week and this will be run in conjunction with the Fair but drawn on the 11th September in School Assembly. Some amazing prizes to be won. Please return any unsold tickets and monies to school office ASAP.

We currently have teachers listed in the 7HO Vote for a Teacher so please make your vote count and let’s get behind our teachers and be in the running for the APPLE for the teacher and class.

We are still collecting our Earn & Learn Woolworth Stickers plus any Register dockets from Eastlands for our chance to win again. All these can also be left at School office.

CALENDAR OF UPCOMING EVENTS