Primary News

Term 4 has burst into action, promising a whirlwind of activities in the weeks ahead. It's astonishing how swiftly the year has flown by! During our assembly on Monday, students reflected upon the upcoming grade level they'll step into next year. It's a moment filled with realisation and pride as they acknowledge their growth and progression.

This term serves as a transition period, not only allowing for reflection on the journey thus far but also preparing the students for the exciting milestones ahead, whether it's progressing into Year 1 or moving into high school. At ACC, we are committed to ensuring this transition is smooth and positive for every student.

To facilitate this, we organise transitional mornings for our incoming Kindergarten students and orientation days for Year 7. Our advantage of being a close-knit community allows us to personally introduce students to their future teachers, fostering a sense of familiarity and comfort through playground interactions and buddy programs.

Assessments

Teachers are busy writing reports and collecting data to prove growth and improvements. Reading levels are ascertained through our Fountas and Pinnell tests; Mrs McCarthy has started the primary school individual tests. With 105 students in primary, this is a large job but essential for the evaluation of the student’s learning and to assess our improvement programs.

Analysis of NAPLAN data for Years 3 and 5 this year has shown great improvement in Numeracy, reading, writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation in our year 3 students. We have prioritised our early childhood students for educational improvement and these results were an indication that the Explicit Direct Instruction model and our learning across school programs are having a positive effect.

Writing Improvement Program

This term, our classes are focusing on our new writing improvement model. This is essentially a model where the children complete a piece of writing at the beginning of the term (cold task) and we use the Brightpath Moderating Tool to mark their writing. From the class results we plan the skills that the students need to learn to take their writing to the next level. The teacher meets with the students to describe exactly what they are great at (glow) and their improvement goal (grow goal). These meetings are generally referred to as student conferences. At the end of the term the students complete another writing sample (hot task) to assess whether they have achieved their goal. We will share the final writing piece with parents, so the student can be encouraged from both home and school in their writing development. We look forward to this new ambitious writing journey for our school and will keep parents informed as we go.

Beach Clean Up Day

We are very excited about a special event happening on the 20th of October down at our school beach. Keep Albany Beautiful, along with the Tangaroa Blue Foundation, will run a Beach Clean Up Day for our Year 4- 6 students. This is a research based global project and they want us involved. Our inclusion is due to our ongoing commitment to microplastic clean ups and custodianship of Middleton Beach.

We will be at the beach for the morning and are keen to learn more about marine debris. A small group of budding scientists will be involved in an AUSMAP survey in the afternoon with the Keep Australia Beautiful Foundation.

The Green Fair in the Square will be the following day where the Keep Albany Beautiful people will love to see you. If you are keen to learn more about this visit please open the links below.

https://www.tangaroablue.org/

https://www.ausmap.org/

Jumps and Throw Day

On Tuesday the 24th we will hold the primary school Jumps and Throw day. This is to take time pressure off the Carnival on the 3rd of November. The children are busy learning all the skills and improving their techniques in athletics, ready for the upcoming events. The best in our school from Year 3 up will then be invited to compete in the Interschool Athletics Carnival; on the 15th of November.

Tuck Shop

At recess the Year 6 students sell healthy snacks for $1 each. The snacks include popcorn, grain waves and Quelch natural icy poles. This experience is part of the upper primary school economics curriculum. The money is used to buy prizes for the Thumbs Up tickets awarded in the classrooms. Please support this initiative.

In the Playground

It was lovely to see the children playing in the newly renovated playground area. Mr Pirga and Mr De Lucia have added a big wooden round that is being used as a restaurant at the moment and could be repurposed as anything the students want by tomorrow. God gave us an amazing imagination and we love to see this in play at ACC.