Newlands Primary School
“Encouraging Excellence”
Newsletter
No.23/2016
Friday 19/08/2016
Newlands Kids are Great Kids
SCHOOL MOTTO: ENCOURAGING EXCELLENCE
SCHOOL VALUES: COURAGE, PERSISTENCE AND RESPECT
Dates To Remember - Term 3August
Wed / 24 / 3 day Camp for Years 3 to 6 commences
Fri / 26 / NO SWIMMING
Campers return to school
Sun / 28 / Bunning’s Coburg – Sausage sizzle
Wed / 31 / Athletics Day
Premier’s Reading Challenge Finishes
Items due for the newsletter
September
Fri / 2 / FINAL SWIMMING SESSION
Newsletter published
Fri / 9 / Book Parade
Grandparents Day
Mon / 12 / Pupil Free Day
Wed / 14 / Items for the newsletter
Thu / 15 / Coach Approach – Mini Olympics
PFA meeting 7.15pm
Fri / 16 / Newsletter published
LAST DAY TERM 3
Last Updated: 19/08/2016
Dates To Remember - Term 4
October
Mon / 3 / First day Term 4
Mon / 10 / School Council Meeting
November
Tue / 1 / Melbourne Cup Holiday
Thu / 3 / 2017 Prep Transition Day –session1
Thu / 10 / 2017 Prep Transition Day –session2
Mon / 14 / School Council Meeting
Thu / 17 / 2017 Prep Transition Day –session3
Wed / 23 / School Concert
Thu / 24 / 2017 Prep Transition Day –session4
2017 Prep family night
December
Tue / 20 / LAST TERM 4
School Camp Years 3 to 6
Leave Wednesday 24threturn Friday 26th August.
PUPIL FREE DAY
Monday 12th September Children do not come to school on this day.
Call for volunteers - PFA BBQ
Bunnings on Sunday 28 August
The Newlands Primary School PFA is holding a fundraising BBQ at Bunnings on Sunday 28 August.
We are still looking for people to help out by cooking or serving in two hour blocks. If you can help please fill in your details at this link
indicate your time. We will confirm via email.
Robert, Secretary,
FROM THE PRINCIPAL
NAPLAN RESULTS
The 2016 NAPLAN results have now been received at school. The results for years three and five show a consistent growth in learning, for each cohort of students.
As a national measure of student progress for; reading, writing, spelling, grammar and mathematics our school performed well above the national standards. As a state government assessment of student progress our school performed above the state mean in all of the above categories.
It is wonderful to see such results from a school with limited resources, but loads of teacher dedication, persistence and a focussed attention to the student’s progress and needs.
Spanish at Coburg High School
Coburg High School Leading the World in Languages
Three students from Coburg High School have received Elite Awards as part of the Language Perfect World Championships.
Language Perfect is an online learning program for languages. Students earn points for every correctly answered question. The Championships had over 300,000 students and 1000 schools participating from around the world.
Coburg High School was ranked first in Victoria, second in Australia and seventh in the world for Spanish. They also ranked eighth in the world for Greek and fourteenth in the world for Arabic.
Learning a language has multiple benefits such as developing a student’s critical thinking, analysis and problem solving skills. It also teaches students about other people, their ideas and ways of thinking. It also contributes to social cohesiveness through better communication and understanding.
Importantly teaching languages can support strategies to achieve excellence in teaching and learning as well as community engagement in learning.
Ross Dudgeon
REMINDERS
Instrumental music lessons update
We now have two teachers offering instrumental musics lessons during school hours: Rachel teaches piano/keyboard on Mondays (fully booked) and Kyra teaches piano/keyboard and ukulele on Wednesdays. Kyra is nearly fully booked for Wednesdays but can take on another day if there are further enrolments. A flier with further information on what Kyra offers is attached to this newsletter.
Want to see new instruments offered? Music lesson working-group meeting next Thursday; 25th August, 9.15am in the After-care room.
Everyone with an interest in how instrumental music lessons are offered at Newlands is invited to come along to discuss the next steps regarding inviting new service-providers to offer lessons at the school during or after school hours. Responses to the music lesson survey (distributed earlier this year) showed that quite a few families are interested in lessons for guitar and drums. If you can’t come along but want to contribute your views please contact Nina ( or 0400123336). Thanks!
Tiqbiz
IMPROVED COMMUNICATION WITH TIQBIZ!
You have probably seen TiqBiz mentioned throughout the year in various newsletters. This is now the main form of communication from the school to families, allowing for easier, more direct communication at all times.
If you have not already signed up to it, we'd strongly encourage you to. There is a phone app and also a desktop version. Once you download the phone app you can put in your preferences to receive any notifications via email or via phone.
Within the app, you choose the classes that your child/ren are in, to get specific information from those groups. You can also notify the school of past or upcoming absences through the app, rather than the current system of calling and writing notes to explain your child’s absence.
Caitlin in the office will be the one running and posting any TiqBiz notices, and teachers have already started using TIQBIZ to communicate to families on a regular basis.
So far, there have been notifications to remind families about swimming, about the Grade 3/4s needing old magazines for some upcoming class work, gardening working bees, Read-a-thon, PFA meeting and call for volunteers for upcoming Bunnings BBQ etc.
Once the system is properly being utilised, it will be a great system of instant communication between the school and families. Digital forms of the newsletter will also go up through the app and any recent forms for excursions, camps, etc. This helps to alleviate 'lost notices syndrome' that seems to occur in many households, whereby the piece of paper handed out at the door disappears between the classroom and the parent standing 10 metres away!
NEWLANDS COMEDY GALA IV
The fourth annual Newlands Comedy Gala was a brilliant success!
Thank you so much to everyone who came along, and brought their friends along, and enjoyed our food and drink and had a wonderful time.
At this stage we estimate that the Comedy Gala and Monster Auction have raised about $15,000 for Newlands Primary School.
That is an amazing outcome for a school of less than 130 families. We are able to pull off something of this magnitude because of the commitment and generosity of a range of people and organisations.
First and foremost are the performers. Without their willingness to ply their trade for the good of our school there simply is no gala. I encourage you to show your appreciation for them, and our previous performers, by attending their shows and spreading the word about their talents.
Local businesses and organisations support us in many ways – Mountain Goat Brewery have been on the team since the very first Gala, and Nelson Alexander Real Estate have also supported us for a number of years. Degani's were kind enough to help us get the beer cold for you, and Woolworths, Murray Goulburn, and Manildra Flour Mills all donated ingredients for the scones. Vintex Wines provided those very easy-drinking French imports, and Glenroy Bakery gave us a great deal on the sausage and spinach rolls. And then of course, there are all the people and businesses who donated goods and services for the Monster Auction. Thank you all so very much.
The Monster Auction was co-ordinated by Tash and her team, and they did an amazing job sourcing fantastic and interesting items (p.s. if you were a successful bidder and haven't paid for or picked up a Monster Auction prize yet please contact Tash or I).
Where Newlands really shines is in all of you who volunteer to help on the night, whether it be unloading cars, putting jam and cream on scones, serving behind the bar, or helping us with clean up. I particularly want to acknowledge Diarmuid who single-handedly baked every single one of those scones!
The power behind the volunteers is our excellent, wonderful, very good organising group. We have been meeting since April to put together all the details for the night. Thank you and congratulations to Janis, Jo, Mim, Nic, Kylie, Sarah, and Carin.
And finally, you cannot talk about this event without reflecting on the massive contribution of Nelly Thomas. The idea for the Gala originated with her many years ago, and she has driven it ever since. Her professionalism and commitment to the school have guided the organising group each year and we owe her a great deal. Thank you, Nelly.
Melanie McGrath
LIBRARY NEWS
Newlands Read-a-thon
8/08/2016 till 19/08/2016
As part of the celebrations, Read-a-thon winners will be announced at the Book Parade – Friday 9th September.
Book Week Celebrations
Theme for this year’s Book week is "Books Light Up our World"
Finishof Book Week and Dress Up day at Newlands - Friday 9th September
Read-a-thon forms will be sent home the first week of term 3.
To find out more about Book Week, go to
Mel. A
The trouble with languages in primary schools
The Age Tuesday 9/08/2016
Primary school students are spending, on average, less than half the time recommended by the Education Department learning a language.
Just 0.9 per cent of Victorian schools, excluding those offering bilingual programs, met the Department's target of 150 minutes of language teaching a week.
Prep students studying Spanish at Newlands Primary School. Photo: Eddie Jim
In 2015, students devoted an average of 59.4 minutes to learning a language every week, a figure which has stagnatedover the past decade, despite a massive increasein the uptake of languages in primary schools.
Yvette Slaughter, a language education expert from the University of Melbourne, said increasing the time spent learninglanguages was an ongoing challenge.
"There's a lot to fit in the curriculum and schools do need to be convinced about the value of language education. The less amount of time they spend learning a language, the less they are able to achieve by the time they finish school," she said.
Dr Slaughter said parents were often disillusioned about what their children would achieve through school language programs.
"They get disillusioned by the argument that it is good for trade or career purposes. But that pathway requires a lot more work than the education system will allow for. Even at a VCE level."
But schools are finding creative ways of meeting these challenges.Newlands Primary School in Preston began teaching Spanish for the first time last year, after a decade-long absence of language programs.
It wanted to wait until the nearby and newly opened Coburg High school had decided on a language, so that its students would have continuity if they moved to the local high school.
The primary school has integrated Spanish into all aspects of the curriculum, and aims to eventually become a bilingual school.
In science, they might discuss animals and the climate in Spanish, and in maths they might talk about measurements or numbers in the language. This approach has allowed students to clock up half an hour of Spanish a day.
"We wanted to move away from the model where students spent a whole block of time twice a week learning a language, and the connection back to the classroom is not a smooth transition," Principal Ross Dudgeon said."We wanted Spanish to be part of the culture of the classroom."
Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers' Associations immediate past presidentKylie Farmer said students found this approach more engaging, and it allowed them to retain more language skills.
"Fifteenminutes a day is more effective than 60 minutes on a Friday afternoon. It opens up so many more possibilities," she said.
She said there had been a shift away from evaluating a language's success in primary schoolon how much vocabulary students picked up.
"It is more about a positive experience and attitude towards learning a language, rather than having everyone able to count to 100. That is not that useful if you can't do itin a way that is culturally appropriate and applicable to various scenarios."
An Education Department spokesman said there had been a significant increase in primary schools offering languages, with 92 per cent running a program in 2015 compared to62 per cent in 2012.
"Victoria has the highest student participation rates in language education in the country," he said.