OUR VISION

A Community of Learners Prepared For

The Future

OUR MISSION

Quality Education That Inspires and Empowers

OUR VALUES

Respect, Responsibility, Integrity

IMPORTANT DATES:

Assembly Friday 4th May

1 Campbell item

May Day Public Holiday

Monday 7th May

Mother’s Day Stall Tuesday 8th &

Wednesday 9th May

Allergy Awareness Week 14th-18th May

NAPLAN

15th-17th May

National Walk Safely to School Day

Friday 18th May

SUPERVISION PROVIDED BETWEEN

7:50am TO 2:45pm

Welcome back to Term 2!

Thank you to all the parents who have attended 3 Way Conferences with their children over the past couple of nights. The engagement of our students with their learning, through this process, has been exciting to see. We are hoping that parents are impressed with the confidence of their children to talk about their learning and now have a clearer understanding of their child’s learning focus for this term. We invite and encourage parents to provide feedback on this new process, as well as the online booking system we used this time. The red post box for the feedback forms will be in the office until the end of this week. I will share the feedback with our school community in our next newsletter.

Thank you also to the parents and staff that participated in our ANZAC Day commemorations at both the Palmerston service on ANZAC Day and the ANZAC Assembly here at school on Friday 27th April. If you missed this, there is a great story in this newsletter. Thank you especially to Cassie Knight our Defence Support Transitional Aide (DSTA), who organised all the events and assisted teachers in bringing the learning about Australia’s war history to life. Cassie is an important part of our school team and we appreciate her dedication and commitment to our students and families.

In the next few weeks we have a number of things happening which I have outlined below: Principal and School Review Week 3, 8th – 10th May External assessors will be in the school interviewing staff, students and parents on their views of how our school is travelling and collecting any feedback. This information will be used as part of our next strategic planning cycle.

Mother’s Day Stall Tuesday 8th & 9th May A Mother’s Day stall will be set up in the library for students to purchase gifts for Mother’s Day. More information is included in this newsletter.

Food Allergy Awareness Week 14th – 18th May Be Aware, Show You Care Due to a number of students and families who manage food allergies on a daily basis, we would like to raise awareness of food allergies across our school and school community. Please see the information in this newsletter on what will be happening in our school during this week.

NAPLAN Years 3 and 5 Students only, 15th – 17th May Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will sit NAPLAN tests Australia wide this week. Students will undertake four tests (Reading, Writing, Numeracy and Grammar & Punctuation). If your child is in either Year 3 or Year 5 an information pamphlet was sent home on Monday. We also ask that parents make every effort to get student to school and on time this week. Michael Grose, author and well known parenting expert suggests that ‘A positive, caring parent attitude is one of the best gifts you can give a child when they are apprehensive or nervous about approaching any different situation whether it’s going on school camp, joining a new club or sitting a NAPLAN test.’ More information and parent support on NAPLAN can be found at: https://nap.edu.au/naplan/parent-carer-support/

Walk & Ride 2 School Day Friday 18th May For health, our environment and to reduce the number of cars on the road we are once again promoting Walk or Ride Safely 2 School Day.

This week we will have Year 1 Campbell performing at assembly. I hope you can join us.

Jo Jefferson Principal

May 3rd 2018 Term 2 Newsletter No. 1

Website address: http://durackschool.nt.edu.au/

Phone: 89977555 Email: durack.school@ntschools.net.

Dignity and Determination

FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Notes home: 1/2 McNeil/Reeves excursion note

3 way conferences note

Yr 6 Shirts note Skoolbag flyer 2 hour power letter

Anzac Day Commemorations note

Dental Clinic

For any dental enquiries, to arrange an

appointment or for dental

emergencies, please call 8922 6466

On Track AT DURACK

Some names are intentionally left off this publication due to permissions. If you would like to update your child's details, please see the ladies in the office.

Meet our Japanese teachers

My name is Akane Sensei. I grew up in a small town called “Miyakonojo” in Kyushu, Japan. The population of my hometown is the same as Darwin, but geographically everything is totally different. Miyakonojo is surrounded by mountains and volcanos and is not by the ocean, therefore, there are lots of hot springs instead of crocodiles! I have lived in Darwin since 2012 with my husband and more recently my son who is now three years old. I have been employed by Darwin Languages Centre since 2013, teaching Japanese language in many Darwin primary schools. I really enjoy working with children. In my lessons I like to try different ways of engaging students through singing and playing games, because I want them to enjoy and have fun learning a second language. I love sharing my experiences and my knowledge of Japan with the students. This semester the students will be learning about Greetings, Classroom Instruction, Numbers 1 to 20, Age, Parts of the body, Colours, and Basic Japanese pronunciations for Early years. Numbers 1 to 100 in Kanji, Dates, Colours, Parts of the Body, Shapes, Adjectives, and Hiragana characters for Primary years.

My name is Miki. I was born and raised in a small town called Yatomi, in Aichi Japan. Yatomi's population is about 40,000 and it is a lot smaller than the population of Darwin. Yatomi is on the border between Aichi and Mie prefecture, which is great area to enjoy both. From Yatomi, people can get to Nagoya (fourth biggest city in Japan) by train in 15 minutes. In Nagoya you can visit Nagoya castle, Toyota museum, Lego land, Higashiyama Zoo, Rail way Park, Nagoya aquarium and in Mie there is the Ninja village, Ise shrine and Nagashima spa land. I was a primary school teacher in Japan for 9 years. In 2012, I moved into Darwin with my family and have been teaching Japanese at the Darwin Language Centre since. I enjoy teaching Japanese and sharing Japanese culture with the primary school students in Darwin. It is lovely to see the students greeting me in Japanese, even when there are outside of the class. I believe that learning a language is fun and does open people's world and their future.

My name is Viktoria and I was born and raised in the biggest country in the world- Russia. After I finished high school at the age of 19, I accepted an opportunity to study and live in Japan. When I moved to Japan I didn’t speak any Japanese, however, with the help of amazing teachers, I became fluent in speaking, reading and writing within the first two years and successfully graduated from university in four years. After university, I found a job, had a family and lived in Japan for another 12 years, continuously improving my Japanese. I hope my positive story will encourage all my students to study Japanese and learn about the culture of this beautiful country, which has become a second homeland for me. I teach Japanese at numerous primary schools and also teach students at the after-hours language school on Mondays.

This year we started our commemorations making Anzac biscuits in Transition Hawkett and Hender classes. In the process the students learned about the tradition through listening to the story ‘Anzac

Biscuits’. The students loved the hands on learning together with a special visit from Annabelle’s Dad, a former Australian Navy member. He spoke about his role in the Australian Navy, the importance of Anzac

Day and brought in his uniform, medals and badges for students to see. On Tuesday the biscuits were packaged up and sold by the Student Leadership Council at recess to raise

money for the charity “Walking Off the War Within”. Over 150 biscuits were sold raising a total of $169.00.

Durack School was proudly represented in Palmerston on Anzac Day, with students, parents and teachers all marching as a school community to the Cenotaph for the ceremony and laying a wreath.

A big thankyou to everyone who attended.

On Friday a special Anzac Assembly was held with ceremonial support from 8/12 Regiment at Robertson Barracks, a guest speaker from the Palmerston RSL and SGT Anissa Hogbin from the Australian Army

Band who played The Last Post. Beautiful reflective writing poems were read by students from 3/4 Colling, 5/6 Edie and 5/6 Bykowski as well as the revealing of 5/6 Kellam’s diorama.

Over the past 7 weeks students researched and worked together to recreate the scene of when the ANZACS landed at Gallipoli on 25th April 1915. Apart from the model soldiers, everything was made by the

students from scratch, including the landscape and boats. Students were visited by SGT Knight and his long time military friend Patey, discussing what Anzac Day means to them, imparting military history and tactical guidance for the construction of the diorama. It was fantastic for the rest of the school to see this

amazing snapshot of Australian history.

I would like to thankfully acknowledge all the ex-serving and current Defence Force members who took time to visit the school and ensure that the importance of Anzac Day lives on for generations to come.

Lest We Forget

ANZAC DAY 2018

The students in 1 Campbell are learning through health about emotions, how we can describe ways to include others to make

them feel they belong. Students have been exploring how people feel when they are included and excluded from groups and activities.

They have recognised different emotions and feelings as well as using appropriate language when encouraging others and recognise

their strengths and achievements

On Tuesday 10th April, many of our 5/6 students attended two excursions; GALA sports day and the GRIP leadership conference. The remaining students worked with the 5/6 teachers to learn about the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth Games. They also created and coached a potato athlete to compete in our own Durack Games throughout the day. Students were required to research the biography of their potato athlete and construct games for them to compete in. The athlete’s oath was read and the winners received gold, silver and bronze medals. The students really enjoyed this activity and worked hard to find solutions to problems that occurred throughout the day.

On Tuesday 10 April Durack Student Leadership Council members attended The GRIP Student Leadership Conference in Darwin. The GRIP conference concentrated specifically on training student leaders for their role as SCHOOL LEADERS. The style, topics, and content of this conference all focused on what the students can do RIGHT NOW. The student leaders left the conference with a clear vision, a solid understanding and dozens of ideas for their time as a leader. Students enjoyed interacting with other student leaders throughout the day.

On Tuesday 10th April, 28 Yr 5/6 students travelled to Bakewell Primary School for the

Basketball and Rugby League Gala Days.

The students had a great day participating against other schools in the PARR region.

Congratulations to all who participated.

The start off our term 2 science unit with a bang, Year 5/6 students became Crime Scene Detectives for the morning. Throughout the term, they will be investigating chemical changes. To spark their curiosity, they were shown objects and materials that they needed to investigate. They were asked questions such as:

What can you observe about each example? What changes have occurred to the original objects and materials? Do you think the changes can been reversed? Why? How? Why not?

Students needed to record what they observed through photographs, notes and diagrams and work collaboratively to write summary of their findings for the initial session. Some of the summaries include: Chocolate The colour changed from light to dark brown, because they had put it in the microwave for a while, which made the Freddo burn from the heat. It wouldn’t be reversible because if you put it in the fridge it wouldn’t go back to normal. Icy Poles The icy poles that were cut open and frozen were still icy but the ones that weren’t were completely melted. The icy poles that were cut open stayed frozen because it was getting air con and the ones that were closed melted because they weren’t getting any aircon. The ones that weren’t cut open are reversible but the ones that are open are not because half of it leaked out. You could put the icy pole back in the freezer and it would freeze. Tablet When the tablet got dropped in the water it started to fizz up and the water dissolved the tablet. The tablet change is irreversible because the water dissolved the tablet. Milk It was a frozen bar of milk and it started to melt. It turned into liquid. It is reversible because you can put it back in the freezer and it will turn into a block again. It changed because of the temperature - it is too hot for the frozen milk. Candle The wax from the candle melted from being lit up, and it dried hard after it cooled down. Heat melted the wax. Cool air made it go hard again. The wax can be reversible because it can go back to being wax again. The wick is irreversible because it is all burnt and not there.

5/6 Science Detectives

Throughout Week 4, Durack School will be recognising Food Allergy Week. This important week aims to raise awareness of food allergy including potentially fatal food allergies. Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia (A&AA) is calling on all Australians to unite during Food Allergy Week from 13-19 May 2018, and for individuals to Be Aware. Show You Care.

Did you know? Australia has one of the highest

incidence of food allergy in the world and this is increasing at an alarming rate

One in 10 babies born in Australia will develop a food allergy.

With no known cure for food allergy, awareness and education is of utmost importance, as a severe allergic reaction and/or anaphylaxis can rapidly become life threatening, and must be treated as a medical emergency.

It’s important for all Australians to be aware of food allergies, and know how to respond in an emergency situation.

Our Mother ’s Day Stall will be held on

Gifts available from $2-$10