Yankalilla Area School eNewsletter

A Note from The Principal

Merry Christmas and a happy last day of Term 4, 2022!

The highlights of 2022 have been too many to list – from having to navigate through the Department’s COVID safe measures for another year, camps and excursions resuming, the Cockatoo Café opening up to the community, Sports Day, transitioning to our new data management system, celebrating our graduating students and welcoming our new students - it has been a big year!

We have also farewelled a number of valued staff throughout 2022, and at this time of the year our contract Teachers and support staff too.

Our student numbers for 2023 are at their highest and we look forward to welcoming new faces to our school. Throughout this term there have been some significant works happening around the school.

In February our Canteen Manager will be on leave so we are seeking a temporary Canteen Manager for 4 weeks. We will be advertising this on our Facebook page shortly.

As the school year closes, whatever you are doing, I hope you get to enjoy a safe and happy time with your loved ones.

Christine

A note from the Pastrol Care Worker

Our last newsletter for 2022. Here is a snapshot of my year. A lot of time was spent planning and working along side many valuable members of our community to bring this event together – then it RAIN!!!

*An initiative of Rev Shelley at the Uniting Church – we held several Fleurieu Kids afternoons throughout the year. We are looking to run them again on the first Friday of the month starting in Feb, 2023

*Flag and flagpoles – after nearly two years, we finally have our flagpoles.

*The core business of a Pastoral Care Worker is the support of students. I often use these Kimochi feelings pillows to start a conversation with students when they just want a listening, non-judgemental ear to share with.

*As the year draws to a close, there was singing, our last Breakfast Club for 2022, and of course morning tea for our teachers and SSOs.

*In answer to this question – I think we can safely say a resounding “YES”. Our students, and YAS community have benefitted from the immense planning, organisation and skills of all our YAS staff.

*My final thoughts after another huge year. When you think back to the start of the year - we were set up in the gym with some students working from home and others here on site. It was a crazy time.! No wonder we are all feeling a little weary at this time of the year.

May your Christmas season be blessed with an especially happy time with family and friends. I sincerely hope you get a chance to relax and recharge in preparation for 2023. I look forward seeing you all again in the New Year.

P.S Don’t forget the Carols in your Car event at Yankalilla Oval this Sunday 18th. HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Our school has detailed plans in place to keep your child safe on catastrophic fire days or in the event of a bushfire.

To help us keep your child as safe as possible, parents and caregivers can prepare for the fire danger season by:

making a bushfire survival plan with your family
providing us with your up-to-date contact details
advising the school/preschool if your family’s personal bushfire survival plan will impact school attendance
talking to your child about what will happen in a bushfire emergency
liking the CFS, SES and SAPOL pages on Facebook
adding the emergency information hotline 1800 000 279 to your contacts.

Parents and caregivers should also read and save the new bushfire and your child’s school or preschool brochure. This resource explains what our school will do on a catastrophic fire day or in the event of a fire.

Get the brochure by searching ‘bushfire information’ on www.education.sa.gov.au.

IMPORTANT DATES FOR 2023

UNIFORM SHOP

Tuesday 24th Jan 2023 9AM TO 1PM

BACK TO SCHOOL TERM 1 2023

Monday 30th January 2023

Year 9 Graduation

On Wednesday we held the Year 9 Graduation in Performing Arts. It was fantastic to see so many parents/ caregivers and friends come in and join us in celebrating the Year 9s' time in the Middle School at Yankalilla Area School.

Mrs Barry performed a humorous rhyming couplet about each graduating student and then the students each introduced each, sharing insight into their friendships, achievements and happenings over the Middle School Years.

We ended the presentation with a film highlighting some of the learning experience these students had during the past 3 years, including some snippets from drama performances. Even though this graduating group was affected by lock downs, home and online learning and the cancellation of some excursions and camps, they still managed to have some fabulous learning experiences both at and beyond the school grounds.

We wish them all the best and lots of success as they head into Senior School in 2023.

6/7 Rotation Arts

This rotation, we learnt about the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and her love of dots. We learnt about her early life in Japan on a pumpkin farm and created our own pumpkin sculptures. After looking at Kusama's art, we explored the art of Australian First Nation artists. We were surprised to find out that dot painting started in the 1970s!

We investigated the art movements of Papunya and Bidyadanga. We initially created motifs in the "dirt" and then moved on to creating artwork that depicted our identity or connection to a place. One of our challenges, was to find a painting tool from nature; we experimented with small sticks, leaves and rocks in order to find the most effective tool for making dots and line patterns.

Bahasa Indonesia

This year we spent some time learning to ask and respond to questions about ourselves in several ways in Indonesian. One of the tasks we had was to write a postcard to the 4-5 class at Port Lincoln Primary School. The Port Lincoln class used the rubric that covered the success criteria of the task to mark and comment on our work. Bu Gray, their Indonesian teacher, also commented on our work, citing great sentence writing and sharing of information.

The Port Lincoln class were hoping to return a postcard to us, but unfortunately ran out of time. However, most of us were pretty happy with our grades and comments. Bagus!

2/3 B Bungala River walk excurion

Thank you to all the students, staff, volunteers and caregivers who helped make our 2/3B Week 6 Bungala River walk unfold so smoothly! We enjoyed our frogging excursion and we are very thankful to the small chorus of kind Common Eastern froglets who put on a show for us so that we could record their frog calls on our frog ID apps using the school iPads. Lots of plant and bird species were identified and recorded by students too using our SEEK app. We finished off with a bit of reading from Wind in the Willows whilst we ate our lunch on the riverbank.

The data collected throughout this year by 2/3B students has been logged with three separate SA Museum and Australian Museum projects - the Bush Blitz, National Bird Count and National Frog ID Count projects, which is very exciting. 2/3B students collected, analysed and wrote about their scientific observations and species identification, through their science, english, maths and deep learning curriculum.

We received emails recently from the scientist teams behind the projects, sharing the species data they found particularly valuable and thanking the students for their work. 😄🐸🦅🍀

Sarah Betts, 2/3B Class Teacher

2/3B Frog ID Journal Writing

At the end of the national Frog ID count, a very important song was released, which almost beat Taylor Swift on the charts! It is called ‘Songs of Disappearance’ featuring all the frog calls from species worldwide that are currently endangered. Our class listened to ‘Songs of Disappearance’ and researched the species featured in the song. We also wrote about our local frogging experiences down at Salt Creek. It was very cool to hear from the museum scientist team, that we managed to record an endangered Eastern Banjo frog down at Salt Creek! Here are some of our 2/3B student journal reflections which were written as part of a Week Eight vocabulary and sentencing task…

The most common finding on FrogID was the Common Eastern Froglet. The Scientific name for this frog is Crinia Signafera. Gracie.
Common Eastern Froglets are the most common frogs found on the FrogID app. Heidi.
Crinia Signafera is the Common Eastern Froglet and we now realise that it has two names because Crinia Signafera is its scientific name. Alexia.
I learnt that different species of frogs can do unique things like water holding frogs because they store water in their body and they dig a hole and stay underground. They stay like that with no food or water for two years. Isaac.
The Common Eastern Froglets are the most common because nearly everybody on the FrogID website found Common Eastern Froglets. After the national frog count ended people had found 128 503 Common Eastern Froglets. Brody.
Common Eastern Froglets are the most common frogs and I think this is because of their name. Khaos.
Boy frogs croak loud to find a girl frog to create babies and that is called breeding. Arabella
Frogs breed in a variety of different climates and seasons. Jasper.
Did you know some frogs can jump up to 15 times their body weight? Evie.
I wonder where the Mountain Mist Frog lives. Isabella.
We collected nine audio recordings of frogs at Salt Creek including the Common Eastern Froglet, Spotted Marsh Frog, Brown Tree Frog and one recording of the Eastern Banjo Frog. Ruby
Did you know that the Screaming Tree Frog, Baw Baw Frog, Yellow Spotted Bell Frog and White Bellied Frog, are all endangered? Isaacc
Frogs range in size from less than 1.3 centimetres in species in Brazil and in Cuba they get to 33 centimetres. Paige
I think frogs are pretty significant creatures because they help us with the food chain so they are really essential, we need them and there are lots of types. I think we really need frogs in our environment. Sulley.
I wonder if frogs have teeth. After my research, I discovered that some have tiny teeth on their upper jaw and roof of their mouth. Their teeth are sometimes fang-like but only one species of frog, Gastrotheca Guentheri from South America, actually has true teeth. Some species are completely toothless. Kohl.
The Baw Baw Frog is endangered because it can get an infection on its skin. Armeet.
I like the Brown Tree Frog because the last time I saw it, it was brown and it blended in with the trees. When you walk past frogs they are camouflaged so that you cannot see them. Their croak gives them away. Grace

A huge thank you to the following volunteers on our frogging excursion too!

Thank you to Marlene, Jane, Chloe, Laura, Carol and Graeme for volunteering their time with our project and the frogging excursion!

Year 3 Camp

Last week the year 3 students had enjoyed a camping experience. They had two days of activities and a sleepover in tents. We all learnt how to put up a tent and set up our sleeping areas. We went for a walk to the Yankalilla Football club where Nature SA came and took the students for a geocaching activity followed by afternoon tea from the Yankalilla bakery. The students enjoyed team challenges, free time, farm activities and movie time on camp. A big thank you to the parents who volunteered to enable the event to happen. We all had a great time.

Farm News

It’s been a busy time at Amaroo farm over the past week. We have had our crop mowed, raked and baled ready to feed our animals next year. The students were involved in the process and were able to go onto the tractor and watch how the hay was made into bales. We would like to say a big thank you to the following businesses who have donated their time and machinery to our school to make this happen.

Yankalilla Seeds

Chris Andrews Contracting

Travis Bartlett Contracting

Yr 6-9 Aquatics

Over the last two weeks the Middle school students headed to Middleton for their Aquatics sessions, which are a part of the Physical Education curriculum.

While the weather was not particularly warm for either group, our intrepid swimmers braved the cooler conditions in wetsuits to do some body boarding, kayaking and some safety activities and games.

Let's hope we get to see some of these skills out at the local beaches over the Summer and we get some good beach weather for the holidays!

R-12 Marion Excursion

The R-12 class end of year celebrations at Marion shopping centre for a movie and bowling.

End of Year Colour Run Fun

Lots of fun had by the R-5 on Wednesday for the colour run. Too bad the weather wasn't in our favour, but that didnt matter. The kids had a great time, and ended up very wet and colourful!!

Middle School Sports Marathon

The annual Sporting Marathons for year 6/7 and 8/9 classes were held this week. Teams competed in various sports to see which team came out on top. Competition was tough, but ultimately, when the scores for both days were combined, the winning team was Barker.

It was great to see the good sportspersonship on display and students getting in and having a go at the various sports; badminton, table tennis and indoor hockey to list a few.

Thank you to Mr Gray again for organising this event and the students who filled in to make teams and helped with umpiring and other jobs that need to happen to make this kind of event successful. We hope to see another close competition in 2023.