November 29th, 2012

Vol 1, Issue 14

Student Visits

St Ives Park P.S. Concert

ASU student home school

project

Dates for your Diary

Birthdays

Principal’s Message

News from the Classrooms

Sir Eric Woodward

School Newsletter

Cnr Ayres and Acron Roads, St Ives NSW 2075

Telephone 9449 6003 Fax 9983 9334

Email: sirericwoo-s.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Website: www.sirericwoodwardschool.com.au

STUDENT VISTS @ SEWS Sir Eric Woodward School hosts a variety of students throughout the year to support many programs at both local schools and universities. The benefits of welcoming students to SEWS are many, including wonderful assistance across a variety of our programs to support the educational outcomes, daily learning, success and fun of all our students. This fortnight SEWS welcomed students from Killara High School, Australian Catholic University (AUC) and Macquarie University. Rebecca and Rachel from ACU having been working alongside the team in our autism support unit (ASU), to support our students in their learning across the curriculum. Olivia has been working with Sandy, Sandra and Louise and the young ladies in our senior class assisting with a variety of projects as we work towards the end of the 2012 school year. These young ladies are studying education and will make fine assets as future educators. Sheena, from Macquarie University, has also been working alongside the young ladies in the senior class once a week for a number of weeks. She has also supported our students in other classes in the hydrotherapy program assisting our students in a full range of learning experiences. Killara High School, as part of their community service program, provided SEWS with some outstanding young people to work at the school alongside our staff and students. It was a pleasure working with such respectful students who assisted in a number of school programs and projects, joining with our students as they accessed their curriculum. A very big thank you to all of our visiting students for your commitment to the education of our students at SEWS.

Student Visits @ SEWS

Tom and ACU student teacher Rebecca

Lorrin and ACU student teacher Oliver engage in literacy

Yasmin and ACU student teacher Rachel read together

Sophie works with Sheena from Macquarie University on the whiteboard

St Ives Park Primary School Concert On Tuesday this week student representatives from K- 6 at SEWS were invited to attend St Ives Park Primary School for their end of year concert performance. The students from St Ives Park P.S delighted us with their musical and dramatic talents in an Australian theme concert. We heard old favourites including ‘Home among the gum trees and Waltzing Matilda’. The performance took the audience on a journey of Australia including historical events like Macarthur and the sheep farming industry. Mem Fox’s ‘Possum Magic’ was acted out and the costumes and students acting abilities were wonderful. We also got to see the vastness of our country with performances such as ‘Brumby Jack’. SEWS students were role models and their behaviour and audience participation was a credit to them all. A big thank you to St Ives Park Primary School for their very kind invitation. Congratulations to all the staff and students on their successful performances, we know your night performance to your wider school community will be a huge success!

Charlie and the girls from Killara High enjoy the performance at St Ives Park

Nathan with visiting teacher from Arndell Andrew and Anita demonstrates an enthusiastic audience member

ASU Student Home School Project Lego Display Case Written By Tom

Last Tuesday I presented my Lego Display Case at Cherrybrook Public School with the other year 6 students. Dad helped me build the case out of Perspex, mum helped me come up with the idea and I saved my pocket money to buy the Lego. It took me six months to complete. I made a road for the bottom out of wood and paint. We put lights around the front of the case. I was very happy with the outcome.

Tom

Tom with his dad Greg proudly exhibiting his Lego Display Case

Tom’s successful project – Lego Display Case

Dates for your Diary

International Day of people with a disability- Monday 03rd December, 2012

SEWS Annual Presentation Day 2012 – Friday 7th December

Field of Mars Incursion, Bush Christmas -Wednesday 12th December,2012

Birthdays

A very “happy birthday” goes to one of our wonderful staff members, Christine, who celebrated a very special year. “Happy birthday” also goes to Fionn, our great DESU student who is now 11 years old, and to Megan in our Intermediate Class, who turned 13 this fortnight. We know you would both have had lots of fun for your birthday.

Principal’s Message SEWS continues to be busy preparing for our Annual Presentation Day next Friday December 7th. We are looking forward to seeing you all there to help us celebrate our 2012 achievements and student successes. A big “thank you” is extended to all of our visiting students this fortnight. Your contribution to our school is invaluable and watching you form wonderful rapports with all our students and staff is very rewarding. We hope if you have time you will visit with us again. Congratulations, Tom! What a wonderful completed project - a designer in the making. You should be very proud of your efforts. It was great to have the opportunity to attend St Ives Park Public School this week. Well done to all our students who attended the concert. Your behaviour was a credit to you and our school. Big congratulations to all students and staff at St Ives Park. Your performance highlighted the great work that happens in our public schools.

Jo-Anne Gardiner Principal

News from the Classrooms

Senior Class Presentation Day is fast approaching and the students are practising their music skills for the big day. Sophie particularly enjoyed a music conversation with Jo-Anne, the teacher. She played a string of sounds on the IPAD and Jo-Anne replied with scales on the piano. They repeated this conversation with music many times. Late, Lorrin and Georgia joined in to form a class trio.

Sandra, Sandy & Louise

Sophie rehearsing drum sounds on the IPAD for

Presentation Day

Georgia joins in on the musical performance practice

Lorrin playing sounds on the chimes

Deborah’s Class Stephen is very adept at modifying model cars for his TAS projects, using his own designs. He recently modified a model Hummer, using battery powered neon lights, and equipping it as an off-road vehicle. Stephen celebrated his 18th birthday on the 14th of November. Happy birthday Stephen! Deborah

Stephen working on his TAS design project

Happy Birthday Stephen!

Norma’s Class Keeden is really enjoying his sensory stories and he is responding so well to each sensory item. In the past month we have been working on a pirate theme.

The cue that the story is about to begin is a pirate hat and as soon as Keeden sees it he moves towards it anticipating the story. As well as anticipating what is coming up next, Keeden is communicating how much fun he is having by smiling and laughing.

Great work Keeden and great work mum. You make wonderful pirates!

Norma

Sharon’s Class In PDHPE Logan has been actively involved in preparing and cooking healthy meals and snacks. I am always impressed with Logan’s talent to follow a recipe. Recently, he made ‘Eggy bread’. He independently used a cutter to cut the bread into a gingerbread man shape, carefully cracked the eggs and dropped the bread into the egg mixture. To make this meal healthy, Logan decided not to fry his French toast in oil and instead used a sandwich grill.

Logan you are acquiring some fabulous cooking skills and learning how to stay healthy, well done!

Sharon

Logan reads the recipe

Logan pressing the cutter into the bread

The bread cut into gingerbread man shapes

Breakfast is ready!

Junior Class

In our group cooking class this semester, the Junior Class has enjoyed preparing baked goods in different shapes and colours to reinforce their Mathematics programme. Squares, circles and triangles have been popular shapes and many wonderful colours of the rainbow have found their way on to the top of our cakes.

Nathan, Omar, Oliver, Amira and Charlie all kneaded and helped roll dough into a circle for our pizza. Everyone had fun piling on toppings of different shapes and sizes. When it was cooked we cut the pizza into triangles to be enjoyed by our Riverview volunteers.

As part of our English program focusing on communication, we said farewell to our Ravenswood buddies in style by icing cupcakes in traditional Christmas colours for their final visit. Oliver, Omar, Nathan, Amira and Charlie all chose to ice cakes either red, green or snow white. It was fun to offer the cakes around and see them being enjoyed by our buddies from Ravenswood. Mary-Jo, David & Christine

Charlie assists in assembling the pizza

Nathan sees there is only one triangle left

Counting olives

Oliver makes a request to ice his cakes green

Nathan applies red icing to our cupcakes while Omar ices his green

Pablo and Buddies admire our hard work

Amanda’s Class

Jessie has a new iPad. She has been using a school one to play cause and effect games for several months. She is leaving school at the end of this year and her parents have used ADHC Family Assistance Funding to buy Jessie her own iPad.

Jill, her mum has loaded the iPad with Jessie’s favourite videos as well as some new ones which Jessie enjoys watching as part of English: making a choice, and PDHPE: indoor leisure.

The video in the pictures is one Jessie hasn’t seen for years and she was happy to watch it for far longer than usual. Well done, Jessie for focusing on a video for so long.

Amanda

Jesse demonstrate great focus using her iPad

Barbara’s Class On a recent visit, Codey helped me take some photos to show other people how to say hello to him and his twin brother. With an extra pair of hands around at home at the moment, Codey and Will are looking forward to more outings into the community and hoping that lots of new friends will come up and say hello.

The twins both love the sound of loud bells. So they were very excited when their old set of manual bells was recently replaced by a beautiful new switch-adapted set. In the past, both boys enjoyed helping their tutor to hit the bells with a stick but it was hard work. Now Will and Codey are working on learning to press the switch independently so they can hear the sound of bells whenever they want.

Will and Codey haven’t been very well lately so they have been relaxing as they listen to stories and water sounds on the iPad. They have also found it soothing to watch the lights from the Bubble Ball mobile and optic fibre curtain.

Barbara

Codey showing everyone how to say hello to him

Enjoying the sound of very loud bells

Will watching the Bubble Ball mobile

Class pool activity

Listening to Clare SEWS physiotherapist during swimming

David’s first time playing the violin

Thomas on the drums practicing for Presentation Day

4/5B & 5/6B This fortnight we welcome Sam and Jai who are new students to our classes. Keep your eyes out on the wonderful things that both Sam and Jai get up to in future newsletters.

This fortnight’s snapshot includes: examined the meaning of 'audience' and the use of formal and informal speech, practised the correct tense of verbs, completed some terrific 'incident' poems using no words than 12 words and five lines, used daily newspapers to look for Australia's global connections, 'worked out' on various circuits, discussed what is a ‘fair test’ and investigated how to change the height of a shadow, used the memory function on the calculator to multiply multiple equations, experienced the feeling of using the bow to play the violin during Music lessons and practiced our performance songs for the end of year Presentation Day. Some of the students also visited St Ives Park Primary School to attend their ’Day of Song’ presentation which highlighted Australian themed music and performance.

Our class has been fortunate to have Rebecca and Rachel from Australian Catholic University working with us as part of their 2 week practical experience. Rebecca and Rachel have both been engaged in each activity with the students and they have been a valuable asset to our school during this time. We wish them well as they complete their Teaching degree.

Donna, Sue, Anita, Paula & Jennie

Rachel works with Yasmin during PE

Rebecca skips with Luke

Incident Poem – By David. E

Surfing on waves smell of water on the waves nothing

Diamante Poem – By Matt. L

'Ghosts' noisy, scary fireballs, shooting, exploding it destroys almost anything assaulting, hiding, attacking deadly, weird Ghosts

Lyndsay’s Class

Mikaela has been working on a Mountain and Safari Animals unit in Creative Arts. She has been sketching and shading to create wonderful drawings of animals in her visual arts diary. Mikaela impresses us all with her creativity. Well done Mikaela!

Lyndsay

Bald Eagle

Grizzly Bear

Llama

Lucy feels the seeds as she reads along with the story

Brooke feels the cold pack on her knees

\

Megan feels the warm wheat bag

Stuart completes a puzzle about the book

Intermediate Class

As part of the Literacy Program the Intermediate Class attends a weekly Library lesson with Librarian, Anna Trayner. The students are wonderfully engaged as a variety of literature, both fiction and non-fiction is presented using a multi- sensory approach.

For example, when attending to the South African story ‘One Child, One Seed’ by Kathryn Cave, the students not only listened to the text and looked at the bright visuals but were given the opportunity to run their hands through seeds and experience the sensory textures of a slice of pumpkin.

When listening to a non-fiction text about ‘Hot and Cold’ from Science Alive the students felt the difference between a cold freezer pack and warm wheat bag. Library is definitely a favoured lesson during the week and we look forward to receiving our new library bags so books can be borrowed.

Julie, Jennie, Christine & Paula

Rifa listens attentively as a book is read to her

Daniel compares the real pumpkin to the one he can see

in the book

Louise’s Class

Brayden has been enjoying learning about the moon in the Key Learning Area of Science over the last few weeks. Brayden is very creative and to demonstrate his knowledge that the moon is very rocky and has craters all over it, he made a Paper Mache moon. He used a balloon, torn up pieces of newspaper and glue to recreate the rocky surface of the moon. Using his great computer skills, Brayden attached a photo of his moon and emailed it to his teacher.

Nicole written for Louise S

Brayden’s wonderful Paper Mache moon

Jo’s Class Earlier this term I visited Keith and his family and worked with him on some of his program work.

Keith proved to be very knowledgeable about renewable and non-renewable energy sources. While we were working on this unit Keith suggested that the wind turbines originated from Holland. He then proceeded to check this information on his iPad by using Google. To his surprise the first windmill was stated as originating from Persia in 200BC!

Before I left Keith was eager to show me the NASA uniform that his brother, Jake had received when he visited America during the school holidays. He waited till his brother arrived home from school and obtained his permission to put the uniform on to show me.

Keith your internet research skills are excellent and thank you for showing me the NASA uniform. You would make a great astronaut! Jo

Keith happily displays how he uses the internet for

school work

Keith the future Astronaut

We look forward to your company at our Annual Presentation Day 2012