From the Principal

Dear Parents and Carers,

It was great to be able to spend time with our families from our 2021 Foundation class last Friday night at our Welcome BBQ. Social occasions such as this are a vital part of the strong sense of community that we enjoy and a positive way for our year group families to build positive relationships, which will be a great support network throughout each child's journey here at Golden Grove. Thank you to the P & F for organising and hosting a most enjoyable evening.  

Two of our key parent support groups here at Golden Grove are our Class Carers and 

P & F who have both held their first meetings for the year over the past fortnight. We are blessed to have these groups playing a key role in our consistent focus on building and nurturing our community, and I very much encourage you to be involved with both groups throughout the year. 

Our students are looking forward to an out-of-this-world National Science Week this year when we start growing native golden wattle seeds that have flown in space. We are blessed to join a group of schools across Australia that have been selected to participate in the "What'll happen with the wattle?" program. We are delighted to receive the news that our video and written application was successful. 

The One Giant Leap Australia Foundation has partnered with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to send the seeds to the International Space Station for six months. Our students will germinate and grow the seeds, which will be a selection of those that have flown to space and those which have not, and record data to determine the effect of space on these processes. This will prove to be an excellent focus for our 5/6 cluster, whilst our Year 3/4 cluster is currently writing postcards to be sent up into space, along with some other classes throughout the school, and we are planning for our 1/2 cluster to be involved in the 'Asian Herbs in Space' program, which will run along similar lines to the 'Wattle' program. 

Our Year 5 and 6 students arrived back last Wednesday from their three-day camp extravaganza at Victor Harbor, enjoying a range of activities including surfing and kayaking, setting personal goals and challenging themselves to achieve or exceed them. Camp also provides a unique way for our children to build their friendships with one another and for our teachers to strengthen their relationships with the children in a different environment. 

We have a strong emphasis on outdoor education at Golden Grove Lutheran Primary School. Camps play a critical role in the life of our curriculum and are a distinctive feature of our teaching methodology. Our camp programs emphasise a hands-on, tactile, concrete, experiential approach to learning where educational outcomes are maximised in an outdoor setting. Opportunities for students to get involved and respond to the stimulus are abundant as, for weeks before and after, the class is preparing and 'gearing up' and then later, 'unpacking' their experiences in the classroom. When we look at all of our camps, we seek to offer a broad range of different camp and life experiences. Our camps are also enriched by the participation of parents. It's a great way for parents to see what we do, help out, and spend some special time with the children. We are so privileged here that often there are more parents with their hand up than we can fit on the camp! 

One of the real weaknesses of the primary methodology of western education is the way in which bottoms have been planted on seats; the view that learning supposedly only occurs best as textbooks are worked through and that teachers are the bastions of the vast knowledge that they can inculcate absorbent students with. 

We are very aware that deep, powerful and effective learning requires a wide variety of approaches, hence the manner in which our school has embraced the IB Primary Years Programme. Our curriculum seeks to develop creativity, character education, citizenship, critical thinking, collaboration and communication so that our students are best prepared to engage with and contribute to our world in a meaningful way. Traditional classroom practice has a very important place in our school, but a wide diversity of methodologies that stimulates all children and appreciates the multiplicity of ways in which we all learn is a must for our school. 

Blessings,

Will