Student Learning

What's been happening in Foundation TL 

This term has been a very busy one for us. We have been working hard practising our nativity play for the Christmas Celebration, trying to remember our lines and stage movements! It has taken a lot of focus for us! We enjoyed the opportunity to develop our swimming skills at Aquatics in Week 4, however with the hot weather recently, we are wishing we could do it now! 

We have been enjoying our last few weeks together as a class, enjoying each other’s company and getting ready for Christmas. In Foundation, we refer to our Foundations who began at the start of the year as frogs and our mid-years as tadpoles, this is a nice way to link our LEAP program together to their beginning in Foundation at school. Our frogs are very excited to be Year 1s, and our tadpoles are looking forward to becoming frogs!

Maths

Maths this term has been all about our addition strategies. Each week we have learnt a new addition strategy as part of a secret code. These strategies include subitising, turn around, counting on, adding zero, friends of ten, or rainbow facts! Through various hands-on activities and games such as dotty six, which has been a massive hit in the class, we have equipped ourselves with many addition strategies which we can use. I wonder how many you use in your everyday life but don’t realise you are using them?

Grandbuddies

We have had lots of fun in Grandbuddies this term. We have continued our partnership with Seeds Church to participate in Grandbuddies every fortnight. There have been some lovely connections made this year and both the students and Grandbuddies have thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We went and performed our nativity play at Seeds Church in Week 6, which was received with great enthusiasm. We have had such a wonderful time connecting with those involved.

Buddies

This Wednesday we farewelled our Year 6 buddies. These buddies have been so important to our Foundations this year, helping them settle into school and being a person which our Foundations can go to when they need help. We exchanged goodbye cards as part of our farewell. It has been wonderful watching the relationships form across the year, and we will miss our buddies greatly. 

iUnit

In iUnit, our focus has been on special places. We had a look at the features of a special place, what makes them special, and how we can care for these places. As part of this unit, each one of us shared about our own special place. We had many wonderful talks, with the students bringing in posters, sharing powerpoint presentations, and creating dioramas. We even had a tree brought in!

Some of the special places were bedrooms, the beach, grandparents’ pools, Bounce, playgrounds, special trees in the backyard and camper vans! The students were very passionate about these presentations and thought deeply about what makes them so special.

English

In English we have been learning our final sounds to finish off our lessons in phonics, our tadpole students have been discovering sounds like ‘th’, ‘sh’ and ‘ng’ to go with our alphabet sounds, while our frog Foundations have been learning the ‘oi’, ‘ir’, and ‘ow’ sounds. Once we have learnt these sounds, we revise them through various games and activities to help solidify them!

In Writing we have been exploring Narratives. We have had a focus on the main components of a narrative, including characters, beginning, complication and resolution. We have analysed our favourite fairy tales, had a go at designing our own characters, thinking about their appearance, traits, and feelings.

Tom Ledson & Lisa Newbury

Foundation Class Teachers

Foundation Excursion 

Today the Foundation students went to Glenthorne National Park as part of our ‘Special Places’ topic in iUnit. We walked along the trails, looking at the significance behind the areas we were exploring. We read about the history of the park, and how we can take care of Glenthorne. We learnt that there are no rubbish bins which means we had to take our rubbish with us as we left! It was encouraging to watch the Foundations catch on to this and start reminding each other to put their rubbish in their bags. We also got a glimpse of the wildlife that lives in the park. One group walked along a trail which had markers spaced out along the path that introduced a native bird each time, alongside some interesting facts about that bird. Some comments from the students:

I enjoyed playing on the big slide at the playground. - Lucy

I loved learning about the birds as we walked along, and I loved walking with my friends. - Ryker

I liked looking at the lake and seeing all the birds around. - Acacia

Tom Ledson

Foundation Class Teacher

Bebras Australia Competition Results

A number of our students from Year 3 to Year 6 participated in the second round of the CSIRO Bebras Challenge. This is a national online competition that engages students' computational thinking and problem solving skills in a fun, interactive environment. Students complete the challenge either individually or in teams of up to four. We had excellent results as you can see! Congratulations to the following students:

• Excellence: Arjuna, Jacob E, Benji, Ned, Ben P, Josh
• High Distinction: Grace L, Danny, Josiah R, Aiden
• Distinction: Johnny, Ashton, Malachi, Ethan S, Leo, Ariella, Aria, Danni
• Merit: Wenxin, Lucas, Anni, Rafiki.

Choir at The Hub 

On Thursday, the Pilgrim Choir sang at Hub Shopping Centre as a way of blessing those who had come to do their shopping and helping to share the good news of Christmas.

Despite the heat, the choir performed beautifully, singing with enthusiasm and making a lovely sound. It has been wonderful to watch the students in choir grow in their confidence to perform through the year and to have so many students who confidently sang solos in a public place. It was a wonderful way to top off a great year for the choir. Many of the local traders came out of their shops to hear the beautiful singing, and it was also wonderful to see so many of our Pilgrim families coming to support the choir. The students (and staff!) enjoyed a well earned icy pole as a way to cool down after the performance. This was the last performance for our Year 6 students and also for Mrs Sarre, who has been our accompanist for the last two years. We thank them all for what they have brought to the choir. We have been blessed by their involvement. We look forward to our current Year 3-5 students continuing in choir next year and for our incoming Year 3s to come and join in the fun!

Kate Tretheway

Choir Director

Chihuly comes to Pilgrim School

To enrich the experience of attending the Chihuly Exhibit at the Adelaide Botanic Garden recently, students in Years 3 and 4 created their own artworks.

It took a lot of trial and error to find a way to replicate glass and the way he uses it, but eventually we persisted and found that PVA glue poured into a wire frame and left to dry produced a glossy, translucent form that could be manipulated to look like his bowls and organic shapes.

The photos show the finished display arranged in a similar manner to his exhibit. The display was then dismantled and the individual artworks placed around the Pilgrim building in hidden places among pot plants and other displays, similar to the way Chihuly’s artworks appear around the Adelaide Botanic Garden. 

Students have had a lot of fun seeking out the hidden “gems”.

Andrew Harris and Jordan Wheatcroft

Year 3/4 Class Teachers

Year 5 - Serve Focus

The Year 5s Serve focus this year included helping to provide safe drinking water to people in Uganda.

Last term the class walked laps around the school carrying buckets of water, to gain some understanding of what it might be like for children their age to collect and carry water in Uganda. They also researched health and sanitation in Uganda, and diseases that occur from the dirty water. Finally they made water filters, in a team building activity, that were sent to a Refugee Settlement Camp in Uganda - this was through The Water Works Program.

Recently we received photos from Uganda of the water filters we donated. The Year 5s were pretty excited to see the stickers that they had designed, on the filters. Check out the photos below. 

We received the following reply from The Water Works Program:

Dear Elizabeth and Year 5s at Pilgrim School,

I have good news! Last week, our team in Uganda distributed 150 household water filtration systems to families in the Kyaka II Refugee Settlement Camp. Of these 150 systems, 3 were donated by Pilgrim School!

Elizabeth Sarre

Year 5 Class Teacher

School of Languages 

Would your child like to learn Auslan or Chinese? 

Pilgrim School hosts classes outside of regular school hours.

Interested in other languages? There may be more opportunities nearby!

Check out the link below to find out more.