A message from Margie    

National Reconciliation Week

We all loved celebrating National Reconciliation Week last week with the theme Now More Than Ever.  A highlight was publishing our school's Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), with our school's actions and commitments towards reconciliation for the coming year. Each family was sent a copy of the 14 page RAP, illustrated with our students' drawings.

I'd like to sincerely thank the members of the RAP working group for all of their work over the past few years to make this happen: 

Parents Becky Edser, Lou Turner, Jess De Campo, Sam Bateman and Anna Price, consultant Deanne Hanchant-Nichols and staff members Samantha Irvine, Stephen Tsiaprakas, Katie Martin and Jaya Thomas. 

Monday we launched Reconciliation Week with students participating in  8 activities in cross-age groups Reception to Year 6, led by our Year 6 students leaders: 

Creation Stories – How Birds Got Their Colours with Kelly

Did you know how the birds got their colours? Well that is what we learnt in Kelly’s group.

First Kelly read us a creation story about how the birds got their colours. Then our group had the chance to either draw birds or decorate templates with feathers, crayons, textas, pencils or paint. 

It was fun looking at all the different birds that all the kids in our group of different year levels drew and decorated.  They all looked amazing!  Ben and Tyson.

Fire with Jess

The fire sparked to life for first time in the morning, lighting up the faces of our group members. Jess spoke to us about the many ways Aboriginal people used fire as she walked around the willow circle, handing us a branch each to throw into the fire. We spoke about how the lives of the First Nations people changed when the Europeans took over, and how they separated children from their families. Not long after this, we wrote or drew on sticky notes our wishes for the future, then took turns reading them to everyone else and tossing them into the fire. 

Let's Play Some Games – Aboriginal Games with Alex

The first fun activity Hamish and I did was games with Alex. The first game we played was ‘Jumpinpin.’ This is a game where there is a fisherman who tries to catch people. The people cannot move when they have the ball, however, Year 2’s and under can. When you get hit by the ball, Alex gives you a sash. You then become the fisherman.

The other game was called ‘Nanyima.’ This is a game where someone is picked to stand in front of everybody else who is crowded together in a group. The person in front throws a ball behind them and somebody from the group catches it. The person that catches it then says, “Nanyima,” and the person in front must guess who said it.  Hamish and Nilah

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in Karuna with Sallie 

On Reconciliation Day, our first activity was Sallie’s class. We learned a fun dance called head, shoulders knees and toes in Karna. The word for head is mukarla, the word for shoulders is kartaka, knees is mampa, and toes is tinda. The word for eyes is Miina, ears is yuri, taa is mouth and mudla is nose. So, the song would be:

Mukarla, kartaka, mampa, tidna, and the second half would be:

Mina, yuri, taa, mudla. It was interesting and fun and we want to thank Sallie for showing us this wonderful dance and stories. 😊Ila, Harriet and Sammy

Ngaka Ngaka with Stephen

Stephen’s voice boomed through the classroom as he introduced our first activity, the Ngaka Ngaka game which is like tic tac toe or noughts and crosses. He told us how the Aboriginal people played this game. Then he showed us a video about how to make it. We got cardboard and drew the grid and Aboriginal symbols around it. We chose beads and used them as tokens for the game. Then we played the game a few times. We ended by watching the rest of the video and she showed us how she made her tokens out of milk bottle lids and drew more Aboriginal symbols on them. The people in our group were: Me (Elodie), Stephanie, Hazel Smith, Seamus, Archer, Harvey Newman, Sebastian, Aishlyn, Hazel Nitschke, Evie, Margot, Mabel, Lilly, Harvey Richards, Rachael, Bria, Harrison, Xavier and Louie. Elodie and Stephanie

RAP with Margie

Wow! The amount of schools in SA that celebrate Reconciliation Day and do a RAP! What even is the RAP? Our first activity on reconciliation day was RAP with Margie. RAP stands for Reconciliation Action Plan. The RAP in our school is a little booklet with ways to incorporate Aboriginal learning and thinking into the curriculum. The original pictures where quite dull so Margie got us to draw new pictures to make a booklet of our own. The school picked a few pictures to put into the booklet and sent out to all students to take home. Chloe and Elsa.

Rock’s with Jaya

In Jaya’s class, we drew Aboriginal symbols on rock to tell stories. When we had the story we placed the rocks in a line to tell it. We had a sheet to help us come up with ideas. Aboriginal people used to use ochre to paint stories on rock surfaces. Ochre is a type of rock that is mushed up and mixed with water to make paint. To this day it still is used. Ivy and Anji       

Languages with Sam 

In Sam’s languages, we learned about words in Kaurna language. These words were learn, stand, give, fly and Uraidla Primary School. In Kuarna, learn is ‘tikanthi,’ stand is ‘yuwanthi,’ give is ‘yungkunthi,’ fly is ‘karrinthi’ and Uraidla Primary School is Yurreidla Piipawardli. We practised these words on a sheet and put one tally mark every time we said a word correctly to the group around us. We watched a video on animal names that the Kaurna people would have seen in the hills.  Lena and Chastity.

PJ Day

Today students came dressed in their comfy warm pj's as part of our SRC fundraiser. Here are some photos of our cosy students. 

I wish you a wonderful and warm fortnight! 😊

Margie