The year 3 soccer team had a very competitive season this year.  We have learnt a lot and improved so much since last year.

We have had so much fun playing soccer and we can't wait for soccer to start again next year. Big thank you to our coaches and team manager 🙂

Please see below the upcoming important dates and school events for the remainder of Term 3 2023.

Dear Parents and Carers,

After 22 years of both teaching and leadership at Mitcham Primary School, our Assistant Principal, Lexie Anderson has decided to retire at the end of this school year. Lexie has taught and supported the education and wellbeing of an enormous number of students’ within our community and we thank her for contributions over the years.

I know you will all wish Lexie well with her next exciting adventure.

I am pleased to announce that Lachlan Norman, our DigiTech Coordinator, was the successful applicant for the Assistant Principal position. Lachlan will commence his new role at the start of next year.

Regards, Scott

On August 16, our Year 5/6 STEM Extension students travelled to the Cumberland Park Community Centre to showcase their Augmented Reality games which were designed with a goal to increase movement for older people from ECH. Augmented Reality (or AR) involves superimposing computer-generated images on the real world using a device. The most famous example is Pokémon Go but now, companies are using AR to help sell products, to display data, and to help those with disabilities.

The older participants were amazed at what the students had created and had plenty of fun learning how to play and hearing how the students made their games. The students also learned a lot, listening to the feedback on what made their games successful and enjoyable or otherwise! A big thank you to Sharon Beech of ECH for her work in helping facilitate the partnership.

Meanwhile, our Year 3/4 STEM Extension students completed their learning on game design by inviting their younger buddies to come and play their games designed to teach the younger buddy a new concept or skill, such as addition and subtraction, or even responsibility!

It was a great way to cap off the enormous amount of work that the students had put into designing, coding, testing and refining their games over the past two terms.

STEM Extension is a funded program with limited positions, for students with exceptional academic performance. For further information about the program and entry criteria, please contact Digital Technologies Coordinator, Lachlan Norman at lachlan.norman451@schools.sa.edu.au.

Lachlan Norman - Digital Technologies Coordinator

We have had such an exciting time celebrating Book Week this year – we even managed to stretch it over a few weeks. Children were busy hearing from visiting authors and performers, completing challenges in the library and participating in the Great Book Swap.

The winners of our Book Week competitions are: Oscar (G9), Sophia (M1), Alexandra (N8) and Matilda (N2). Thank you to all students who participated!

We’d like to thank everyone who brought along a book and a gold coin to swap; as a school we were able to raise $473.00 for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. If you would still like to donate directly to our school’s fundraiser you can do that via this link https://edu.greatbookswap.org.au/mitchamprimarysgreatbookswap.

This year we were lucky enough to have some visitors to our school! In Week 2 this term, the year 4-6s heard from Oliver Phommavahn about how to craft an interesting story. In Week 4 the Receptions - Year 2s watched Way Too Cool! - a musical performance about the magic of this years Children’s Book Council Shortlisted books. In Week 5 Katrina Germein visited the Receptions – Year 3s to speak about how she finds inspiration for her stories. Mike Lucas taught the Year 4-6s how fun poetry can be! We are so grateful to have been able to have so many special visitors this book week and hope all the students loved hearing from someone new.

Mitcham’s Big Read was held on Wednesday of book week. All students visited another class to read a story and participate in an activity related to that book. The children and teachers enjoyed a variety of activities – from dancing in a class disco to crafting animals from the stories they read.

Finally, we ended Book Week with our parade on Friday. We were amazed by how many staff and students dressed up. It was so great to see everyone getting into the spirit of Book Week and it made our week! We would like to thank all the parents that came out to support our students, we loved having you there.

Just a friendly reminder that the Premier’s Reading Challenge forms need to be returned to the library by Friday the 8^th of September. 

Yours in reading - Vasi and Sunyoung

On Tuesday the 8^th of August beautiful weather greeted the Year 2 classes from T1 and T3 as they excitedly headed off on an excursion to the Marine Discovery Centre at Henley Beach. The bus ride is always a big part of the fun and seeing a plane take off as we drove past the airport was met with big excitement!

In our Geography lessons, we have been learning about the use of spaces, as well as our city, our state, our country and our world. We think that Australia is lucky to have so many beautiful beaches. In our STEM lessons we’re also looking at being Waste Warriors and how important it is to keep our rubbish out of the sea.

We loved walking along the beach and hunting for many different things. We got to make sandcastles in the sunshine with our friends and we all loved that part.

In the Discovery Centre after lunch, we loved using the VR headsets to explore underwater, looked at recycling at the beach environment, and had hands on fun with microscopes, shells, fishing rods and so much more!

We came back tired but happy. We loved the excursion.

By Ms Wadmore’s Talented Turtles and Ms Day’s Shooting Star Year 2’s

नमस्ते! Buna ziua! வணக்கம்! Ahoj! Sveiki! Hallo! Kamusta! Γειά σου! Witam! 

Did you know that there are 7139 languages spoken across the world? Here at Mitcham, we are proud of our diversity and celebrate 35 languages and dialects other than Standard Australian English that are spoken at home! Isn’t that amazing?

In Term 2, the English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EALD) team collated two work samples from each learner of EALD and had the opportunity to analyse the fantastic literacy techniques they are using in their writing. With this data, we have restructured our timetable and considered how we can further support and extend our multilingual students. Our EALD teachers Lauren, Danni, Mrs Taeuber and Miss Searle are continuing to work collaboratively with classroom teachers to provide in-class support to learners of EALD across all year levels. In addition, we are implementing structured intervention sessions that prioritise our EALD learners and are streamlined to complement their classroom learning. These small group sessions engage students in rich dialogue and are targeted toward the development grammatical features. We are excited that these sessions also give the children an opportunity to collaborate and build relationships with peers from other classes too.

If you would like any further information about our EALD programme, please contact your child’s classroom teacher who can direct your query to your child’s allocated EALD specialist.

Lauren Ritchie, Danni Aoukar, Katelyn Searle and Linda Taeuber - EALD Teachers

We are enjoying the recent burst of sunny weather and have noticed that many families are taking the opportunity to stay after school for a play. We certainly welcome our school community, but ask that parents closely supervise their children to ensure that play is safe and that ball games are respectful of others. As we have many sports teams also practising after school, the court and play areas can become very busy. Thank you!

Our next scheduled Pupil Free Day is Monday 16^th October – Week 1, Term 4. On this day staff will be engaging in professional development in the area of Educator Wellbeing provided by Madhavi Nawana Parker.

Madhavi is a specialist in building wellbeing cultures and will provide staff with a practical framework and evidence-based strategies for fostering resilience and supporting their personal wellbeing.

We look forward to sharing more information with you after the day.