Dear Parents/Caregivers,   

We hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday. Welcome also to the new families and students who joined us this term; Grace, Zara and Jack.

It gives me great pleasure to announce the following staffing placements at our school. Kathryn Morgan has been appointed the Deputy Principal position for the next 4 years. Kathryn will start at the beginning of 2020 and has a strong background in the International Baccalaureate programmme, as well as working in Junior Primary leadership. We are really thrilled to have her join our team.

Congratulations also to Ms Eve Hooper who has been appointed to the ongoing permanent teacher position at our school. Eve has been working at the school as a contract teacher for the past 3 years.

Liz Pelling

On Friday 25th October, we celebrated World Teachers' Day. This day is a fantastic opportunity to acknowledge the wonderful contribution that teachers and school staff make to the lives of our children and young people. We are very lucky to have a great staff at Coromandel Valley Primary School.

World Teachers’ Day was set up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1994 to celebrate the role of teachers in society, and is now celebrated in more than 100 countries.

To celebrate the day our staff enjoyed a sit-down lunch in the library where they received a card, made by students, featuring a hand-drawn portrait.

This year we will select our 2020 classes based on information provided by students and staff. Teachers consider a wide range of information in developing class structures including special needs, academic achievement, behaviour and friendships. Teachers have an excellent overview of both student achievement and needs. Students will be asked to indicate friends they would like to be in a class with, supporting the class decision making process. Parent requests are not required for this process however any major concerns should be addressed to me (Liz) or shared with your child's classroom teacher. The final decision for class structures will be decided by leadership.

Last Sunday we held a working bee at the school. It was great to see families pitch in to help out with planting, weeding, and mulching. We focused on garden beds at the front of the school, near the office back door, behind the gymnasium and the garden area near the Yr 1 classrooms. Thank you to all those who helped, including Keith who purchased plants. It was a great turn out with 26 people helping on the day, including students. 

Materials and Services Charge

The Materials and Services charge is an amount charged to parents for the cost of items and services such as stationery, art supplies, texts etc. 

Each year the fee is reviewed by the Finance Committee and presented to Governing Council (GC) for approval.  For 2020, Council has approved a $5 increase per student.

The Governing Council must also consider whether this entire fee is voluntary or legally recoverable.  For it to become legally recoverable the school community needs to be polled to find out if the majority support this.  As per previous years, the GC has endorsed making it legally recoverable to ensure we can provide a quality program for our students.  

In the coming week, a notice will be issued asking you to vote on this issue. 

If you would like any further information please or feel free to contact Liz or myself.

*Please note that there is no effect on School card families who will still receive the same benefit.

Daniel Zervaas

Governing Council Chairperson

It's been a big month for the Coromandel Valley Chess Team.

At the end of Term 3, a team of 12 students - Charlie, Cian, Daniel, Dylan, Ewan, Finn, Jackson, Jake, Maggie, Micah, Nathan and Sebastian - travelled to Norton Summit Primary School, to take part in the Hills Zone Tournament.

The Hills Zone has some talented players, and with 5 schools and 45 students competing, it was always going to be a tough tournament.   After battling it out with Norton Summit PS and Basket Range PS all day, Coro finally broke away in the last few rounds to finish 4.5 points clear and take first place and the gold medals - the first tournament win for the school!    

While everyone did a fantastic job in representing the school, there were some fantastic individual results, with Maggie and Daniel both scoring 6.5 points from their 7 games to be the best 2 competitors on the day. Maggie was crowned tournament champion on a countback of games played.  Sebastian and Jake both finished in the top 10 players.    6 of our 12 players also set new personal best tournament scores.

The best news however, was that by winning the zone we qualified to take 5 players to the State Finals. Selecting our best 5 was not an easy task, but based on tournament results over the year, Daniel, Finn, Maggie, Nathan and Sebastian were selected for the team, and made the long trip north to Tyndale College to take part.

With 13 schools and 98 individual players taking part, the team knew they would be playing the best chess teams and players in the state.  Burnside, Glenelg and St Martin de Porres established an early break at the top, with a group of 8 schools including Coro, fighting it out for for the next few spots.  Burnside finally won out on the day, with Coro finishing in 11th place, but there were just 3.5 points separating us and 6th place.  A fantastic effort in our first State Titles. Everyone played well, but special mention to Daniel who scored 6.0 points from his 9 games, finishing in equal 10th position. 

A huge thanks to Opal Greenwood, Marcus Read, Kerry Coghlan and Jane General for assisting with transport over the 2 tournaments - without your help it would not have been possible to have our team compete.

The Chess Club continues to meet on Monday lunchtimes, and anyone is welcome to come along.    It would be great to see some new faces.

David Shaw

Free School Disco

When: Friday 29th November in the school Gym

Rec - Yr 3: 5:30 - 6:30pm

Yr 4 - Yr 7:  6:30 - 8pm

Remember if your dog was the teacher, you would learn lessons like:

- Run to greet your family when they come home! 

- Allow the experience of fresh air and wind in your face to be pure ecstasy! 

- Take regular naps

- Stretch before rising! 

- On warm days, stop to lie on your back in the grass! 

- Delight in the simple joy of a long walk!

- Be loyal 

- If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it! 

- ENJOY EVERY MOMENT OF EVERY DAY!

As the weather warms up, and we head towards the crazy season, stop and enjoy life, and be grateful for all of life's small blessings.

Jenni Forder

Pastoral Care Worker

Did you know that your local library has thousands of e-books and audiobooks?

You can borrow them, instantly, for free, using just the device in your hand.

All your loans and holds are kept on a single shelf. You can keep track of your reading history in the Activity Tab. Positions, bookmarks and notes are kept in sync across your device. Sample any book with a tap — nothing to download or delete.

Try a zoomable graphic novel, or a picture book with readalong audio. Never have an overdue book as they return instantly once the loan time expires.

Download the Libby app onto your device then use your free Public Library card to activate the Libby app to use this fantastic service. Parents can download the app onto their child’s device and set the search field to Primary so that only books suitable for Primary school students can be downloaded.

Our school has closed our Wheeler’s e-library subscription so if your child enjoys reading e-books or listening to audio books then the free Libby app is available to download.

Sheralyn Robertson

Teacher-Librarian

Coromandel Primary requires a Footy Coordinator

In order to continue to offer football (AFL) at Coromandel Valley Primary School we are now looking for a parent(s) volunteer to come forward to be the new football coordinator for season 2020.

As part of this role you would be required to coordinate all school football activities throughout the season which runs from around the start of Term 2 to the middle of Term 3 and acts more as an administrative organiser of footy for the school. This role oversees the various team managers and coaches who manage their respective teams.

School footy is part of the SANFL Sturt Juniors Zone who provide valued support and guidance to all football coordinators in the zone so you don’t have to be a footy person to become involved!

If you think you would like to assist in this volunteer role please either contact Kate Merritt at katecmerritt@gmail.com or Marc Jones at marcjuliaandtheboys@gmail.com where a comprehensive handover will be provided and guidance given next season.

Unfortunately if no parent(s) volunteer for the role next season, Coromandel Valley Primary School will not be able to offer footy as a sport to your children.

Camp was an experience that we will all remember.

It was a fun way to learn about our native animals and plants. We also learnt about the way we use the Murray River. On the walls of the Murray were cracks which were formed by floods. The floods were so big! There was also a crack that hadn't been recorded and it was higher than the rest. Our activities were boat riding and gymnastics, caving, archery and more. We went along the Murray and learnt about the ecosystem. In gymnastics we built our body strength and had lots of fun in the foam pit. We also had some fun in caving and fossil finding, we went through tunnels and found fossils. It’s was hot in the cave, but it was heaps of fun.

The safari trailer ride and archery were so exciting. In the trailer ride we looked at some lime stone art and old buildings, we learnt about our native animals and saw some bones. Archery was a rotation. We had one group doing archery and one group doing go-carts and the last group doing the haunted maze, we all rotated until we had done everything. We had a nice trip to a sheep farm and Jaymie and Isla sat on a long tube with holes and a dog came and tickled their bottoms! We looked at some sheep and had I race.  We learnt how to crack a whip and saw some wombats at the sheep farm. There were many kangaroos and an emu that was born with a broken beak.

Brianna 5B