31 May 2021
Newsletter Articles
OUR MISSION, VISION AND VALUES
Our Mission
Our mission is to foster academic and creative excellence in a respectful and nurturing educational environment. We strive to support student wellbeing and provide meaningful learning experiences that develop socially responsible and resilient life-long learners. Through collaboration and leadership, our students will engage in, and contribute to the community, both locally and globally.
Our Vision
At Pinnacle College, we celebrate diversity and uniqueness in an innovative and inclusive learning environment. Our vision is to equip students with the confidence and skills to reach their potential and meet the challenges of the future as global citizens, leaders and innovators.
Principal’s Message
Dear Parents and Caregivers
Welcome back to Term 2
We have used several approaches to inform our community about the loss of our beloved Year 11 student, Ahmad Alfarhan. Once again I would like to extend my condolences to the whole Pinnacle Community as well as to Ahmad’s family. May Allah reward him with paradise and May Allah give his family patience in their grief. As Alfrarhan was part of our Pinnacle College family, we ensured that we could support the family in every way and we will continue to do so in the future.
Every event we experience in our daily lives helps us to understand and cope with difficult life situations. The tragic incident that occurred at the end of the last term meant that we could not publish our newsletter last term. After this incident, we have learned that we are all part of one family. If any part of the body is in distress, the entire body is affected. I would like to thank all community members and families for their on-going support in this difficult time.
I would like to congratulate everyone’s Eid ul Fitr on behalf of Elizabeth East Campus. I hope everyone enjoyed their time. The term began with good news. Our soccer team came second in the local area tournament. Pinnacle College once again has commenced regular daily routines.
Parent-teacher interviews were held last week on Wednesday of Week 5. Unfortunately, the attendance at the interviews was lower than expected. These interviews are an opportunity to talk to the teacher directly regarding the progress of your child. We always believe the success of a student does not only rely solely on school performance but also needs parental support. We believe that successful communication between the parents and school is one of the key pillars of academic progress.
The Community Engagement department increases their activities each term. This creates great opportunities for both the school members and families. Our new fitness room is almost ready and the Community Engagement department and Community Hub will also organise some activities for parents.
The other important issue is the drop off and pick up areas. Please be extra vigilant and be aware of students’ safety when you pick up your child or drop them off.
Till next issue
Educationally yours,
Gokhan Kot
Elizabeth Campus Principal, Pinnacle College
Community Hub News
Our Community hub is off to a beautiful start this term. Playgroup is run two times a week Monday 9-11am and Thursday at 1-2pm. This is a great place to meet other parents with children and a fantastic place for you and your child to experience some fun, educational activities together.
Our English classes are also run two times a week, Monday 1-3pm and Tuesday morning 9-11am. Our community hub parents are enjoying our sessions as they learn English in a fun, safe and engaging environment.
Our cooking classes have been a great way to get together to create and share delicious cultural foods.
For anyone interested in joining in please call Mrs Hannan Hassan on 0433814396. All our sessions are free along with a free child-minding service. Come and try it out!
Counselling and Inclusive Ed
Dear Parents and Guardians,
I hope you are doing well.
I just wanted to provide some tips on noticing signs of a child’s/teen deteriorating mental health and wellbeing. It is important for parents to remain mindful of their child’s wellbeing and to be able to recognize and identify signs to ensure that your child receives the required support as early as possible.
Signs to look out for:
- Spending more time in their room (isolated/withdrawn)
- Loss of interest in usual activities they enjoy
- Decline in school performance
- Disturbance in routine, sleep and diet
- Excessive sleep or insomnia
- Fatigue
- Low self-esteem
- Personality shifts and changes (e.g. excessive anger)
- Expression of hopelessness
- Stop contacting or seeing friends
- Unmotivated
- Have an unexplained physical problem (e.g. Headache, nausea)
Things you can do to support your child:
- Check in with them, listen to them and provide emotional support
- Book them in with a GP (referral to a psychologist and other support services)
- Encourage them to seek counselling support at school
Resources:
- Kids Helpline: https://kidshelpline.com.au/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwwLKFBhDPARIsAPzPi-IofRzF9xSoeALOZqP-0t6Az8Ui-FZ8pE_2LFlab9rzBiHXueeiQQoaApoSEALw_wcB
- Headspace: https://headspace.org.au/young-people/mental-health/
- Beyond Blue: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/
- Smiling Mind
Kind Regards,
Zina Al-Mufti
Library
17-23 May was Library and Information Week. On Tuesday 18 May was Library Technicians Day - I would like to THANK Mucella for all the help and support she provides the Elizabeth East Campus Library. Reception to year 2 celebrated by being involved in National Simultaneous Story time and read ‘Give me Some Space’ by Philip Bunting. The story was read from the International Space Station.
Book Fairs are quickly approaching. Elizabeth campus Book Fair is June 7- 11. This year, we are emphasising on books and reading for the students. Book Fair is a great opportunity for every student to have books of their own to keep and treasure. To encourage this, we will have a special when buying 4 or more books. Come and see the staff at the Book Fair during lunch, recess and after school.
Book Week is approaching in term 3. The theme for Book week is “Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds”. We have read many of the books during library time. It is a great celebration of great Australian authors and books. Ask your students what is their favourite book so far.
Premiers Reading Challenge forms are due early September. But if your student has completed their – please return to your student’s teacher.
Kind Regards,
Ms Lisa Preston
Librarian
Front Office Notices
In other news, congratulations are in order! This past Sunday, Mr. Dolling tied the knot at The Manor in Basket Range. A compliment to Mrs. Dolling for making the wedding dress, bridesmaid dress, groom, and best man outfits. We wish them every happiness!
Primary
Foundation
We have had a busy start to Term 2. Last Wednesday we took part in National Simultaneous Storytime. This takes place every year and is when a set storybook is shared at the same time around the country in many schools, Kindys, Childcare settings, and libraries. This year the book was called ‘Give Me Some SPACE!’ and was shared by an astronaut on the international space station. We enjoyed reading the book and making our astronauts. We are very much looking forward to our excursion to Gorge Wildlife Park this week. Photos to follow in the next newsletter.
Year 1
The year 1 students have been extremely busy within the English Curriculum and I am very pleased with their efforts and achievements. Children in my classroom have been learning about the purpose and structure of procedural texts.
Some examples of procedural titles that have been used in the Year 1 class are:
How to wash your hands
How to make fairy bread
How to make toast
How to make a sandwich
Students have improved their writing skills by learning how to use a variety of verbs and adverbs. We had a lot of fun making fairy bread and we then wrote amazing procedural texts based.
Year 2
Hello Parents and Caregivers,
We can’t believe this term is half way through! We have been having a great time in class studying Information Reports for English, past and present toys for Science and HaSS and shapes in Math!.
Last week we joined in on Simultaneous Storytime where everyone in Australia read the same book at the same time! We loved listening to ‘Give me some Space’ by Philip Bunting.
We then created ourselves as astronauts. Have a look.
Thank you to you all for your ongoing support. Please keep reading with your children every night and do not hesitate to come in if you have any questions!
Miss Musa.
Year 3
Hello my name is Myah M and this is what my class and I have been up to so far this Term. Firstly, I want to talk about Art! I can't wait to do the superhero script making! When we started the topic we had to design our very own superhero on paper. Mine is called Water Girl and her powers are water and mind-reading!
Secondly, I'll talk about English! In spelling, we are learning the rule [le].You can find it in many words like: castle, bottle, little, reptile and loveable!
Hass is FUN! The topic in Hass is celebrations around the WORLD! Everyone has picked a celebration and has to research all about it! Celebrations include; Ramadan, Easter, Christmas, Diwali Day and Lunar New Year!
Our class is so glad NAPLAN is over - we tried our absolute best!
Year 4
Dear Parents and Caregivers,
I can’t believe how quickly the term is flying by! I am constantly impressed with the level of effort and drive the Year 4’s are putting into their learning!
Our Literacy focus this term has been biographies. The class has thoroughly enjoyed writing about authors, celebrities and influential people in society over the past few weeks. The students are writing their final biography on a member of their family. We have spent a significant amount of time developing sentence structure, spelling, grammar and the structure of our texts.
We have looked at several topics during our Numeracy lessons. Problem solving was definitely a highlight of the term and the children worked in small groups to solve addition and subtraction multi step problems.
Please make sure reading is done each night with comprehension questions being asked. Our reading tests will commence in week 8.
Remember, you’re always welcome to pop in to look at your child’s bookwork and classroom displays
Miss Rowlands
Year 5
During this week in Year 5, our focus has been preparing for Naplan as we have been sitting our Naplan tests. We have worked extra hard on practicing our reading comprehension skills and our problem solving skills. During Maths, we began a new topic, focusing on the Area of rectangles and other shapes. We have also conducted science experiments to explore how light travels through transparent, translucent and opaque objects. For some fun, we began planning our technology projects where we are required to make arcade games.
Year 5 Team and Miss Marcoionni
Year 6
In Maths this term we have been learning about 3D shapes and their nets. We have learnt about how to identify different shapes like prisms and pyramids. We also created some ‘Optical Illusion 3D shapes’ which we will display in our classroom. Mubina - 6A
Art
Year 5 students have been learning about creating texture in art and how ‘mark making’ is an essential component of Australian indigenous art. Year 6 students have created colourful abstract art pieces inspired from great artist Kandinsky.
Turkish
Elif mine
6.B,
This year we have learnt how to phrase numbers probably and how to pronounce them. We have also learnt about jobs and songs. It was lots of fun when we listen to songs and that time where we had a project on countries. Thanks for Turkish class, I am more than happy that I have also learnt how to figure out time in Turkish and how to greet in Turkish. I have had an amazing time and I cannot wait for future classes.
Thank you, Mr. Birol
Arabic
Dear parents,
At Pinnacle College, our main focus is to acquaint the students with strong Arabic intonation, broad vocabulary acquisition, and basic grammar understanding. By the end of term 2, students in Year 2 are expected to have active control over the Arabic alphabet sounds to build new words. They are able to communicate their daily needs using simple language with teachers and among themselves. They are also learning about family members and fruits. In Sha Allah, with the help and collaborations of parents we can reach high standards in the Arabic studies.
Kind Regards,
Yasmin Aly,
Year 2 Arabic teacher
Secondary
Art
‘Cubism is a form of art, consisting of irregular and imperfect shapes and colour schemes. I think of it as a picture with irregular colours and forms as if I see them through a broken mirror. Having no orientation to follow cubism makes it a unique way of presenting emotions visually; multiple angles, reconstructed features.’ Yousif Shibeeb
‘In Art class we have been studying Cubism and learned about Picasso. Cubism is a type of art where you combine a drawing and a photo of the same picture you choose. The overall collage art looks as if the objects in it are seen through a shattered mirror.’ Jake Polulach
English
Year 10 has been studying Shakespeare’s Scottish play, Macbeth. As an assignment, they had to prepare and re-enact a satirical parody of a scene in the play. They came up with brilliant ideas. Enjoy one of our group’s excellent work!
Click here to view a scene from Macbeth by our Year 10 students.
PE
This year, Pinnacle College has implemented the foundations of creating a Futsal Academy. Myself and Giancarlo Zumbo, former State Futsal coach and National Championships coach have been undertaking intense training with select students from years 6-10, in order to instill Futsal skills, technique, gameplay and tactics.
Our first tournament a fortnight ago was the Year 8 Boys 5 a side Northern Zone tournament. The boys, captained by Omar Elsayed, went undefeated all the way up to the Grand Final, which they lost 2-0. The boys scored 39 goals in 8 matches and only conceded 5. Their biggest wins being 10-0, 8-0 and 7-0.
The boys will now compete in the South Australian Finals consisting of the 8 best teams around the state. Muhammed Turay was deemed best player with 19 goals for the day, Year 6 Student Hakan Kot scored 9 Goals. Ayman Ismail and Azi Aizimaiti were stalwarts in defence, while Tillo Kodirjonov, Ali Keita and Alper Altunkopru ran things from the middle. Ahmed Yusuf Sanli was a monster in goals. Well done to all the boys for their efforts during training and matchday. Great things to come!
Michael Triantafilakis
Sports Coordinator
Humanities
During Year 10 History we studied WWII and were introduced to the topic through an activity where the class split into different ‘countries’ (Germany, France, UK and USA). This represented negotiation over the Treaty of Versailles that was proposed by the allies after WWI. This activity gave us an understanding of the early anger felt by the Germans towards the Allies for what seemed like unfairness over what to do Germany's military and to which countries reparations would be given. The WWII assignment involved watching the film, Schindler's List. The film showed us a German Businessman during WWII and how he slowly went from caring about profit to caring for the Jewish community. By studying WWII, I learnt of the events behind it, the importance of the sacrifices made by the people who fought and died and what WWII means to different communities all over the world today.
Josh Polulach 10B
Science
In our incursion, we had to do forensic science. We were given the task of determining which person stole a special tree that could grow in any type of soil. We had twelve pieces of evidence. Each evidence led to the culprit. Every piece of evidence had an instruction sheet on how to see who was responsible for the crime. There were 4 main suspects of the crime: John, Nick, Kay and Steve. They were all park ranchers where the special tree was. For the first piece of evidence, we had to draw a line on a strip of paper with the pens of every suspect and put it in some methylated spirits and let the methylated spirit move up the paper with the ink. We had an image on our instruction sheet which showed the image of the methylated spirit that had moved up with the ink and whichever one looked similar was the suspect. After waiting for the methylated spirits to finish moving up we came to a result of Kay being the suspect. After doing one of the twelve steps we conducted various experiments such as : Comparing the fingerprints on a can that was left on the crime scene and on a toolbox, inspecting the footprints found on the mud and the suspects shoes, looking for the suspects blood types, seeing their pet’s hair that was on the car seat if it matched, we also did a salinity (salt) test and a pH test to find out the amount of alkaline and acidity from the soil on their boots to see if it matched with the soil near it. One of the other experiments we did included plant mash-ups that were squeezed into a tiny glass rectangular prism. We put them in a machine that could detect how much light would go through the item. Our evidence suggested that the suspect would be the lowest amount of light to go through the plants. We found out that Steve’s plants only let 86 percent light out while all the others let out 120%. This is why we suspected Steve. In the end we learned that it is just unreasonable to suspect anybody because of the evidence we have for instance Steve would be worried if his footprints were not there because he is a park ranger. The forensic science incursion was really fun and unique. It was unique because we did not realise that there are different perspectives to everything. In conclusion, All the evidence was messed up and there were multiple suspects for every piece of evidence and there was no suspect.
By Abdullah M, Mohammed Gursel, Davud Mizrye
The year 12 physics class enjoyed a wonderful day out in the sun launching water rockets. They had been studying the forces which act on objects in motion, and how this effects the distance the object travels. My peers had finished the content for this chapter and so had fun examining the variables that changed the flight of the rockets out on the oval. They added different volumes of water in each rocket, to measure the distance the rocket would travel. In doing so, my peers were able to achieve results for their SACE folio tasks for this semester. Other high school classes also watched and were captivated by the flight of the water rockets. A great way to put an end to physics content… for now.
Hibba Al Daghestani.
RV
HELPING OTHERS
In our Religion and values classes, we have been learning about helping others. Helping others has many benefits. These benefits can be in many categories such as scientific, mentally or physical. Firstly, helping others can help you to increase your life span. The more you help others the happier others will be with you, meaning your happiness will increase too. Helping others promotes good behaviour such as respect, organisation and will enable you to be socially active.
Alongside positive behaviour, there are benefits such as your grades will increase, and it will provide you a purpose and give you satisfaction.
We should be helpful to our community, neighbours, friends, parents and family. This means helping other people that are just not Muslim. The Prophet (SAW) encouraged helping others even if they are of different religion.
The Messenger of Allah (SAW) said: “Whoever relives a Muslim of a burden from the burdens of the world. Allah will relive him of a burden from the burdens on the Day of Judgement. And whoever helps ease a difficulty in the world, Allah will grant him ease from a difficulty in the world and in the hereafter. And whoever covers (the faults of) a Muslim, Allah will cover (his faults) for him in the world and the Hereafter. And Allah is engaged in helping the worshipper as long as the worshipper is engaged in helping his brother.”
According to the Prophet (SAW) a person should try their hardest to relive any pain or burden that is on a Muslim and a non-Muslim. This will help the person on his burdens and in the hereafter.
In the Quran, Allah says: “Help on another in acts of piety and righteousness. And do not assist other in acts of sinfulness and transgression. And be aware of Allah. Verily, Allah is severe in punishment” (Qur’an 5:2).
Allah himself encourages us to participate in acts of helping others. And do not go against yourself and sin. While helping others you should be righteous and should not expect anything back.
If you help others, Allah will help us. If you help others, Allah promises to help us. Allah will help you in any problem or in any situation. Allah will increase your rewards in multitude of what good you have done.
Helping others is an easy way of entering into Jannah. Allah will be merciful to you since you are a really nice and helpful person to others. With this you can enter Jannah, with Allah’s Mercy.
“The believing men and believing women are allies of one another. They enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong and establish prayer and give charity and obey Allah and His Messenger. Allah will have mercy upon them, for Allah is Almighty and Wise.” (Qur’an 9:71)
Allah tells us that the believing men and women are allies of one another. Meaning the only way, you can believe is if you are kind and helpful to each other. These people should go towards the right things instead of the wrong and they should stop the wrong things. Allah encourages us to be helpful so we can establish prayer and give charity and also to obey the Messenger of Allah. Allah will have mercy on the person who helps.
Abdul Rehman Muhammad (Year 10B)
Pastoral Care
A Reflection from a Year 6 Student About the PC Programs
During Pastoral Care we learnt many things, this includes: Islamic studies, good manners and much more, we often did this by reading together. We read some amazing books, but my personal favorite was The life of the prophet Muhammad. We also had some exceptional lectures by Mr. Raza, these lectures taught us about respect, kindness and other principles of Islam. We were often eating pizza but seldom we ate a delicious platter. We were also able to improve our physical and mental health by exercising while having a ton of fun. We were able to do our homework in a great environment for studying, and Mr. Raza did a fantastic job of helping us. Overall we had awesome times and we made some great memories to remember.
Kamran, Year 6
