2 July 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
As we approach the end of another busy term, I would like to take this opportunity to recap and highlight some of the events that happened during this term.
Qurban Campaign: First of all, I would like to congratulate everyone’s Eid ul Adha on behalf of Elizabeth East Campus. I hope everyone will have a great time with their beloved ones. It is the qurban time and I pray that may Allah accept all your Qurbans and donations. We had very successful fundraising events this year. Particularly I would like to extend my appreciation and thanks to the SRC department, Pastoral Care Department and students for organising our annual Qurban festival and stalls. It is a great pleasure to see our students and colleagues working together for the wider community and humanity.
Pinnacle Got Talent: The other great event that was organised by Primary was Pinnacle got talent. I congratulate our students who participated and competed in the finals. I am so proud to see our talented and creative students at our school, especially those who planned choreography.
SA State Soccer Finals: Our soccer team represented Pinnacle College in the State finals for the first time. Although they could not make the final, seeing them competing with the best schools across the State was a great achievement and milestone in their life.
Migrant Refugee Centre Winter Appeal: The Pastoral Care Department organised a winter refugee food and toiletries appeal with Vinnies. Each class filled big boxes and during the holiday program, they delivered all the items that were collected at school to the refugee families at Vinnies Centre.
Once again, I would like to thank our school community for a wonderful Term 2! Wishing all students and staff a very safe and enjoyable school break!
Happy Holidays!
Till next issue
Educationally yours,
Gokhan Kot
Elizabeth Campus Principal, Pinnacle College
Community Hub News
We are happy to tell you all that our Community Hub family has continued to grow and become livelier. Our parents are enjoying our English classes and our young children are growing and learning through Playgroup. We look forward to seeing more new faces join us in term 3. Enjoy your holidays! Mrs Hannan Hassan (Community Hub Leader)
Library
Thank you for all the families that supported the Book Fairs. As always the staff have put in lots of extra support for the Book Fairs to run smoothly. Thank you to all staff who helped with the Book Fair this year. If you have any feedback about the Book Fair, please come in and see me.
Reading over the holidays is very important to everyone. Here are some quick tips of reading over the holidays:
- Read for Fun. Let children read whatever they would like. Just make sure they have time to read.
- The public libraries are a great place to find books. If you do not already have a public library card, the holidays are a good time to organize this. Many of the families would have one form when Playford library was visiting the school. The public library has many more titles than the school library. Upon returning from holidays, your students could suggest their favourite titles to get for the school library.
- Even if you travel, have children read. Along with reading books, Children should be encouraged to read signs, maps, and other instructions on trips. Share your travel information with them.
- Create tradition with reading, like reading before breakfast, with a hot chocolate, at bedtime. Find somewhere warm and cosy and read as a family.
Next term is Book Week. 21-27 August. This is an exciting week where the children will be given an opportunity to dress up as their favourite character or an imaginary character. Your teachers will let you know the date of the dress-up day. The theme to Book Week this year is:
Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds.
Enjoy reading and enjoy the break.
Front Office Notices
Primary
Foundation
This term we went on an excursion to Gorge Wildlife Park. These are the children’s thoughts.
We met a koala called Lucy. The keeper’s favourite question we asked was “What is a koalas favourite colour?”
We fed the kangaroos and found out that they use their tails to balance.
The goats were so naughty, they tried to escape.
We had so much fun.
Year 1
The Year 1 students have explored landscape in this Uluru landscape Aboriginal inspired Art lesson. We have taken inspiration from Aboriginal artist Danny Eastwood to create these wonderful mixed media artworks.
“We have learnt about warm and cool colours and how to paint with watercolour. Art is lots of fun.” - Zainab & Amani Year 1
“It has been fun working with oil pastels, watercolour and acrylic paints”
Anisa Year 1
Year 2
Wow! What a fantastic term we have had! I can’t believe we are already halfway through the year. We have been learning about forces in Science and AFL in PE. To celebrate and consolidate what we have learnt in class we went to AFL Max for our excursion.
I am so proud of the effort everyone has made this year and hope you all have a well-deserved, restful break. Remember to keep reading!
Love, Miss. Musa :)
Year 3
Hi everyone, Maika and Demi here. We are first-year student teachers from the University of South Australia and have been in Natasha Parletta’s Year 3 class for the past six weeks. We have both absolutely loved every day we have spent in the Year 3 class. This week, we have each taught one Maths lesson and one English lesson to a group of students, where our skills have developed. We are so grateful to Pinnacle College and Natasha for this experience.
Year 4
I cannot believe how quickly the term has flown by! I am beyond proud of the continual effort and persistence that the class puts into their learning! We have had a blast over the past few weeks writing procedures. We made pizza, iced chocolate, and pancakes, which were followed with some very creative procedure texts!
Please practice your times tables over the holidays. The students are expected to complete their holiday homework booklets and continue with their reading.
Have a safe and well-deserved break!
Love Miss Rowlands
Year 5
Hi everyone!
We have had such a busy last two weeks of term. The students have worked so hard finalising their assessments and projects. We have had a successful first semester and I encourage students to keep reading and learning at home during their relaxing break.
From the year 5 cohort, we would like to wish everyone a happy and safe holiday!
Love,
Miss Marcoionni and her Fabulous Year 5’s
Year 6
In Week 9, both year 6 classes enjoyed a Chemistry Show by SciWorld. We saw how Liquid Nitrogen effects different objects such as a mandarin, balloon, pringles tin, metal, and bouncy balls. We reinforced our learning from earlier in the term about solids, liquids, and gases and how substances change from one state to another.
Mr. Schlicker
Art
Year 5 students explored 2 masterpieces by VanGogh; they emulated their own versions of his famous paintings ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Sunflowers’ using oil pastels over 3 weeks. It was a rewarding experience which taught students how to create texture via different movements and pressure applied on paper. Year 6 students created abstract pieces after Kandinsky and Klee while learning about composition rules using backgrounds of varying colours and transparency.
Secondary
Art
Approaching the end of another term, Year 7 students completed their second indigenous inspired abstract oil pastel works and reflected further on symbol, meaning, and story in indigenous art. They will start next term exploring further about representing personal memory through art. Year 8 students worked on a collaborative cubist portrait and started converting that into a relief cardboard portrait.
Arabic
Asalam Allakum, my name is Ahmed Ali and I am part of the Year 9/10 Arabic class with Mrs Yasmin Aly. In term 2, we focused on the grammar and the language conventions used in the Arabic language. We also focused on different reading stories such as respecting neighbours, parents, and human rights. We learnt about some hadith of the Prophet which relate to how we should act. In Arabic, we also enjoyed using the iPads to do educational activities. We practiced speaking through presenting speech about human rights. Another group in my class created posters about transportation and presented them in front of the class as a part of the speaking assessment.
Ahmed Ali
Year 9
English
Our Year 9s ended Term 2 by stepping into the shoes of a minor character from Deadly, Unna? and conveying that character’s thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. Here are some examples of the creative work from the students:
“Glass rained down onto the floor with splinters flying everywhere. Lovely barged into Big Mac’s room, slamming the door right open. There really was no turning back now…”
“The pounding of my heart was becoming louder and louder, heavier and heavier. I wasn’t ready to die, this wasn’t part of the plan…”
“I felt betrayed… The world collapsed around me. No one was standing up for me. I looked around; even my own teammates were shouting at me!...”
PE
CHAMPIONS!!!
Cross town rivals Pinnacle College and Islamic College squared off in the 5th annual Intercultural Power Cup AFL Grand Final last week at Adelaide Oval. After finishing first and second respectively on Friday’s twelve team Gala Day, the two top ranked teams met to decide the best girls’ team in the tournament. As the crowd was filling up to almost 30,000 for the Port Adelaide vs Sydney match, the girls team took the field for the half hour match. In what was an extremely one-sided contest, Pinnacle College girls team defeated Islamic College Girls team 5.6.36 to 0.0.0. The boys’ team were extremely unlucky, finishing 3rd on Gala Day with only one loss. The winning girls team consisted of captains Asraa Al Sarraf and Nazira Yarmuhammed, Zakia Adam, Zehra Yigiter, Farnaz Ahamed, Nargiza Dengiz, Sarah Haddara, Marzi Ergasheva, Asra Bagsoken as well as Golden Grove students Mariam and Sarah Al-Zobeidy , Basira Charo and Inas Hamada.
Congratulations to Zakia Adam who was named player of the tournament and Abdulmalik Almsater who was the official referee on the day.
Humanities
I had a really good time at the Confucius Institute and had a lot of fun. These excursions are the types that I dream about. It might not only be me, but I really enjoyed it when we went to get the food and went to the university to do the painting and calligraphy. Overall, I give this excursion a 9.5 out of 10.
Science
In Science, the Year 9 boys have been learning about Acids and Bases. For the previous few days the main focus of the lesson was Acid-Base reactions or Neutralisation Reactions. To further help the boys understand the concept of Neutralisation reactions, we went down to the lab for a science experiment. The goal of the experiment was to be able to identify which substance is an acid and which is a base with the help of the universal indicator.
The universal indicator is a substance that, when is dropped into an Acid or Base, changes the colour of the substance. When the colour changes to red, it indicates the substance is a strong acid. But when it turns to blue colour, it indicates that the substance is a strong base. With this knowledge in the back of our heads, the boys performed the experiment and found out that the two substances were Hydrochloric acid and Sodium Hydroxide. Every Acid-Base reaction has the two same products at the end: salt and water.
Once the boys found which substance was acid and which was base, their next goal was to perform a Neutralised reaction. A neutralisation reaction is when the acids react with the base to form a neutral substance with the colour green, indicating it is a neutral substance. So, the boys started the neutralisation reaction by adding a few drops of acid to the base until the colour turned green. By reaching this green colour, the experiment was over. Carrying out a virtual experiment helped the boys understand neutralisation reactions!
The pictures below are showing different stages of the experiment!
Ahmed Ali Yr9B
Pastoral Care
A group of students participated in the “Reconciliation Native Tree Planting” activity at Stevens Reserve organised by the Tea Tree Gully Council. Our students learnt about the native habitat of the reserve as well as the connection of native people with this land.
Pastoral Care Department
