15 November 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 of Pinnacle College,
Welcome to the latest issue of the Pinnacle College, Elizabeth East newsletter, for your reading pleasure.
We have had a productive and successful term at the Elizabeth East Campus. Our school life is slowly returning to normal and we thank everyone for their patience and understanding in these difficult times. We believe it is important to be positive and provide a supporting environment. Some of the major activities organised by our dedicated staff and students, as well as many subject excursions and incursions are listed below.
Primary Sports Carnival: Sports carnival is one of the major events in our school calendar. Recently on Friday 5 November, the students participated in a variety of events at our sports carnival. This year it was another huge success! Our students demonstrated all our school values, in particular determination as they pushed through to do their best. Teachers’ creativity and sacrifice and students’ efforts created a fantastic environment. There was some competitive spirit amongst the students, the main focus of the sports carnival was about participation, fun and enjoyment. Congratulations to all teams and students for demonstrating the essence of winning.
Teachers Day – Celebrating the contribution of our teachers: Last week we recognised and presented gifts to our teachers at the teachers’ day program. Teachers Day is a great opportunity to celebrate and value teachers for the vital role they place inside our classrooms and outside in the wider community. Inclusive Education Department Members and SRC Students organised an incredible assembly to celebrate this special day. I was so proud to be part of the Pinnacle College family.
Parents entries to the school ground: It is great to see that our families are back at the school ground. I believe we have already left unprecedented and unexpected Covid nightmares behind. All parents are welcome to pick their children up and speak freely to any staff member Please note a mask is still required.
Undercover area and Laptops for Secondary School students: SA State Government regularly provides funding for educational institutions. Last year we received $80000 from the SA Government to purchase 30 laptops and an undercover area between the main building and Science and Art building. Both projects were recently completed and ready for the school community. We believe this will be very beneficial for the school community.
New Inclusive Education Department Coordinator Role: Mr Thomas Schlicker will be our new IED Coordinator for next year. Congratulations on this new role and we wish you all the best in your new venture.
Upcoming Primary and Secondary School Events:
- Subject Award Ceremony for Year 7-11: will be held on the 30th of November at the gym.
- End of Year Performance and Award Ceremony: Elizabeth East Campus EYOC and Award Ceremony will be held on the 2nd of December. Please contact the front office for details.
- Graduation Ceremony for Year 12 Program: Ceremony will be held on the 3rd of December at the gym and the dinner program will be at Hilton Hotel.
- Graduation Ceremony for Year 6: will be held on the 8th of December (Sfera Convention Centre).
Till next issue!
Educationally yours,
Gokhan Kot
Campus Principal, Elizabeth East
Community Hub News
We have had so many fun learning experiences so far in term 4. Some of our playgroup themes included music, celebrating Children’s week, gardening and recognising people who help us. Children got to plant some seeds, water them and watch them grow. Our playgroup also got involved in the primary school sports day and competed in their very first running race!
Library
This term we have been having fun with games in the library. Some games have been library related and some are just fun. Libraries from all over the world will be celebrating ‘International Games in the Library Week’ Nov 7-13. Some of the local libraries will have events on - check them out.
It is also beginning to feel like the end of the school year. The libraries at Golden Grove and Gilles Plains campus have grown this year in quantity and quality of books. We have had some great library monitors and lots of activities relating to reading.
Week 6 is the last week to borrow books. This gives the library staff time to make sure all library books are returned and accounted for. Please return ALL books by week 8. We really need to have all books returned, especially all readers.
If you plan to clean up around your house over the summer break and have good quality books. We will accept donations next year. The books that do not get catalogued into our library may be passed on to be shipped to disadvantaged counties through South Pacific School Aid.
Kind Regards,
Ms Lisa Preston
Front Office Notices
Teachers’ Day
Pinnacle College celebrated Teachers’ Day with a special assembly. We want to express our gratitude for our wonderful teachers and staff members. We thank them for their leadership, passion, wisdom, and for guiding our students into a greater world.
Primary
Foundation
Dear Parents and Caregivers,
My name is Nikki Trewin, and I am a pre-service teacher in my final placement. This term in Numeracy, we have been learning about capacity. Capacity is a very hands-on subject, and the students have done an outstanding job! The students have been having lots of fun exploring and learning how to level their scoops before filling their containers with rice and lentils.
Year 1
We had an amazing time during our ‘Cook n Create’ incursion.
Here is the feedback from the children from Year 1.
Nabeeha: “We got to make cookies.”
Arham I: “I liked mixing all the ingredients together.”
Amira: “I loved decorating our cookies.”
Mohanad: “I loved the entire incursion.”
Arham H: “My favourite part was decorating the cookies.”
Zainab: “I enjoyed painting the icing.”
Sumayya:”My favourite part was making the icing into different
shapes.”
Anisa: “I loved it when Jess was helping us.”
Farheen: “My favourite part was when we were painting the icing sugar and
making it into different shapes.”
Areeba: “We even got to wear our own aprons and cooking hats.”
Asad: “We were chefs today, I had so much fun.”
Year 2
We have been learning about Maps and Coordinates in Maths the past couple of weeks. We made our own treasure maps with directions to the treasure!
“I liked doing the steps because you have to lead the
way!” – Marva
“It was really fun writing and it felt like I was driving because I was
giving directions.” - Zeynep A
“We liked drawing the map.” - Qudratullah and Samiullah
“It was fun drawing coordinates and making up a way to get to the
treasure.” – Aref
“I liked learning how to write directions using a grid.” – Zak
“I learned that you can use a map to give directions.” - Aayan
“We liked drawing the maps and the coordinates.”- Waleeya and Sumayya
Year 3
Hey everyone,
Our names are Aminah, Emad and Ayesha and sadly, it is our last newsletter of the year. So far, we have been learning about money in Maths, and we especially enjoyed learning to round cents up or down to the nearest dollar. In Technology, we are learning about sustainability and we will be making our own gardens or farms. In English, we have been learning how to write biographies and we have learnt all about different famous people who have impacted the world. Sports Day was last week and we had a lot of fun! Our favourite activities were the running races and dodgeball. At the end of the term, we are going to Latitude for some end of term fun and we will get to play with the other year 3 classes from GG and GP!
Year 4
Dear Parents and Caregivers,
The Year 4s have been super busy this term with Persuasive Writing being our major Literacy focus. The students have learnt about modality words, editing their grammar, paragraphing and engaging their creativity!
Our Numeracy unit has focused mainly on 3D shapes and their properties, chance and division. The students have done an outstanding job thus far!
Please remember to purchase tickets for our End of Year Concert. They are available for $5 in the front office. We cannot wait to show you our cheeky monkey dance!
Love Miss Rowlands and the Year 4s.
Year 5
Dear Parents and Caregivers,
We are building up our poetic devices skills to write our final piece for our assessment. In Maths, we have been focusing on transformations of 2D shapes. Last week we had Sports Day. It was so much fun and we did many activities such as dodgeball, car race and sprints. Even Miss Marcoionni joined in on the fun!
Miss Marcoionni, Zaineb and the Year 5 Team!
Year 6
In class we have been using Makers Empire. It has lots of modes, I really like blocker, you can design many things. What we did first is we made a maze, it was really fun seeing all the cool tools you can use. There are a lot of mini games that you can play with and you can comment and like on your classmates' designs. It was an amazing experience and it was really fun! We are looking forward to the 3D printer arriving so that we can print our designs.
- Sarah, 6A
Primary Dance and Drama
Upper primary classes practiced dance starting from elementary knowledge to their practices for end of year performances. Students learned about how dance focuses on movement, coordination, repetition and contrast. Year 6 classes will continue with improvisation in drama and Year 5 class will start designing their graduation shirt for next year.
Secondary
Arabic
While English language has 8 parts of speech, Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Adverb, Verb, Interjection, Conjunction and Preposition. Arabic has only three parts of speech which are Noun (اسم) Verb (فعل) and particles (حرف). In equivalence Noun in Arabic combines (Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Adverb and Interjections) as in English, while Verb is the same as Verb in English and Particle is the same as Conjunction and Preposition in English. This are what the year 7&8 standard Arabic are learning.
Art
Year 7 students have been learning about the pioneer of modern abstract painting Mondrian. Inspired from Mondrian’s work, students experimented with creating balance and contrast within a square using rectangles and squares along with primary and secondary colours. Year 8 students learn about using words in art. They designed their chosen words and phrases as drawings. Some of the students continue painting their design as 2D completed artworks while some others choose to build them into cardboard models.
English
Year 11 Adelaide Gaol Excursion
On Monday Week 2, our English class visited the Old Adelaide Gaol, the first permanent prison in South Australia that operated from 1841 until 1988. The idiosyncrasies of the prison were evident when we had just approached the ominous front gate that was decorated with two different statues of a head. Our guide told us that the first statue was that of a young, devilish man and the second was that of an old man who had found his inner peace, thus representing the journey that jailers experienced in this prison. I found that hard to believe. We carried on with the tour and were fed an array of tantalising horror stories by our guide. All in all, this experience really inspired me with countless ideas for my English assignment, satisfying every requirement for gothic novels.
~A Terrified Year 11 Student
Humanities
In Geography, the Year 8 Boys have been making waves looking at Coastal Landscapes; Weathering, erosion and deposition. They have been learning about managing our coasts and the process behind landscapes and formations. Feeling a bit like a fish out of water after studying Samurais and Vikings in History, the boys have been enthusiastic and coasting along about understanding the short and long-term effects of managing our coastlines.
Ahmed Baltagie and Mr T
Science
Practical part of Forces Unit
Mouse-trap Cars. A science project which is held as a competition and is famous around the globe for highschool students. There are 2 types of mouse-trap car competitions. The first competition is how far the mouse-trap car could travel and the second competition is the speed of how fast the mouse-trap car could reach up too.
The competition we chose was the long-distance competition.
In science, we have been learning about forces. We learned about the various types of forces and once we had reached the topic about friction, that’s when we got assigned to create a mousetrap car. The instructions were to learn about how to construct a mouse-trap car using multiple resources and try to reduce as much friction as we possibly could. For starters, we had built a base for the mouse-trap car, with the wheels aligned perfectly with one another which was then powered by the mousetrap’s spring (along with its rod), pulling the string attached to the wheel.
Making this project was a very fun one as we all went through trial and error, learning new things like making a mousetrap car move far distances whether it's fast or slow, depending on the length of the rod attached to the spring and much more. The slow mousetrap cars (with long rods) had the most distance covered at a sluggish pace whilst the fast one's (with a shorter rod) didn’t cover that much distance due to the string running out quickly.
Everybody had a blast while racing against each other. It was a really exciting experience which everyone loved. We got to see a variety of unique designs of mousetrap cars. Some students attached balloons to the edge of their car wheels to reduce even more friction so their cars would go further and they would have an advantage in the competition.
Abdullah M, Davud, Mohammed G, Abdulloh R
Maths
Hi, my name is Mona Al Daghestani and recently I completed my first Stage 2 exam which was Math Methods. To prepare for this exam, I mainly focused on completing past exams and completing as many questions as I could. To minimise my stress levels, I took many breaks whilst studying and allocated time for going for walks, playing soccer and spending time with friends and family. My advice would be to minimise your stress as much as possible. Remaining relaxed and confident whilst studying and whilst completing the exam is the best way to go and will guarantee a great result. Creating a study schedule with allocated time for other activities and hobbies of your interest is an effective way to study and will also help minimise stress.
Good luck future year 12 students!
Mona Al Daghestani
PE
Congratulations to our 8/9 Basketball team for reaching the state finals for 2021. After going undefeated in the zone tournament, the boys will now set their attention to the State Finals on the 23rd of November, playing the best schools in South Australia in an 8 team tournament. With the bigger emphasis and time put into our sporting program at Elizabeth East, this will be our second team qualifying for state finals this year after the 7/8 boys soccer earlier this year. It is a fantastic feat considering some schools we play have 5 times the amount of students in those particular year levels. Special mention must go to State Player and Captain Mohammed Al Ani, who has been dominant in each game. The team has also been strongly supported by Melih Aslan, Mohammad Adam, Abbas Mohammed, Alper Altunkopru, Mohammed Turay, Ayman Ismail, and Ali Keita. Regardless of the outcome on the 23rd, we are very proud of the boys for accomplishing this fantastic achievement.
Mr T
Pastoral Care
Another Boys Pastoral Care summer camp is around the corner where they get to have a great time with their friends and teachers as well as achieving personal development through seminars, skill-building activities and reflective reading sessions. Please contact Elizabeth East campus office not to miss out this opportunity.
