Good afternoon parents, carers, and students. 

We are now in full swing with the academic programmes being run in our school for term 1. 

Miss Kylie has been working with both our senior and junior students in improving their Wadjarri vocabulary and listening to storytelling in Wadjarri language. 

Our senior students' cultural clubs are in full swing, and just last week our senior girls participated in an excursion to Suzy's Art Gallery in Mullewa; to learn about painting techniques used to depict local areas around Pia. The High School girls are planning to go back very soon and paint alongside Ms Susan Merry (artist in residence).

In week 5 we had our mid- term assembly. Congratulations to our award winners.

I have been impressed by the Pia students who are making a big effort to come to school every day, on time, and ready to learn. Attendance across the school has improved significantly since the commencement of the term. Well done to all students who come to school with a positive mind set and keen to be the best they can be.

Students who come to school on time each day are keen to join in with our fun morning fitness programmes and mind up sessions. Each day we join together, to have fun participating in our healthy body and mind activities. Our junior students love Wednesdays when we run a PMP (Perceptual Motor Programme). The goal of the programme is to improve students' fundamental movement skills, their balance, their focus on tasks and of course just to have lots of fun!

We then go to the library to relax, reflect, and focus on being ready to learn in the classroom. We listen to relaxing music and use mindfulness techniques to clear our minds in readiness for a busy day of learning fun.

We have now also introduced a morning reading programme, and each student is given the opportunity to read to a friend or a teacher, to show- off their skills, before going off to join their class teacher for the rest of the day.

Due to covid restrictions, many of our planned activities outside of school have not been able to go ahead for term 1. Hopefully, things will settle down, and we will be able to reschedule postponed school camps, excursions, and incursions in term 2.

Our students here in Pia have taken to wearing masks in school with enthusiasm and great responsibility. To date, we have managed to keep clear of Covid, and I commend everyone in the school and wider community for doing their part to minimise the risk of Covid coming to Pia.

Miss Marika is off on 4 weeks leave at the end of this week to return to Perth. She will be attending the wedding on one of her daughters, and I know she is very excited about the upcoming event. We all hope that she has a wonderful time catching up with her family. During the time she is away, Mr Sean and Mr Bradley will take on the teaching load of the junior class.

Have a great week everyone and stay safe during these uncertain times of Covid.

Susan Trigwell

Principal

This term for HASS, students in the Junior class have been learning about "Then and Now".  Students have been comparing school days, viewing, discussing and physically exploring, similarities and differences between school then and now.  They have been using an old school bell instead of the siren to signal the start and end of the school day, recess and lunch.  We have an old school desk in the classroom with a student blackboard and chalk.  The highlight for many of the students was viewing video footage of the cane and how it was used as punishment decades ago.  This week, students will learn about toys and games then and now and how they have changed and remained the same.  

Also this week, students will be creating their own story map in Talk4Writing to learn how to write a non-chronological report about an old school case.  

Students in the Junior class have been learning that a sentence is a group of words that express a complete thought.  Last week students sorted sentences into complete and incomplete sentences.  They glued complete sentences (spider legs) and made a happy spider.  This week students will glue incomplete sentences on the reverse of their spider and make a sad spider.  

Students  engage daily in Top Ten Math programme.  The programme is differentiated to meet the needs of each and every student.  Each Math session begins with Mad Minute Math.  Younger students have been learning numbers 0 - 20 counting  forwards and counting backwards from 10 - 0. They are learning to read numbers, quantity, match and order numbers.