PE, Music, LOTE

At Immanuel we are committed to encouraging our students to live active lives.

To this end, our students have a number of opportunities to engage in fitness activities during each week.

Each year level has a specialist PE lesson every week, as well as designated fitness lessons with their classroom teacher each week.

Students are also involved in a number of other sporting activities throughout the year, including Sports Day, the annual Faith Challenge at Tanunda, sporting clinics such as Hot Shots Tennis, annual Swimming lessons and occassional incursions from sporting teams such as the Adelaide Crows. Students also have the opportunity to try out for a variety of events run by SAPSASA each year coordinated by our local Gawler district.

Immanuel is also a member of the government sponsored Sporting Schools program. This program is a wonderful opportunity for our students to experience a variety of sports from specialised coaches. Coaches from local clubs or sporting organisations join us at Immanuel and over a number of weeks, share their sport with students. In the past this has included sports such as Gymnastics, Soccer, Tennis and more!

As locals of Gawler for over 30 years, we understand the important role local sports clubs play in our community. Because of this, we do not have our own sports teams but rather encourage our children to join local sporting clubs and contribute to Gawler’s sporting community. By being a part of Gawler’s sports clubs, our students grow in social skills, sporting knowledge and techniques, which is a great thing for Immanuel and for Gawler itself.

with Mrs Charmaine Strickland and Mrs Rachael Siviour

We have made some significant changes to our program and feedback from our students has been extremely positive.  They have really looked forward to LOTE lessons and have enjoyed inquiring into different aspects of language and culture which interest them.  As well as providing this great opportunity to further develop skills in inquiry, the LOTE program is helping to develop an appreciation of the world, its people and their diversity.

This is a snapshot of what our classes have been looking at:

Foundation: The Foundations have been looking at where we live and where Australia is in the world.  They are finding out about the countries that are Australia’s neighbours.  They started with China (a more distant neighbour) because they were interested in Chinese New Year.

Year 1/2: Our Year 1 and 2 classes are focusing on Asian Studies and they began by looking at where Asia is in the world and its significance in the world.  They are finding out about Japan and they have looked at how Japanese language is made up of Ramaji (words) and Kanji (symbols).

Year 3: The Year 3 classes have been looking at indigenous Australia, specifically the Kaurna people and the Kaurna language.

Year 4/5: The Year 4/5s are focusing on European Studies, beginning with German.  They have been finding out about where Germany is in the world, Germany’s neighbours and language used in greetings and introductions.

Year 6: Our Year 6 students are on an adventure, choosing a culture to find out about and a language to learn.  They are putting together a survival guide, with important information on their chosen country.  They are also learning to speak the language and finding out how to deal with different situations – beginning with meeting people and introducing yourself.

Some of our Year 6  students spoke to us about their experiences with Cultural Studies:

“At the start of the year we got to pick a language we wanted to learn.  We’re learning French.  We’ve learned greetings and how to introduce ourselves.  It’s challenging because there are a lot of silent letters.”    Jessie and Madison

“LOTE is a bit different but I’m enjoying it.  I’m learning German.”   Ben

“I’m learning Japanese because I like finding out about their legends.”  Jane

“I’m learning Greek and I’ve been enjoying it.  It’s a challenge to write it because the letters are different to ours.”    Emily