Newsletter Issue Nº 3 June/July 2017 Upcoming Dates 7 July Last Day of Term 2 24 July First Day of Term 3 1-2 September Eid al-adha 8 September Premier s Reading Challenge ends 1 October Daylight saving starts Term Dates Term 2: 1 May - 7 Jul Term 3: 24 Jul - 29 Sep Term 4: 16 Oct - 15 Dec From The Principal Assalamu Alaykum Warahmatullahi Wa Barakatu, Dear Parents, Guardians and Care givers. Alhamdullilah we have reached the end of the second term of 2017 at IQRA College. The highlight of the second term was the blessed month of Ramadaan and of course Eid ul-fitr on the 25th June 2017. We are certain that our students enjoyed the extended Eid ul-fitr long weekend as well as the Eid festival on Sunday the 2nd July 2017. During Ramadaan, we have performed Taraweeh prayer at the school mosque which was well attended by members of our school community. Our Taraweeh prayer will now become an annual event Insha Allah. Our IFTAR dinner was an overwhelming success and was well attended by students, Parents, Teachers and their families. Our students did presentations on behalf of IQRA College at the Eid Festival on Sunday. The quality of the presentations reflected both the learning experience of our students as well as the commitment and dedication of our highly qualified teachers. We are proud of our students and our teachers in terms of our Mission where we envisage to provide our students with the best educational experience. The presentations at the Eid festival is once again an illustration of our mission to enable our students to be part of a community and contribute to Australian society. The proceedings and presentations at the Eid festival were uploaded on our Facebook page. Our school is growing at an alarming rate and we currently have close to 110 students enrolled at our school. This is due to the challenging work, commitment and dedication of our experienced staff, teachers and volunteers who have always tried to achieve positive student outcomes. We hope to employ additional teachers for next year to cope with the increased demand for places at our school. This is thanks to your support, confidence and trust which the community have in our staff and teachers. (Continued on page 2) In This Issue P.1 Principal s Message P.5 IQRA College Family Iftar P.2 Class Updates P.6 Parent-Teacher Committee
(From the Principal - continued from page 1) You should have received the school photos which you have ordered and we suggest you keep the photos as memories of IQRA college in 2017. The end of term reports have been handed to students last Friday and this Monday. Kindly peruse the report and arrange to meet with the respective teachers to discuss any issues in the report which you might want to discuss. Discussions with teachers is strictly by appointment only. We once again kindly ask parents to ensure that their children follow the instructions of the bus drivers as the bus drivers need to focus on safety issues while driving the bus and they are unable to discipline the students whilst driving the bus. Parents could you please ensure students are in their correct uniform everyday because some students are still coming to school with colour shoes. They need to wear black socks and shoes. Remember, students continue reading books during the holidays, have fun and stay safe! Wassalaam Mrs Zulekha Naby Ms Hina s Year 1 Class Assalamualykum, In the second half of term 2, the students of year 1 We hope our students enjoy the mid-year holidays and we look forward to contributing to the development of our students next term Insha Allah. Finally, the Management of IQRA is trying their utmost to start years 8 to 12 next year. We therefore invite an expression of interest from prospective students and/ or parents for year 8-12 for 2018. Shaheem Doutie Acting Head of School Class/Teacher Updates Mrs Naby s Reception Class Assalaam u alaikum, Where has the time gone? We are already saying goodbye to our second term! My students have worked really hard this term, doing their best to improve their reading and writing skills. Most students have progressed in leaps and bounds from Term 1, achieving their initial learning goals. Well done! The students have become more confident speakers due to our daily oral presentations. Sadly, we bade farewell to Ramadaan which was an exciting and busy month of reflection and prayer. We reflected daily on our behaviour and how we can increase our good deeds, along with reciting Quran in class. Masha Allah some young students kept full day fasts! We all enjoyed the Eid festival and the students performed so bravely. We welcomed many new friends into our class where they have settled in really well. After learning about Earth/Space in Science, we are really enjoyed to the Planetarium. We were super excited, since this was our very first excursion! continued to build on their skills. For literacy, we consolidated our knowledge of the letters and their sounds. The students have started to blend the sounds and have also practiced the various diagraphs. They completed proper and common nouns, singular-plural and pronouns. They are now able to write well punctuated sentences. For numeracy, we moved on from addition to subtraction and patterns. The students enjoyed learning skip counting. For science, we explored the differences between living and non-living things. For humanities and social sciences, the students explored the food habits of Aboriginal Australians. For art, the students used paper plates to make an animal of their choice. They look fantastic hanging on the wall of theclassroom. It was amazing to see many year 1 students fasting during the holy month of Ramadan. May Allah continue to bless us in all our endeavours. Kind regards, Hina 2
Mrs McShane s Year 2 Class What a busy and exciting term we have had in Year 2! Last week the class travelled to the Migration Museum to learn all about the varied cultural groups that have migrated to Australia over the years. They saw some very interesting artefacts including a blanket madefrom possum fur, beautiful tea cups with Scottish thistles on them andone very old suitcase. Also on their excursion, the Year 2 s visited Adelaide City Mosque to discover its wonderful history. The children finished off their amazing day with a trip to Helicopter Park where they had a whole hour of action-packed fun! In other learning areas, children have been getting creative making fruit collages in art. They have demonstrated great attention to detail by overlapping various textures of paper to produce eye-catching designs. In class, we have also been working hard to increase our confidence in using strategies to help with our reading and spelling. The children are now getting into the habit of checking and editing their writing which is lovely to see. I am looking forward to seeing the children progress even further in term 3. Please continue to encourage your child to read for at least 15 minutes each night and to complete their weekly homework. Kind regards, Mrs McShane Mrs Ayoubi s Year 3 Class Assalamu Alaikum Dear Families, I hope that all of our families had a blessed Ramadan and Eid. It was great to see many of our students and their parents at the Ramadan IQRA College Iftar a few weeks ago, then at the Eid Festival at the Adelaide Showground last weekend. I was very proud of our class s performance on Sunday! They displayed great courage to stand in front of a large audience that day and I applaud them on their efforts. like to also thank Br. Fahim who volunteered to be our guide at the Adelaide City Mosque to show us around and provide very useful information about the historical significance of the mosque to us as Muslims in Australia. I would like to wish all families a relaxing July holidays. Looking forward to reading my class s recount writing about their holidays when we come back insh Allah! Kind regards, Mrs. Ayoubi Mr Hafner s Year 4 Class As term two comes to an end, we reflect on the highlights of the semester. During Ramadan students joined together to decorate the school and collect donation money from all classes. To celebrate the end of Ramadan our annual Eid Festival concluded with outstanding class participation. A big thank you to all parents who came out to enjoy the day. All students performances went well and we were very happy with the result. Well done to all those that participated. In Literacy, students practised writing information reports and explanation texts. They researched African rainforest animals, learned about life cycles of mammals and reptiles as well as tried their hands at writing Diamonte poetry. Check out our African Art Gallery in the hallway as we have finished our African Masks to represent symmetry. In Numeracy, students have practised multiplication to 10x10 and related division facts. We have also learned a variety of strategies in order to solve simple and complex problems mentally. Parent participation and encouragement in learning multiplication facts to 10x10 at home is greatly appreciated, as it will enable their student to quickly and more efficiently solve problems. Thank you for your continued hard work and dedication to your students learning. It is greatly appreciated. In Science we delved into the world of chemicals. Throughout the term students investigated the properties and states of matter. Students will be exploring solids, liquids and gases in order to determine physical and chemical properties. They also learned about reducing, reusing and recycling. Students are finishing off recycling information posters to post around the school, reminding others of the importance of sustainability. One of many highlights for this term include our excursion to the Migration Museum and the Adelaide City Mosque last Thursday. The children have again displayed great manners at both places and gained knowledge about Australia s cultural history and the influences on our modern day Australia. We would Have a safe and restful school holidays. We are looking forward to coming back rested and ready to learn in Term three. Mr Stephen Hafner 3
Mr Zamri s Year 5 Class Alhamdulillah. How time flies. Before we realized, it is the end of the term. So much has happened over the last 10 weeks. My first term with the Year 5s has been an exciting and productive period. I have gotten to know the students better over the course of the term. Let me use this opportunity to update you on some of the activities that we had completed and planning to do. For HASS, the Year 5s were tasked to create a town plan. I was pleasantly surprised with the work that was produced. They students really enjoyed creating their own town plan and put in a lot of effort in their work. It was really an enriching experience observing and guiding them applying the knowledge that they have acquired. In week 10, we went for an excursion to the National Motor Museum with the Year 4s. We participated in the Bush Mechanics Education Program which explored the relationship between Aboriginal people in Central Australia and their motorcars. I am sure the students benefited from the experience. A few educational activities have been planned and I am sure they will benefit from them. I am really looking forward to it and the students are really excited about the excursion. The upcoming term break is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to recharge our mind and body. I hope all of you will have a good break. Happy Holidays to the Year 5s and their families. Mr Byrne s Year 6/7 Class Assalam Alaikum, This term we looked at SPACE, the final frontier in Science and visited the Planetarium on an excursion. We investigated the planets once more, looked at how the night and day work and what affect the moon has on the seasons and tides. In Math we investigated fractions, which the students were a little broken up about. Then we looked at decimal, I believe they got the point there too. In Literacy/English we wrote persuasive texts and finished off some narratives. We read the BFG this term and compared it to the visual text. Then investigated why the movie was so different from the book but still complete. In health we looked at nutrition and exercise and the students played and worked on skills in Footsal soccer. With the completion of the holy month of Ramadan we are back to longer days, the students have dealt with that quite well. I am proud of the effort put in by your children and look forward to expanding their minds some more next term. I hope you all have a safe and happy break Kind Regards, Mr Byrne Ms Hana s Arabic/Qur an/islamic Values Class We had lots of fun in the holy month of Ramadan as we practiced a lot different activities. The school was very proud of the students performing at the Eid Festival. For Arabic Early Learning we started to learn about colours, numbers and a lot of words in Arabic. We practiced our Islamic Arabic songs/nasheeds about the alphabet, Ramadan and praising our beloved Prophet Mohammad (SAW). We continued memorising a lot of Surahs for this term as it s the month of Quran. The majority of my students have finished memorising 4-8 Surahs this term and I am very proud of them. Many of the students have finished of all Juz Amma and I can t wait to see what is new next term! For the 50th day of Arabic class we wrote 100 words in Arabic. One lesson that we have taken was about reading different texts. Students learned a lot of new vocabulary and had the chance to practice these new words. Throughout the past two terms, students have learned bigger and more challenging words. Our young students are well on their way to becoming readers of the Arabic language. They are learning that Arabic books go from right to left and we read an Arabic picture book together every day. In Islamic studies class they learn lots of facts about Islam and the many different prophets. Arabic Islamic Teacher Hana Alsare 4
IQRA College Family Iftar On Saturday 10th June, IQRA College hosted a Ramadan Iftar Dinner for the families of students. Thank you to everyone who joined us, and all volunteers who made this event possible. 5
Parent-Teacher Committee IQRA College is opening nominations for a Parent- Teacher Committee. We are looking for parents who want to help students achieve the best possible experience at IQRA College, while helping the school achieve its mission. The committee will facilitate open communication between parents and the school, forming subcommittees, and supporting the school community. We would like to invite all parents of students to nominate themselves to the IQRA College Parent- Teacher Committee. If you are interested, please collect and fill in a nomination form from the front office. An election will be held in Term 3 to determine the members of the inaugural commmittee. My Ramadan Challenge Congratulations to Ruoaa Alsufyani (Year 3) who was the winner of the My Ramadan Challenge. She is now the owner of a new Samsug Galaxy Tab 3! Fitness & Self Defence Classes Regular self defence training is a great way for children to learn how to physically defend themselves, as well as develop fitness and confidence. From Term 3, the school will start its fitness and self defence program, running twice a week. Qur an Competition IQRA College will host its inaugural Qur an competition for students in Week 3 of Term 3. The head of our Islamic Department Shaykh Ahmed Mostafa, along with two other judges will judge students on their memorisation, enunciation and language. In the last week of Term 2, students have been assessed on their reading ability. We welcome all parents/guardians to come and view this event. More information will be provided to students at the beginning of Term 3. Canteen News The canteen is once again open at both recess and lunch. We will be releasing a new price list in Term 3, adding more options to the menu. Well done to all who participated and gave their best efforts during the month. Ramadan 5c Challenge During Ramadan, classes competed in the 5c Challenge to see which class could raise the most money to donate to charity. Alhamdulillah, students have managed to raise just over $1200 to donate towards providing the poor and needy hot meals for Iftar and Eid gifts and clothing. Congratulations to Mrs Ayoubi s Year 3 students for being the class that raised the most money! We require a volunteer to run the canteen during recess and lunch on Tuesdays and Fridays. If you are interested in helping, please contact the school office. No Nut Policy IQRA College wishes to remind parents about our strict no nut policy to protect children with allergies to nuts. No food containing nuts is to be brought into the school. This includes: - Peanut Butter Sandwiches - Nutella Sandwiches - Chocolate and Muesli Bars Containing Nuts - Energy/Trail Mixes 6
Class Excursion Photos All classes in the school had the opportunity to go on excursions in Term 2. Here are some photos from the year 2/3, year 4/5 and year 6/7 trips. 7
Adelaide Multicultural Eid Festival On Sunday 2 June, our school participated in the Adelaide Multicultural Eid Festival at the Adelaide Showgrounds. Students performed the national anthem, nasheeds and recited surahs from the Qur an. The school also had a stall where the community could meet teachers and find out more information about the school. Address: 5 Majors Rd, O Halloran Hill, SA 5158 Phone: (08) 8298 2550 Email: info@iqracollege.sa.edu.au Website: www.iqracollege.sa.edu.au