Cornerstone and St Mark's Year 12 Child Studies Collaboration
On Thursday, 6 April the Cornerstone College Year 12 Child Studies class visited ours Hills Integrated Lutheran Schools (HILS) partner St Mark’s Lutheran Primary School where students had the opportunity to read their newly created Storybooks to several small groups of Foundation students.
As part of our current topic ‘Stories Matter’, the students have been learning about the importance of children’s literature, reading and language development through storybooks.
Our class visited St Mark’s Lutheran Primary School Library three weeks earlier where students learnt more about these topics from the Librarian. They then spent time exploring different children’s storybooks as part of their research.
The following weeks required students to develop, design and create their own storybook that would support the social and emotional health and well-being of a 4-7 year old child. This resulted in a wide variety of interesting and topical issues being addressed.
Our return visit last Thursday culminated in the students reading their own storybooks to several small groups of children. This allowed them to practice reading aloud to young children, ask leading questions and ‘test’ their final product before writing their evaluations of the whole process.
The class found their time reading to the young Foundation children to be an extremely valuable, enjoyable, challenging and beneficial experience.
Year 12 student reflections:
“I enjoyed reading to the children at St Mark’s. I want to work with children as a career and found it was a great experience.”
“This was a rewarding and great opportunity to share our work with younger students through creating and reading our story book.”
“We really enjoyed reading to the foundations as they were super excited to see us and listen to our story books.”
Katrina Traeger
Year 12 Child Studies Teacher, Cornerstone College
St Michael’s School celebrated the opening of their new Senior Centre
Special guests included Mr Josh Teague MP, Mr John Proeve, Executive Director of LESNW and Wayne Schiller, JBG Architects. The new centre is refurbished to provide group spaces, individual learning spaces, collaborative booths and even a green room for digital media creation
Cornerstone College Principal, Craig Fielke awarded 2022 ACEL Educational Leadership Medal
Principal Craig Fielke is the recent recipient of The Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) SA 2022 Educational Leadership Medal. ACEL SA honours those educational leaders who in the view of their peers have made a significant contribution to the understanding and practice of educational leadership.
ACEL is the largest professional association in the education sector in Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region, with a network of more than 7,000 members and over 45,000 educators, with branches in each state and territory
Cornerstone College awarded Adolescent Success Middle Years School of Excellence 2022
At Cornerstone College, one of our Strategic Intentions is to ‘Empower Innovative Teaching and Contemporary Learning’. Keeping up with current best practice in education is vitally important if we are to prepare our students for life beyond school in a world that is changing at an ever-increasing rate.
Cornerstone was one of only 6 schools throughout Australia and New Zealand to be awarded their Middle Years School of Excellence.
This award was based on the work done in the Middle School to:
- Implement a new structure at Year 8 that allows for Team Teaching and a deliberate focus on the Capabilities
- Establish a new Year 9 subject called Ignite, which uses Inquiry Learning as its foundational pedagogy
- Create and use Learning Progressions as an assessment method to highlight where students are at with their learning and their next steps of improvement.
St Michael’s – Collaborating for School Choir
Each week the St Michael’s school Choir rehearse with their much-loved Choir conductor, Sophie Zerner. Ms Zerner is one of the staff in Cornerstone College’s music department and brings her expertise to the primary students.
The St Michael’s Choir is open to students from Year 4 – 6. Each week the students learn choir skills as they improve their ability to sing together. St Michael’s was excited to welcome the Cornerstone College Music students who performed with their various bands and ensembles. The St Michael’s Choir also performed and were surprised when Cornerstone students joined their choir for the final song.
The choir will perform at school and community events and it is planned that they will also perform at the Cornerstone College’s annual ‘Cabaret’.
HILS Bus Service
Our newly launched HILS bus service which operates in partnership between Cornerstone College, St Mark’s Lutheran Primary School and St Michael’s Lutheran Primary School is in operation. Currently, there are bus routes operating for Mount Barker, Kanmantoo (via Nairne and Littlehampton) and Uraidla (via Stirling, Crafers and Aldgate)
HILS School Bus Information
Land Donation to Support Hills Education
A development consultancy firm has been appointed to plan the development of a large parcel of land donated to Cornerstone College.
The land bordered by Sims Road and the Heysen Boulevard in Aston Hills, Mt Barker, was transferred to the College last year from Betty and the late Marty Liebelt.
A 21st-century educational ecosystem and a tertiary education hub were among the ideas discussed at a recent stakeholder meeting