Weetangera Primary School Newsletter | Week 3, Term 3 2022

From Julie

Dear Families

Thank you for supporting the Pupil Free Planning Day on Friday, 5 August. All staff members were able to spend quality time with their team leaders and teaching colleagues to continue the development of their term 3 programs. With no duties or activities to oversight at lunch time it was with great enthusiasm we all gathered for lunch in the new transportable building to admire the bright new and shiny teaching spaces that are inhabited by two of our Year 5/6 classes. Daniel and Emma are very thrilled to be teaching in the building they refer to as ‘The Outback’!

Just before I left school on Friday afternoon I was visited by a very thankful member of the local community. The community member had dropped by to thank me for having such a marvellous group of students at our school. She let me know that on the previous afternoon a group of senior girls had provided assistance to her when they noticed that she had fallen over in her driveway. As she could not recall their names, she would like me to pass on her thanks. I would really like to let you know who these young women are so, if it is your daughter who stopped to help and provide kindness to a member of the community, please let me know so we can all feel very proud of these great leaders.

Each year the Children’s Book Council of Australia conducts BOOK WEEK. This year’s themes is: Dreaming with eyes open

In two weeks time we will conduct a host of activities to celebrate this most important event and we are all looking forward to dressing up for book week. More details to follow ASAP. Get your thinking hats on and be prepared for a week of celebrating stories. And I wonder what DREAMING WITH EYES OPEN means to you!

It does seem surprising, especially when temperatures can be in the minus, but the information is very clear, now that it is August it is: Hats On!

The message from the Cancer Council says this:

Below is a message from Mark Huxley, Executive Branch Manager - ESO

A message from the ACT Education Directorate: Keeping our students learning in Term 3

Every ACT public school is working hard to manage the impacts of COVID-19 and the flu in our schools to ensure minimal disruption for everyone and keep students learning.

Face-to-face learning in the classroom remains the core way students are learning this term; however, staff shortages may see them learning a little differently from time to time.

What can parents and students expect?

When schools do not have appropriate staffing levels to support students in their usual classrooms the following measures may be put in place:

• Older students may learn online in a supervised setting.
• Students may be engaged in a modified program of learning in their regular classroom with supervision from school staff.
• Students may participate in self-directed learning (supervised by other classroom teachers this may be via Google Classrooms or a pre-prepared activity).
• Students may be split into classes across the school, where children may engage in self-directed learning and/or the learning of their host class.
• Some activities may be put on hold (eg lunchtime clubs)

Where schools are no longer able to manage using the above strategies students may move to learning from home for short periods of time.

If this is the case your school will work with the Directorate ahead of time to make this decision and families will be provided with learning activities for use during this time.

Sometimes this decision will need to be made quickly. We appreciate that the short notice is difficult for families and, where we can, will ensure we give as much notice as we are able. 

Non-essential events and excursions

There may also be the need to postpone/cancel planned activities and events offsite (eg camps, excursions, sporting days etc) from time to time, sometimes at short notice.

We appreciate any cancellation is disappointing and wherever possible schools will reschedule these missed opportunities.

Thank you once more to our parents, carers and staff for their ongoing support and commitment again this term.

And to finish I feel the need to include the message from last week regarding students who do not use the pedestrian crossing and drivers who are not paying attention to their surroundings. Everyone needs to be mindful that before 9am and just after 3pm our community is teeming with children making their way to their homes. Don’t rush! Be patient! Take care!

This was the message:

Today we had a very lucky escape!!

One of our students crossed Schumack Street. This would not usually be a problem if the following had not occurred:

• the student did not cross at the marked crossing
• the student walked between two cars parked on Shumack St
• one of those cars reversed with the parent inside waving to their child who was walking down towards their lines
• the parent reversing their car was completely oblivious to the potential accident and did not notice the screams of an onlooker or the fact that their car had lightly ‘bumped’ the small child that was walking between cars. (An update the child was unharmed)

Staff will remind students of the four steps in the process of crossing the road:

1. STOP
2. LOOK
3. LISTEN
4. THINK

But the most important reminder is for all of the adults who are using the road; our students are smaller, less visible to drivers and can be impulsive even when confronted with a crossing.

Please, please, PLEASE be aware of your surroundings when reversing! If you see a student at the crossing by themselves, ask them to join your family as you cross and, like our helpful parent this morning, STAY VIGILANT.

This event ended with no one being hurt, thank goodness, and I know that all of us wish to keep it this way. Please remind your children to be safe and sensible at all times in and around the road.

And the thought for the week:

Have a great week of looking!

Regards,

Julie

Julie.cooper@ed.act.edu.au

Principal Weetangera Primary School

Athletics Carnival Update

The Weetangera School Athletics Carnival was postponed last week due to the rain and has been tentatively rescheduled. Confirmation on the rescheduled date will be communicated to families in the coming days.

What's happening in the Ladybirds

We’re off to a terrific start to Semester 2 in the Ladybirds class. Everyone got back into the rhythm of our classroom routines, were thrilled to be reunited with friends after the break, continued to celebrate achieving our learning goals and celebrated 100 days of learning. If that isn’t a top notch start to the semester, then I don’t know what is!

The Ladybirds loved exploring the number 100 and reflecting on the past 100 days of Kindergarten. Here are some of their reflections.

“My favourite part about 100 days was the hat parade.” – Luca

“I liked making my hat with my grandma for the parade.” – Mila

“I liked learning how to make number combinations to ten.” – Camilla

Our favourite warm up activity before our maths lesson is rolling our big dice and writing down the numbers that make 10. The Ladybirds have been having a blast practising their number combinations to 10 through their morning card game ‘I Spy’ and ‘Play it to 10’. We read a book called ‘Ten Flashing Fireflies’ by Philemon Sturges and following this pretended to catch fireflies in our jars and count how many were left out in the night sky. This was a fun way to explore the ways to make 10.

Have a look at our work below!

Rosie Kingelty

What's happening in the Wombats

In the Wombats' classroom we have been completing some scaffolded literacy during our Writing Workshops.

There are 4 parts to the sequence:

Book Orientation- This is where we develop our schema around the topic. We look at the pictures, expand our vocabulary and read the book.

Language Orientation- This is where we pull out one incredible sentence from the book. We analyse this sentence and look at what words make it up (nouns, verbs, adjectives). We continue to delve deeper into the language used and develop our knowledge of synonyms and antonyms.

Transformation- Using our incredible sentence from last lesson, we cut it up to look at the purpose behind the author's choice in vocabulary. We then shuffle the parts of the sentence around and have a look at whether it is as effective.

Patterned Writing- This is where we use the scaffold of the author’s sentence and recreate our own incredible sentences.

The first text we looked at was Josephine Wants to Dance by Jackie French. The sentence we explored was “Josephine whirled like the clouds across the gully.”

Some of the incredible sentences we created were:

Josephine flew like a bird across the sky (Alex)

Josephine pranced like the deers across the forest (Wombats)

Josephine sung like Elton John across the stage (Charlotte)

Josephine flew like the birds in the jungle (Marcus)

Josephine boxed like a gorilla in the jungle (Dom)

Check out some of our other work on Jospehine Wants to Dance below.

 Tarnii Boland and Laura Vernon

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What's happening in the Cockatoos

Term 3 in year 2 is off to a brilliant start!

On our minds are information reports! What are they? How do we write them? Our Kookaburras, Galahs and Cockatoos have been busy finding out where and how to find information about all kinds of things and how to bring this information together in an understandable way. This means research. It means finding and navigating websites and scouring our library for details that can bring our information reports to life. We brainstormed what on earth we could write an information report about? Bright minds came up with a plethora of topics; one even suggesting shoes. While some thought this might not be a fascinating topic, brainstorming provided a surprise to find out that there really is so much that a writer of an information report could draw on when it comes to shoes.

Word Study group heralds an investigation of silent letters.  Why on earth is there a ‘k’ in the word knife or a ‘w' in write, and how about the 'k' in knuckle? How do we actually pronounce words like this? Oh English language, how we love you. Miss T has been giving us the low down on all things silent when it comes to words.

Maths class has seen an array of the proverbial ‘light bulb’ moments with our year 2s as they discover how to use arrays to understand division. Not sure what an array is? Guess who you can ask about that? We have been learning all about columns (they are the ones that go up and down) and rows (they are the ones that go across), and all the ways we can play with these to make sense of these mathematical ideas.

Maths continues as we discover it will only be a matter of time before we know how to tell the time, our other area of mathematical focus this term. Analogue clocks can be very mysterious indeed, soon the mystery of ‘is it 45 minutes past one or a quarter to two?’ shall be solved.

Breathing is next on the year 2 agenda. Protective Behaviours provided an opportunity to understand how being conscious of and learning to regulate our breathing can help us keep calm and carry on.

Added to this a new unit of drama which was launched with a visit to the Canberra Theatre to enjoy a live production of Roald Dahl’s ‘The Twits’. By all reports, a splendid time was had by all.

Rhonda King

What's happening in the Piranhas

Year 3 have had a very busy start to term 3! We enjoyed a week-long water safety program, Aquasafe, run by Royal Lifesaving at CISAC. Year 3 should have completed this important program in 2021 but that nasty pandemic got in the way. It was wonderful to see the kids learn important water safety skills and knowledge that can be applied to a range of aquatic environments. The students were fantastic and we didn’t lose too many socks!

We have been combining some geography and mathematics lessons to understand mapping. Jess pulled out relics from 'the olden days' and talked about the importance of road atlases and street directories and how much has changed with Google Maps! The students really couldn’t believe that having a big book in the passenger seat was normal!

Year 3 have also discussed scale and measured the senior playground. We were able to map the playground in the classroom, reducing the scale from 1m to 1 carpet square, and then reduced it again on A4 worksheets. We have looked at maps with a variety of scales and each student has even created maps at a state or territory level that show where various landmarks are located as part of our 'Are We There Yet?' geography unit. I think it’s safe to say we have some future cartographers in our midst, or, at the very least, kids that are itching to go travelling around Australia!

Jess Yeo

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What's happening in the Gangsters

This term in year four we are connecting our learning to the concept of Conservation. We are linking our English, science, maths, HASS, and technology learning into our one unit, so there is real world connection and the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the core concept through each subject.

The classes have been building on their prior knowledge of conservation through reading, writing, math, science, and HASS activities. We have created a Conservation wall in our shared space, where the students can share their prior and new-found knowledge with other class members. A hands on and engaging activity that was completed recently was the planting of 4 trees in the school grounds. We discussed the important factors to consider when planting a tree:

• Is it native? 
• What does it need to survive?
• Where is the best location for planting?

Our art activity also revolved around the tree planting!

Each student will be provided the opportunity to develop their own Conservation research project, based on an endangered animal of their choosing. The students are very excited about their research task and are enjoying learning about conservation. Please have a look at our work!

Madeleine Scott

What's happening in the K9's

It has been a fantastic start to term 3 for the 5/6 K9's. We have moved and now settled into our spacious new classroom in unit 6 and the students and I couldn’t be happier. We have most certainly made ourselves feel at home.

Thank you to all of those involved in helping us make the move.

For literacy learning this term the students in the K9’s have begun reading the novel Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. This story is about a young man named Brian who becomes stranded in the Canadian wilderness after a very unfortunate series of events. The story details his survival. Our novel study covers a broad range of learnings including looking into the roles of the reader during our reading group sessions. It also covers prediction and comprehension tasks of the text. The students are also actively engaging in many writing tasks based around this novel.

The students have chosen a few tasks completed so far that they would like to share. The first is a short narrative, of 100 words using the sentence starter… "His eyes snapped open, hammered open, and there were these things about himself that he knew instantly. He…”

These pieces of writing are in draft form, we will be using the writing process we have established in our classroom over the next few weeks to take these pieces to the published form.

The second writing task the students wanted to share were the comic strips they have completed to detail the first four chapters of the story Hatchet. The students were asked to reflect on the main events of the story and use this to complete their work.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the students work as much as I have!

Kate De-Mey

School Photos - Special Groups

Zones of Regulation - Strategy of the Week

Category- CONNECT

Sending Kindness

Get a piece of paper or a notepad and a pen. Think about a person that makes you happy and write them a nice note telling them why. If you can, deliver it to them!

How do you feel? What Zone could this be helpful in?

Road Safety Around School Zones

Augmented Reality Road Safety Activities

Launch of augmented reality road safety activities for children

Kidsafe ACT and CreativiTek have collaborated to create augmented reality road safety learning experiences and games for ACT kids. Mobile users can scan QR codes to try the augmented reality activities.

To read more about the project and augmented reality, go to Augmented Reality Children's Activities - KIDSAFE ACT or click the link below.

Weetangera Primary School Fete

Pegasus Open Day