Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Julie

Dear Families

Welcome to Term 4, the final term of 2022. For some of our students who are heading off to high school they will have completed 8 years of learning. Quite a few of our students have been at WPS since they started it all, in 2015 in Preschool. Many other students have joined us along the way coming from far and wide; other schools in the ACT, other states in Australia and from many other countries around the world. We truly have a global cohort of students.

Learning and curriculum

As we move into Term 4 staff and students are looking at tying up the loose ends of learning. Classroom teachers conduct an audit of the curriculum and overview of year level planning. In doing so they ascertain which subjects require strengthening, where further learning is required, what learning needs to be practiced and continued and the areas where some students require additional clarification and practice. All of these activities enhance the reporting process, and this is a huge focus in Term 4.

End of year reports

You will have received notification from Mark Huxley, Executive Group Manager Education Support Officer informing families that the Education Directorate has notified schools that there will be no comments included in the Semester 2 reports this year. As is usual if you wish to talk with your child’s teacher you can make an appointment for Week 9 of this term.

This was Mark Huxley’s message:

Student academic reports - Semester 2 2022

ACT public schools have commenced preparing student reports for Semester 2 2022.

The Education Directorate has again made the decision that student academic reports will be provided with an overall A-E grade, and an assessment of achievement standard statements on a 5-point scale. Reports will not include detailed teacher comments.

This strategy supports schools to prioritise teaching and learning as we continue to manage workload pressures due to COVID-19 and other illness.

Our teachers will continue communicating directly with families about student learning and you are encouraged to speak with your child’s teacher if you have any questions about their progress.

Edna Lee is leaving

One of our teachers, Edna Lee who joined the staff in February this year has provided a wealth of learning experiences and challenges to the students in Preschool to Year 2. Edna’s joyful approach to engaging students and her ability to adapt to any of the tasks required from her has meant that she has been a valued addition to our school. Edna is now leaving us to embrace experiences further afield than Canberra and we want to send her on her way with a heartfelt THANK YOU EDNA ringing in her ears.

Dogs at school

Dogs! Large, small, friendly, yappy, barking, jumping, growling, walking, running, playing with other dogs, sniffing out adventures. You’ve got to love them… just not on the school grounds please! Our playground area is unfenced so it may look like the best place to bring your dog when picking up your children from school, but….. please keep to the community common areas on the perimeter of the school and arrange for your children to meet you there so that the puppy dogs and the children are all safe and secure in the best place for each of them.

Pupil Free planning Days

Last term on Tuesday, 20 August you will all have received notification in the form of a letter from the ACT Education Directorate, via an email from the school. This letter informed families of the following:

Two staff planning days (pupil free) will again be in place in Term 4.
The dates are Friday 28 October 2022 and Monday 28 November 2022.

Contact Details

When parents fill in their child/ren’s enrolment forms they are asked to include their contact details. These details can change over time and it is then difficult for the school to make contact with families. Please ensure that you update your information with the front office to ensure that we can stay in touch. One of the biggest challenges in the front office is when attempting to contact families and the mobile number or email address is incorrect.

Thought for the week

It is always wise to be kind. Even if kindness is not returned others will perhaps learn something from your behaviour.

Have a week of embracing kindness
Julie

Assemblies in Term 4

We are delighted to be able to invite parents and carers back for assemblies in term 4. Assemblies are held each Friday morning from 9.15am, with junior assembly (K-2) and senior assembly (3-6) on alternate weeks.

We ask that parents and carers only attend assemblies for their child's year level, so that we do not end up wit too many people in the hall. Your child's teacher will send a Seesaw message home when their class is participating in an assembly. Our first assembly this term (Friday 21 October) will be hosted by the year 1 classes.

Assemblies are held in the original school hall, so come in through the foyer and join us as we showcase learning in 2022!

Traffic Safety at Weetangera Primary

A message from Transport Canberra and City Services:

It is the responsibility of everyone in the community to drive and park safely, especially around schools. School environments can become congested during drop-off and pick-up times, please be sure to follow the road rules and pay extra care when dropping off or collecting students.

The ACT Government has recently received correspondence raising concerns about some of the parking behaviours on Shumack Street near Weetangera Primary School. Please make sure you are parking where it is legal and safe, which could be a little further away if this will avoid safety and traffic problems, for example at the local sportsgrounds.

More information is available on the Transport Canberra website.

Click here to download the Weetangera PS Traffic Management Guidelines

Dogs on School Grounds

You may have noticed some new signage around our school as a reminder that under the Domestic Animals Act, dogs are not permitted on school grounds.

Section 42 of the Act defines places where dogs are prohibited. These include the grounds of a child care centre, preschool, primary school, high school or secondary college during school hours or when school sport including training is being conducted or a dog is taken into the grounds with the approval of the principal (e.g. dogs required for visions support). Dogs are prohibited within 10 metres of anything designed for play by children in a public place if children are playing on it; a fireplace designed for cooking food; or a swimming area defined by a sign erected.

We understand that dogs are an important part of people's families, and for some the walk to school is a good opportunity to take the dog for a walk. However, as well as the legislation mentioned above, there are children and adults in every school that for whatever reason find it difficult to be around dogs. We ask that you keep this in mind whan walking your dog, and please do not bring them onto the school grounds.

Thank you!

LAPATHON - Tuesday 18 October

Don't forget the Lapathon is on Tuesday next week. We're looking forward to seeing everyone in their brightest and craziest colours ready for a great day of walking.

Please keep collecting sponsors using the forms sent home.

Newsletter.pdf

Pledge_Sheet.pdf

Booroowa Carnival Cancelled

On Thursday, we communicated via email to our year 2-6 parents that the 2022 Boorowa Carnival has unfortunately been cancelled due to the state of the playing fields and in the interests of student safety.

We are disappointed that the carnival is not going ahead as it is always a great day for our students. On a positive note we had 128 students registering to participate which was the most students we have ever had for Boorowa. This was going to mean Weetangera had five netball teams and eight touch-football teams. We would like to thank all the students for their enthusiastic participation in our training sessions for both sports in the last few weeks.

We would like to thank the large number of parents that volunteered to be a coach or manager on the day. The community support for our involvement in the Boorowa Carnival has been fantastic and we look forward to participating in 2023!

Erwin McRae and Tyler Beltrame

What's Happening in the Ladybirds

The Ladybirds are beginning an exciting new unit of work called ‘Scientists at Work’. This unit of work is integrated in the Kindergarten literacy program for Term 4. The Ladybirds reflected on what they know about science and scientists and what they would like to learn.

Here is what we know:

Scientists wear goggles to protect their eyes – Quincy
There are lots of different scientists – Amelia
Scientists tell us when a volcano is about to erupt – Camila
Scientists wear white coats – Mae

Here is what we would like to learn:

About explosions like TNT – Luca
How volcanos erupt – Sylvester
What volcanos are made of – Henry
How cars go and what’s inside of them – Hayden
How sharks stayed alive when the dinosaurs were alive – River
If a velociraptor is faster than a cheetah – Liam

We read a book this week called ‘I Know a Scientist’ which introduced four steps to becoming a scientist

Find a question. What is it that you want to know?
Next you make a guess about what will happen when you do your tests. We call this a hypothesis.
We observe and write all the information we find.
Draw your conclusions and tell everybody what you’ve found out!

The Ladybirds are ready to become amazing scientists this term and we can’t wait to share our new knowledge with you.

Rosie Kingelty

What's Happening in the Wombats

In Year 1, we have started a science unit called ‘Schoolyard Safari’. This week we have been developing our knowledge on worms. We wanted to find out what worms eat, how they move, where they live and how they protect themselves.

We read some books, watched an informative video and had a guest speaker from Global Worming, Shelly come and chat to us. Shelly helped us explore the worms in our worm farm in the community garden. We were surprised to find out that there were tens of thousands of worms in the farm and that even with the food scraps on top, it didn’t smell.

Some of the most interesting things we discovered are:

Worms breathe through their skin
Worms eat roots and other decaying plants and feed
Worms burrow into soil to protect themselves
Worms lay eggs from the thicker part of their body
Worms have rings around their bodies to help themselves move
Worms expand and contract to move
Worms have a brain and a mouth, but no skeleton
They use vibrations to navigate through their habitat
The longest worm is found in Australia and is 3m long

Check out some of our worm diagrams and photos of us at the worm farm below.

Tarnii Boland and Kate Harvey-Sutton

This week in Cockatoos!

A highlight of the week was making our final presentations for our inquiry unit. All the year 2 students shared their perspectives about how the lives of people have changed over time and how some things have stayed the same. We watched vignettes and interviews, we wrote letters and made posters. We saw day to day life in 1905 interrupted by smart phone toting, selfie taking, online game playing, limo driving individuals from 2022. There were even original 1875 Weetangera Primary school teachers who were confronted by students from 2022 when their expectations of a day in the life of school were challenged. So many of us got the ‘cane’.

We had the first of five sessions with Footsteps Dance company. This was so much fun; learning the fundamentals and elements of dance by dancing to some cool music with our teacher Abby, who she was so energetic and fun.

We really enjoyed ‘Wear it Purple Day’ on Thursday. We designed a cool poster for our unit door decoration which won the most inspiring and artistic award. Playing parachutes with the Year 6 students was a highlight of the day.

We have been learning all about the rainbow of food and which foods help us to have the healthiest body. Do you know which colour foods are the best for which body functions? We didn’t until Michelle taught us all about the beautiful food rainbow. Do you know which colour food is good for your digestion? (The answer is at the end of Cockatoos update).

Of course, we have been getting on with the essentials like maths, reading and writing. We have been having a whole lot of fun for more than a fraction of the time, learning halves, quarters, and eighths. We have been getting familiar with Australian currency and asking - what does it look like? What is it worth and how do I write it down and add it up? We saw some footage from the Royal Australian Mint showing how money is made and a video that was produced by the Australian Government to help Australians get used to the new decimal currency which was introduced on 14 February 1966. You can watch it here. That jingle IS catchy! By the way, do you know which one of our current coins has changed shape since it was first introduced? (Yes, the answer is at the end).

Procedural writing and imperative verbs have been the focus for writing along with making sense of long words by breaking them into syllables. Even making two words into one by using contractions. Soon we will begin our Writer’s Notebook and we can’t wait to use all of the writing skills we have learned throughout the year to create some of our own masterpieces. JK Rowling, look out!

Answers:

Purple food is good for your digestion things like eggplant, figs and grapes.
The fifty-cent coin used to be round!

Rhonda King

My New Gallery

What's Happening in the Piranhas

In our recent learning, Year 3 have been unpacking what it means to be a good citizen in our community. We have looked at rules and laws and how we make decisions democratically. We are very lucky to have the niece of Australian author Krys Saclier in our cohort and we all really enjoyed reading her book “Vote 4 Me” in term 3. The book explains preferential voting in a class election. Year 3 have practised preferential voting with an election around what to spend an imaginary billion-dollar windfall on. Our imaginary benefactor insisted that we spend our money on famous artworks, so we had to vote between Composition by Piet Mondrian, Mona Lisa by Leonardo di Vinci, The Great Wave by Hokusai and Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh. We became informed voters and cast our secret (and valid!) votes on Tuesday this week. In the end, The Great Wave won, reaching over 50% of the votes with preferences. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could buy a nice big artwork for the school with a billionaire’s money!

On Wednesday, we looked at the preferential votes of a pretend class who were voting for their end of year fun day activity. At first preferences, it looked like the Movie and Popcorn Day was going to win but after the Fancy Dress and Water Fight went to second preferences, the PJs and Pillow Day won over half the valid votes! Year 3 have gained a sense of how we take fair and safe elections for granted in Australia and how lucky we are to have a free democracy. Given a scenario where someone didn’t like the results of a vote and wanted the election to run again, students came up with insights such as:

“We can’t vote again because we made a deal that we would accept the winner” (Ariam)

and

“No, because there were three options that didn’t win and so you can’t make everyone happy” (Vincent)

and

“There’s no point voting again because everyone got their one vote and they all count equally” (Aali).

Year 3 have also been looking into how people participate in their community as active citizens. They have identified some special people in our community to send Certificates of Appreciation! We will be sending certificates out to organisations such as ACT Ambulance, the Canberra Hospital and ACT Policing, as well as special individuals like our BSO, Glen, to say thank you for everything they do.

Jess Yeo

What's Happening in the Gansta Grannies

In Year 4, we have started our new learning concept of ‘Change.’ This term we will be exploring how change occurs naturally to our earth, as well as the human impacts changing the earth. This week we have begun developing our knowledge on our earth, by looking at the different layers that make up our earth, land formations, exploring different soil types and identifying differences between rocks.

Some of the interesting facts that we have discovered are:

The outer core is made of iron and nickel, and it is hotter than the surface of the sun
Tectonic plates are made of solid rock. When they move, they interact at their boundaries in certain ways. Depending on how they interact, these movements may rise up and form mountains, earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanoes.
There is a region called the Ring of Fire, where many earthquakes and volcanoes occur along the Pacific Plate.

Have a look at our scientific drawings and our exploration of soil!

Madeleine Scott

Structured Play at Recess and Lunch

Towards the end of last term, we trailed a range of structured play opportunities for students to opt into during recess and lunch times. Our amazing staff were asked what they were passionate about and have been doing a phenomenal job at supporting students to access and participate in them.

Some activities are open/facilitated every day in every break session and others are run during set break times and for set year levels (this is due to cohorting). Below is an outline of some of the activities that are on offer.

Disability Program

(currently K-2) All students can access the wonderful and diverse resources within our school’s Disability Program, including such things as, trampolines, exercise balls, giant Connect 4, the sandpit, Just Dance, etc. When: Recess and lunch everyday.

Playmat

(all students) At recess and lunch, space outside of the new hall is set up with a range of cooperative games, construction items and imaginative play experiences. When: Recess and lunch everyday.

Soccer

(currently 4-6) An adult facilitates a range of skill development drills and modified games. When: Once a day (dependent on staff roster).

Garden

(all students) The wonderful Nicole R opens the flourishing garden for students to learn about a range of plants and support in the upkeep. When: Recess (Monday, Wednesday, Friday).

Library

(all students) Students line up at the doors of the new hall at half lunch time where they are collected by the teacher on duty. There are many quiet activities set up to engage in; reading, drawing, puzzles, Lego, etc. When: Second half of lunch

Ask your child if they have engaged in any of these experiences.

Wear it Purple Day

Thursday was Wear it Purple Weetangera! We had a huge day celebrating our wonderful community and all the things that make us unique. Erin, Mia, Rosie, Stella, Annabel and Katja from Year Six delivered a range of talks across the day as well as parachute activities for juniors and a parade for seniors!

One of our favourite parts of the day was door decorating competition. All units did a fantastic job and we made sure to recognise every one for something that made it unique and special. Congratulations to Year 1 for being the overall winner for the Junior school and for Unit 7 in the senior school.

Thank you to our wonderful community for helping us to raise $390.65 that will be split between Minus18 Youth and the Wear it Purple Organisation. A huge thank you goes to the wonderful Year 6 committee for making it happen! We look forward to celebrating Wear it Purple Weetangera with you again next year.

Band Concert - 30 November

Zones of Regulation - Strategy of the Week

Category- DO IT

Be a Helper

Be a helper or lend a hand while moving your body. Here are some ideas:

At school:

Sort the rubbish
Hand out worksheets
Hold the door opern
Clean whiteboards/shelves

At home:

Do some gardening
Take a pet for a walk
Help a sibling with something
Help cook dinner

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

Online Safety Presentation

ThinkUKnow is an area within the Australian Federal Police that deals with online safety. They will be coming to our school on Monday 24 October (6pm) to present information to parents and carers about staying safe online. This is a great way to learn more about the possible risks associated with the internet, and how to support your children to use it safely.

To ensure that we can provide enough seats for those that attend, please click this link and let us know how many people will be attending.