Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Mel

Julie is away on leave this week, so I thought I'd give you a quick update.

Our students are well and truly immersed in their learning. It is wonderful to walk through the units and hear the buzz of engaged learners. Please see class updates below for some more news about what's going on across the school.

Building Works

You will have noticed a construction fence has been erected in the grassed space near the preschool. This is to accommodate the building of the new transportable classroom which we are expecting to be ready in time for term 2.

We are also expecting a new shade structure to be built over the coming months, which will provide a covered outdoor learning area which will include the basketball court. We are expecting this to be complete by the end of term 2.

Before and After School Reminders

Playground equipment:

Just a reminder that the playground equipment is out of bounds before and after school. This helps us with keeping it clean and ready to use during break times.

Dogs:

Please ensure that all dogs are under control and on a leash when visiting the school grounds. Please do not allow dogs to go close to the classroom buildings.

Bike safety:

To ensure that everyone is safe, please ask your child/ren to walk their bikes when close to the school buildings and on shared footpaths around the school.

It has been nice to speak with some of the parents and carers in our community over the past few weeks. I am looking forward to meeting more of you as the term progresses.

Mel

Koalas Update

In KAN Possum Magic class, we have been learning about early writing behaviours. We focus on key strategies, to help students organise their ideas and introduce them to the stages of the writing process. We use learning visuals to demonstrate each of the strategies we are working towards, so students clearly understand the lesson aim.

Each writing lesson is supported by a stimulus. Depending on the purpose of the lesson the stimulus changes to match, this could be an experience, picture, video but often it is a picture book with excellent language and illustrations. At the start of each lesson, students are introduced to a new strategy, or we revisit a previous strategy we have been learning. We create posters that outline each of our writing strategies. This is used for students to refer back to, supporting excellent writing skills and independence.

Our major learning goal this term has been drawing a WOW picture. A WOW picture has lots of colour and attention to detail often including sensory descriptions. By developing students drawing skills, it helps them think about specific details. We have been building upon this skill, to tell stories from their picture and label the important features using the initial sound in the word. Developing these skills makes writing easier, as they are well versed in articulating their story and sequencing their ideas. The intention is they have less mental load when writing and can then focus on building sentences and remembering sounds and spelling choices.

Check out the photos below to see some examples of the marvellous work we have done.

Alex Nicholls

Mopokes Update

Writer’s workshop is a daily hot topic in the Mopokes classroom with students writing frequently, for extended periods of time, on topics that they find interesting and of their own choice. As the students and teacher together initiate writing activities, they engage in the writing process, gathering seeds (ideas), sorting ideas (planning), drafting (paying attention to spelling, punctuation and handwriting), revising (gaining feedback from teacher and peers) to then editing and publishing.

One of the mini workshops the Mopokes have been participating in recently has involved writing and reviewing a super sentence. First, they identified what makes a super sentence and then had the opportunity to compose, review and improve their own sentence. Once having had time to edit and make changes to their super sentence they then published their best sentence to be part of a book of ‘super sentences’.

Hayley Dix

Year 2 DH Kookaburras have had a great start to the year, getting to know each other and building our team spirit. We have been looking at developing our ‘Growth Mindset’, remembering that everyone has strengths and areas they find more challenging. We are learning to love challenges as they help our brains grow, we know we learn from mistakes and that if we can’t do something we don’t give up, we just can’t do it…yet!

In English, we have begun an author study looking at the wonderful works by Julia Donaldson, using these to learn all about writing to entertain and as inspiration for our own story writing. We are in the planning stage at the moment, brainstorming characters and settings.

This week we have looked at how to hook a reader by creating fantastic story starters. Here are some examples:

I had to abandon my home, so I ran into the wild. (Hannah)
One day, Lily thought her day couldn’t get any more hectic. (Claire)
There was a pirate ship sailing to a mysterious island. (Lachlan Gr)
A koala was sitting in a nice brown tree and he was eating some delicious green gum leaves, but something was behind him. (Ebony)
Once, a pirate set sail to find the golden treasure. (Jupiter)

Lauren Domio and Lauren Heeney

Porcupines Update

The Porcupines have been learning about procedural texts and their structure. We discussed that when writing instructions we generally start with a verb. To help us recognise verbs we listened to “How to Babysit Grandma” by Jean Reagan. When we heard a verb, we wrote it down and thought about how each verb was being used. We also discussed adverbs which describe a verb and can give us more explicit directions that support the verb.

The Porcupines read the mentor text, ‘Wombat Stew’. Following this, we worked in pairs to write the wombat stew recipe. After this learning experience, we then used our knowledge of writing a recipe to create our own bush tucker recipe.

We looked at three different levelled planners and discussed what makes a good planner to help us plan our own.

Some of the recipes we are writing include:

Koala Chocolate Cake by Leon
Platypus Stew/Soup by Alex
Kookaburra Stew by Victoria
Bullant Surprise by Olivia
Gumleaf Stew by Aiko

One strategy we are exploring to help us with our writing is generating entry point lists. These lists are based on subjects we know and are like jumper cables to help start the car. They help us generate ideas and ‘jump start’ our writing.

Bec Spoors

Demon Dentists Update

Our main focus during term one is to develop our writing abilities. We wanted to capture the interest of as many students as possible so we took a vote on our favourite style of books. We had a land-slide victory and the selected style was graphic novels. Sure, they have drawings, illustrations, and sometimes photos, but they also have text that readers must decode, analyse, and comprehend. Graphic novels require a different level of comprehension when compared to traditional novels. One of the activities we did was to sentence structure and how this effects the tone of the story. (See photos)

Students are working on developing complete stories and incorporating advanced aspects, such as character development into their writing. Over the past few weeks, students have constructed individual characters with back stories and personalities, encouraging the use of their imagination and ability to appreciate different perspectives (See mind map). After developing their characters, we transitioned into ‘sketch and stretch’. The ‘sketch and stretch’ activity required students to select several frames in a graphic novel style and begin to plot how their character and story development would come together. The students have really enjoyed developing their characters and story lines and look forward to finishing their graphic novels.

Robyn Trenton

Shooting Stars Update

This term in year 5/6 we have been looking at the Australian author Shaun Tan. The Arrival really caught our attention as it is a book with absolutely no words in it at all. It is about a man who has to leave his country and family behind to seek refuge in a new country. We spent a few sessions looking over the pictures and decoding what the book meant. It is filled with a made up language which immediately puts you in the position of someone arriving in a new country. Can you tell what is happening by the pictures?

In Week 5, we used this story as inspiration for a writing piece. We listened to this sound effect and then we used the following lines to start our brains working on what we could write about!

“You have said your goodbyes to your family. You left them in tears at the airport waiting lounge. You don’t know when you will see them again. When your plane lands, you get your belongings and step outside…”

Look at our awesome brainstorm of ideas!

Students have been writing, conferencing with their peers for feedback, and conferencing with me for feedback and next steps.I got students to pick an excerpt that they were proud of, and that is what you’ll see below. Please take the time to read what our wonderful writers have written!

Emma Bradstock

P&C News

Upcoming P&C meeting

The first general P&C meeting for the year is on at 6.30pm on Tuesday, 15 March. Meeting details are to be advised, but it is likely to be held via Zoom. The P&C welcomes parents and carers to join the meeting to discuss the P&C’s plans for the year, to learn more about what we do, and to share your ideas.

Mother’s Day stall

Are you a crafty person? Can you sew, knit or crochet? Do you have a business that would be able to provide suitable items for our Mother’s Day stall? Would you like to help run the stall or do you have suggestions on what items you would like to see on the stall? If any of the above, we would love to hear from you. Please email Kate at Weetangera.pc.vp@gmail.com

Second hand uniform stall

Wet weather making it hard to keep on top of washing the uniforms? Need to replace an item that has gone missing already? The P&C have lots of uniforms in their second hand uniform shop, especially in sizes 4-6. Please email Weetangera.uniforms@gmail.com with the size, item and quantity you would like to order and they will get back to you. Prices range from $1-$4.