Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Julie

Dear Families

Wednesday, 30 November is Wear Blue for Type 1 Diabetes Day. Two of our students have Type 1 Diabetes and they came to me with a plan to raise money for research into Type 1 Diabetes. At the assembly Sophia and Tempest, very bravely, shared their experience of Type 1 Diabetes, the impact it has upon how they manage insulin, food and regulating their body’s needs.

So please, encourage your children to wear BLUE on Wednesday and bring a gold coin donation for JDRF: Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation – Improving lives curing Type 1 Diabetes.

Additionally, Sophia and Tempest have donated 2 jars of lollies, used by people with diabetes to support them when they have a ‘hypo’ – and all students are encouraged guess how many sweets are in the jar.

Monday, 28 November is the final pupil free day for 2022. These days were introduced by the Education Support Office and designed to provide schools with designated time to work through plans, tasks and actions that support staff during the continuing times of teacher shortages.

In regard to the challenge of teacher shortage I must pay tribute to the leadership team who have had to lead and manage staff absences; ensuring that students have a teacher in front of them at all times. Unlike some schools who have been faced with many split classes over the course of 2022 there have not been many occasions when classes at Weetangera have had to be split. It has at times been an extremely time consuming and perhaps also a frustrating task but the team have managed the task positively. Thank you to the team.

Reports will be released on Friday, 2 December. As per usual all reports are emailed home to families. You will recall from messages to families earlier in the term in regard to the omission of comments on the final report. If you wish to speak with your child’s teachers you will need to make contact with individual teachers for a meeting. Teacher conversations will only occur in Week 9; Monday 5 December to Friday 9 December. There will be no teacher conversations in Week 10.

The holidays are on their way! The long, summer holidays will be upon us soon. And while some families may be leaving town for the holiday period it is a long period of time and one when students may need some other things to keep them busy. Have a look through the Holiday Happenings for some ideas over the break:

https://www.holidayhappenings.com.au/online-booklet

The fete is on the way…. Sunday, 4 December

Read on in the newsletter to uncover how you can help, where to drop off items for the fete and the fun you can look forward to. Looking forward to seeing as many families as possible on Sunday, 4 December at the first fete.

2023 School Leaders: Recently the students in Year 5 were invited to participate in the school leadership process. Each student is asked to reflect upon the skills and interests that they would bring to the role of school leader, how they would support their peers across the school and why the role was important to them. Thirty one students participated in preparing and presenting their speeches to the Year 4,5 6 cohort of students. The students were then asked to cast their vote and 4 students were successful. As in the democratic process each vote was equal to one vote, no-one person’s vote held more sway than any other. When Mel and I shared the outcome with the students we spoke of the importance of being proud of their efforts, that there were only 4 students who would be successful and that while they may be disappointed in the outcome they were not to be disappointed in themselves as each one of our students who participated in the process did an outstanding job.

The four students who will comprise the school leaders in 2023 and are to be roundly applauded and deeply appreciated are: Blake – Joss – Carla and Elliot.

Well done to all and especially to our 2023 school leaders.

The thought for the week, shared with staff for this week:

Enjoy being a laptop this week

See you at the fete

Regards

Julie

Julie.cooper@ed.act.edu.au

Weetangera Primary School Fete

Weetangera_Fete_Signboards_4.pdf

The Coffee Van Returns!

We are happy to let our community know that the coffee van will be returning to the school each Thursday morning until the end of term: Thursday 1st, 8th and 15th December from 8-9.15am. Why not stick around for a coffee and let's convince Jess to keep coming back to make us coffee in 2023.

What's Happening in Preschool

In the Explorers Class this term, learning has been guided by the idea that ‘We Can See Change Over Time.’ The lines of inquiry we have been following have included, ‘How do things change over time?’, and “Why do things change over time?’

We have been investigating these questions in a variety of ways, and our silkworms have played an important role in this journey. We have been observing and recording the changes and transitions these caterpillars go through until they eventually become silk moths. We have our fingers crossed so that we will see them hatch out of their cocoons at the end of the term. We have also been learning about the lifecycles of frogs, bees and plants.

Last week we planted sunflower seeds, and the children are monitoring and recording the growth and the changes that occur to these over the next month or so.

By far the most exciting changes we have noticed is in ourselves! ‘How have I changed?’ ‘How much have I grown?’ ‘What can I do now that I couldn’t do at the beginning of the year?’

It has been a very exciting and busy term!

Virginia Hambly

Term 4 has been go, go, GO! We’ve had Footsteps with Abby for the past five weeks on a Monday afternoon, where we learnt 4 different dances that explored the elements of dance. Each week was an opportunity to explore a range of music, movements and practise our performance skills in a fun a safe environment.

During writing sessions, we have been learning about the ways writers instruct. An engaging lesson the whole unit participated in was to make fairy bread. Students then wrote a recipe to instruct others on how to make it effectively, including a title, goal, ingredients, method and conclusion. Not only was it delicious, but it was a great introduction to writing procedures.

In maths, we discovered how and why we use the decimal currency in Australia and practised adding small collections of money in our pretend shop. It was fun trying to spend all of the money we were given and trying to work out what change to give back to people. We currently are exploring measurement. We started by looking at informal units of measurement, for example, using our hands and feet to record the length of objects, before moving towards formal units, such as millimetres, centimetres and metres.

Another highlight of the term so far has been the Aquasafe program. The activities the students engaged in with their instructor were not only fun but informative. They taught students how to help themselves and safely help others if they ever face danger in or near water, including in rivers, lakes or the ocean.

Louise Tominich

What's Happening in the Canines

What a year it has been! Can you believe it will be finished in just three short weeks? The year has been a blur of activity and achievements and as we race towards the end of the year I want to take a minute to reflect on just a few of the literacy related adventures the 5/6 K9’s have been involved in this term:

Completing our unit of work on the novel Hatchet,
Writing our own “Choose your own adventure” stories,
Creating persuasive pamphlets to convince others to “vote” for us,

And this is just to name a few.

As a part of our literacy learning this semester the students in the K9’s read 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. As this unit concluded the students were asked to reflect on the story and their thoughts on how the author wrote and then concluded this epic tale. Some students were satisfied by the ending while others were left wanting more. As a way of justifying these feelings the students wrote letters to the author to express their opinions:

Dear Garry Paulsen
I need more answers from your book Hatchet,
Overall your book was decent I liked how you described the pain of Brian, how the porcupine shot its quills at Brian. How Brian was hungry and all those things that gave Brian pain throughout and built his character. However, the ending was disappointing it lacked emotions. For example when the pilot came to rescue Brian he wasn't amazed to see Brian he just said “ oh you're that kid”. He wasn't like “ Oh my goodness your still alive I can't believe it everyone has been looking for you, your parents have been so worried about you and how no one has found you yet”. The Epilogue wasn't what i was looking for my questions were unanswered they were left hanging, the Epilogue lacked detail why didn't Brian tell his dad about his mum? Why didn't Brian get mad at his mum? Was Brian happy to see his parents? These are the questions that I wanted answered .
From,
Katarina

Dear Mr Paulsen,
I would like to start by saying that your story was interesting as well as exciting. The chapters ended at good points and the events and plotline were clear. I liked how at the start things progressed slowly in a realistic and possible way. The events were tense and fun to listen to and I liked hearing about how Brian figured out new things. Also how you wrote about the character in a way that makes the reader feel his pains and joys. But unfortunately I must say the ending and epilogue were disappointing. I think you ended the story too quickly and it made it seem like you wanted it to end. Then in the epilogue things didn't really help fix the end. Nothing exciting or interesting happened. Things that didn't need to be included were included. I feel you could have ended it on an exciting note, like at the end of the book you could have made Brian tell the secret to his Father and write about his reaction in the epilogue and what he does, or Brian becomes an adult and has a dream about the plane crash. I think another thing you could have done was write a sequel. It should have been like a mystery story about 6 siblings discovering photographers of the shelter and stuff and trying to solve the mystery of the photos. I think your story can be fixed, all you need to do is add more to it.
Your sincerely,
Zea

This term the students have been involved in writing a choose your own adventure story. The students were asked to create a story where each time a problem occurred the reader had options to choose from so that they as the reader could select the path the story took. Below are the opening pages from a few of these amazing stories:

Throughout our unit of Inquiry the 5/6’s looked at what it is to be a citizen of Australia and what their rights and responsibilities are as a citizen of this country. They then explored the three levels of government, local, state and federal linking the rights and responsibilities of government to themselves by creating informative trioramas detailing all they knew.

This term the students built on their understanding of government by looking at their local government and beginning to campaign to become a candidate to represent their electorate. They were encouraged to look at the electorate that they live in and research what might be important to voters, they considered this and used this information to inform some of their choices in developing a plan of action, a campaign slogan and what they stand for.

Each student created a campaign pamphlet detailing why others should vote for them and this utilised what they had been learning about persuasive writing in literacy. Here are some examples of the posters the students developed:

What's Happening in The Busy Bugs

The Busy Bugs certainly have been busy in term 4! From day camp to market day, this term has been jam packed! We have also been busy in the classroom, working hard on creating a choose your own adventure story. Last term we were discovering the different exciting, exhilarating, and entertaining ways that figurative language can spice up our creative stories. Now we get to put this work into practise!

We began by using a planning sheet where we could map out our story from a sizzling start to a captivating end. For each problem that occurred in the story we needed to give the reader a choice of what they wanted to happen next. This got a bit confusing but using the planning sheet helped us to stay on track.

Currently, we are following our planning sheet and creating our story on a slideshow presentation so that the reader can click the links of what choices they want to make in the story.

Later in the term, we will be sharing our stories with our intended audience, children in the junior years. This will be an exciting opportunity to present our work and to interact with children from the younger year groups.

In other exciting news, The Busy Bugs have been working on creating photos for the school Fete which is being held on Sunday the 4^th of December. They have been using line, shape and meaning making elements to creative captivating and enhancing photos. These photos will be on sale for you to purchase at the school Fete! Here is a sneak preview of a few photos.

Daniel Round