Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Julie

Dear Families

After 3 weeks back in learning mode, today, has been a very exciting day! There were 3 occasions where students came together, in the hall, to share some very important reflections.

In year group clumps; K-2, 3-4 and 5-6, the students came together to share their CLASS MOTTO, to explain why their class is a great team and to build together across the school a description of:

This is what I learnt today.

Let me introduce you to the many classes from P-6 and their teachers

Preschool: The Marvellous Meerkats with Virginia Hambly

Preschool: The Exceptional Elephants with Marianne Foley

K: The Kinder Crayons with Leanne Oxley:

K: The Koalas with Rosie Kingelty:

K: The Alpacas with Nicole Mengel:

Small Group: Brain Breakers with Nicole Terry

Year 1 based their class names on the Busy Beaks by Sarah Allen

Year 1: Kookaburras with Isabel Dunn:

Year 1: Lorikeets with Hayley Dix:

Year 1: Galahs with Tarnii Boland and Sarah Masling

Year 2: Dragons with Celeste Tunnecliffe:

Year 2: Butterflies with Rhonda King:

Year 2: Dragonflies with Kate De Mey and Lauren Domio

Year 3 based their names on various authors of Australian Animal Books

Year 3: Tassie Devils with Megan Ferdinand

Year 3: Falcons with Jo Lawson:

Year 3: Green Tree Pythons with Jess Yeo:

Year 3: Bilbies with Teagan Lovett:

Year 4 based their class names on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Year 4: Rainbow Drops with Louise Tominich

Year 4: Wonka Bars with Gabe Kearins

Year 4: Everlasting Gobstoppers with Alex Nicholls

Year 5/6 have based their class names on the many books authored by Jackie French

Year 5/6: The Barbecues with Bec spoors

Year 5/6: The Skilful Survivors with Emily Dzubinski

Year 5/6: The Blazing Flames with Corinne Hannan

Year 5/6:The Storms with Emily Small

Year 5/6: The Groundbreaker with Emma Cottam

We gathered for 3 assembled meetings today and shared the work of learning where the students have established, with their teachers the following two imperative:

An inspired learner at Weetangera PS is:

These are their words and their thoughts on the behaviours and mindsets that will drive their success in 2023. Section 1, Year 3-4, Section 2 K-2. Section 3 Years 5/6.

An inspired teacher at Weetangera PS is:

Additionally, student share very strong feelings about what they need from their teachers, noting that section 1 is Year 3& 4, Section 2 is K-2 and section 3 is from Year 5/6.

In the next newsletter I will list the class mottoes for all our year levels.

On a completely other note, a shout out from the canteen: VOLUNTEERS NEEDED. Please come and see what you can do. We all want and NEED someone else to do the lunches, especially on Friday, but it is a big challenge. If there were 2 x additional helpers available for a session then that is a bonus. Not asking for a huge commitment, if you can do a day, and there are many families at school you would only need to put your name on the list of volunteers ONCE per year 😊

Have a think about it.

And finishing with this week’s thought for the week:

Have a week of embracing reading, bonding over shared stories, switching off technology and switching on imaginations.

Regards

Julie

Julie.cooper@ed.act.edu.au

02-6142 2600

Our Teachers

This week, we'd like to introduce you to our amazing executive teachers!

Kate Harvey-Sutton (School Leader P-2 Team)
Kate North (School Leader 3-6 Team )
Anastasia O'Donnell (School Leader Inclusion and Engagement)
Erwin McRae (School Leader Specialist Team)

Volunteering at WPS - how can you help?

Over the last few years, we missed having parents, grandparents, relatives and friends in our school supporting all the activities and programs that make school such a special place.

As those restrictions ease, we look forward to welcoming parent volunteers back to the school. Volunteering is easy, whether you come in every day, once per day or once per term.

Here are some ways you can help.

Reading with Kids:

Later this term, we will asking for volunteers to come into our classrooms to read with children, and more importantly hear them read! We are holding an information session on Wednesday 15 March where you can learn more about supporting children as they are learning to read. See this flyer for more information.

Library Support:

If you like things neat, tidy and organised, we could use your help in the library. Some common tasks include covering books, reshelving and tidying.

Garden:

You will have seen our amazing vegetable and fruit garden (soon to include chickens!). There are also a lot of other gardens at the school that need a little TLC from time to time. Every little bit helps. If you find pulling weeds therapeutic (it's a thing, we promise!), or you've got a bit of a green thumb we'd love your help!

Yirri Program:

In term 1, we will be restarting our Yirri program, which provides Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students with a supportive environment to explore their histories and culture and connect to community and country. We always welcome members of our community that might be able to support the Yirri program in any way possible.

Canteen:

We all love the convienience (and yumminess) of the canteen, but a canteen is really hard to run without volunteers. With volunteers we can have more counter service and do other great things that make recess and lunch much better for Weetangera kids. Our canteen is currently open on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

(or see here if you'd like to get paid to work in the canteen).

How else can you help?

Do you have a really interesting job, and amazing skill or a fun hobby that you'd like to share with our students? Could you give a talk, help in the garden or provide something amazing that could help students learn more about the world? Please let us know, and we will spread the word to our teachers!

Sign up here:

If you can help us with any of the above, please take a moment to fill in this form, and we will contact you.

Any time you are volunteering in the school, you will need to sign in at the front office. If you plan to come regularly, you will need a Working With Vulnerable People card, which is free for volunteers and available from Access Canberra: https://www.accesscanberra.act.gov.au/s/article/working-with-vulnerable-people-wwvp-registration-tab-how-to-apply

Thank you!

Reading Workshop 15 March 2023

Wheeltangera Returns!

Wheeltangera will return to Weetangera School for 2023 on Friday 24 February.

Wheeltangera is a bike riding program for all students from Kinder to Year 6 and is held on the synthetic oval each Friday morning. Participants ride around a set course on the oval with an emphasis on participation, being active and bike safety. Sessions will start at 8:30am and conclude at approximately 8:55am to allow enough time for students to take their bike to the bike rack and to get ready for class.

All students will need a safe, roadworthy bike and must wear a suitable helmet to participate.The school has a small number (10) of bikes available for those who wish to borrow one.

What: A weekly bike riding session

Who: All Weetangera students from Kinder to Year 6 are welcome

Where: Weetangera School Synthetic Pitch

When: Every Friday 8:30-8:55am starting Friday 24 February

What to Bring: Your bike and an approved bike helmet

Why: To be active and to have fun!

We look forward to seeing students of all ages and abilities at Wheeltangera sessions this term!

Thank you

Mr McRae and Mr Beltrame

Weetangera Playgroup

This week we had our very first Playgroup ACT session. We had 19 children attend today with children ranging from newborns to 4 years old. Many of our current Weetangera families attended with siblings of children attending the primary school. We look forward to seeing more families.

Please see the flyer below for playgroup information if you wish to attend.

School Leader Values Challenge

Our school leaders take their work very seriously. Last week, they began their campaign to raise awareness for our school values: Respect, Resilience, Responsibility and Inclusion.

Blake, Carla, Elliot and Joss visited each class and talked to them about our focus for this fortnight: Inclusion. They issued a challenge to students - to play or work with someone new or someone they wouldn't normally work with. We're pleased to say we're seeing lots of that around the school.

What's Happening in Kindergarten?

The start to 2023 has been very busy for kindergarten, but we are flying high in kindy! (creating kites that show information about our students' interests and families).

We have been getting to know each other through the ‘Start Up Program,’ building a connected environment where all teachers and students feel valued and safe. As a part of this process we developed our class names. After reading several mentor texts the students voted on the book that they found interesting and made connections with. I am pleased to announce that our kindergarten classes are called The Crayons (Leanne Oxley), The Koalas (Rosie Kingelty) and The Alpacas (Nicole Mengel).

In literacy we have been investigating our names, looking at our letters, the letter names/sounds and counting/comparing how many letters our names contain. We have also started ‘Reading to Self,’ choosing ‘Good Fit Books,’ for our book tubs and talking about the 3 ways to read a book (Read the Pictures, Read the Words or Retell the Story.) Everyday in numeracy we are investigating numbers in our world through our Maths Zone. We are using number lines and calendars to track how many days we have been at school, how many people are at school each day using tens frames and the correct number formations when writing numbers. All of the classes have been on a number hunt, maybe you could do a number or a letter hunt in your house or the local community when you are out and about. Numbers and letters/words are everywhere!

All of the kindergarten classes have been joining together to learn some new songs. They have been singing with great gusto. Singing is a great way to make literacy connections - finding out the meaning of words and rhyme. On Friday last week we had the pleasure of singing with the online accompaniment of Dr Susan West (Former Convenor of the ANU Music Engagement Program.) We have heard that some students have already been singing some of the songs at home and teaching their families 🙂 Junior Singing Group for K-2 students will be held every Friday during the first half of lunch in the KNM Alpaca classroom if your child is interested in singing for fun!

Nicole Mengel, Leanne Oxley, Rosie Kingelty

What's Happening in the Galahs?

Over the last couple of weeks in the Galahs classroom, we have been busily working our way through the ‘Start Up’ program and getting to know each other.

Part of the Start Up program was developing a mission statement for our class. We started by brainstorming all the things we thought were important statements for us as learners. We then narrowed it down to just a few really important statements that we believe reflects our class.

‘In the Galahs' classroom we are expert learners. We are smart risk takers. We are respectful learners who like to have fun in our classroom. We are students who are always learning. We are a team’.

We have also been working hard on learning to be a team. Over the last two weeks we have completed a range of activities where we have had the chance to work as a team such as collaborative games and completing puzzles. When we reflected on what makes a good team, we decided the following:

Active listening
Including everyone
Taking turns
Being respectful to others
Being encouraging
Don’t give up and show resilience

The Galahs also had a chance to come up with a class motto. The purpose of the motto was to develop a short message that highlights the ideals of our class. After much consideration, we came up with:

Galahs glide through challenges.

Below are some photos of the Galahs class developing our team building through activities and the artworks we created depicting our class name and while learning about each other. There is also a photo depicting all the hard work the Galahs class have been doing with the Start-Up program the last two weeks.

Tarnii Boland and Sarah Masling

Welcome to 2023!

What a delight to be teaching in Year 2 for 2023. Our class has chosen the name of ‘Butterflies’. It was a clear winner from the myriad of possibilities available from Julia Donaldson’s book ‘Super Worm’.

The Butterflies started their first week finding out about their new classmates with a ‘guess who’ game before discovering who their teacher (that’s me) would be and who would be in their class. They discovered some good old friends were back, some new ones had arrived, and some hadn’t come back for 2023. Since then, they have been busy getting to know everything there is to know about their new class, where everything is and how their class is going to ‘be’. Over these first weeks we have been creating artworks exploring who we are, creating a class mission and vision statement as well as a code of cooperation. We took a tour of the school which included the pedestrian crossing on Shumack Street and how to use it as well as the in and out-of-bounds areas. Really though, the best part of the tour was the Conga Line that manifested and was maintained until we had to go indoors to find out where the temporary new front office is. PE, maths games, practicing conscious breathing, French, Science and reading have filled our days so far. We haven’t had designated seating in our classroom so far. Students have chosen where to sit on a day-to-day basis, we have utilised low desks where students can sit on a cushion but still have a desk space to work on, standing desks, a ‘quiet desk’, desks in groupings and some side by side, most students have chosen a different place to sit or stand each day.

We are looking forward to this new year of learning, it’ll be underpinned by the first part of the Butterflies mission statement which reads ‘we have fun while we learn’.

2023, let’s GO!

Rhonda King

Over the last three weeks, Year 3 have been enjoying our ‘Start Up Program’.

3JY, chose our name after a shortlist and then a preferential vote between snakes, parrots, sugar gliders and echidnas. The deal was, that if snakes won, I would get final naming rights to avoid my fear of venomous things. Naturally snakes won and we are proudly known as the Green Tree Pythons or Pythons for short.

There have been many highlights of our Start Up Program but a standout was our ‘Salt and Pepper’ game. Every student and teacher in Year 3 had a word or a name stuck to their back. We had to collaborate with peers to find out who we were by asking closed questions which required a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. After figuring out our labels, it was then our mission to find our matching pair! Francis had Question and his pair was Mrs Lawson’s Answer. My label was Jessie and I found Mila who had Woody. It took a little longer than expected for R2D2 to find C3PO but Donkey and Shrek found each other quite fast!

An important part of Week 2 was our whole unit Acknowledgement of Country. We discussed the differences between a Welcome to Country and how it is appropriate for our classes to use an Acknowledgement of Country to show our respect for the Indigenous Custodians of this beautiful place. Our Acknowledgment of Country will be read at the assemblies hosted by year 3 as well as before lessons that focus on Indigenous history, art and stories. It will also be hung in our classrooms.

Year 3 - Acknowledgment of Country

In Year 3, at Weetangera Primary School, we acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land we live and learn on, Ngunnawal Country. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging and we are committed to continue learning and sharing Indigenous Culture. We are grateful for Ngunnawal Country and the beautiful bush, animals, rivers and lakes of this land. We promise to protect our bush capital by respecting the animals and keeping the land, rivers and lakes clean.

Jessica Yeo

What's Happening in the Everlasting Gobstoppers?

In 4AN, we have been linking our writing program to our class novel ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ by Roald Dahl. As a cohort, we created class names using the book as inspiration - each class is known as a magical treat! The year four classes are called: Wonka Bars (4GK), Rainbow Drops (4LT) and our class, the Everlasting Gobstoppers (4AN).

This has created lots of excitement and been a source of inspiration to write creative pieces. The language used in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ is an exemplar model for descriptive writing. Students created their own lolly/chocolate creation and practised using describing words, like Roald Dahl, to explain their treat. They had to create a slogan to help sell their treat and outline who they wanted to market it to and why. We had some very tasty and expensive ideas!

Using creativity from the novel again, students created their own three-course chewing gum meal and had to also create a consequence. They were given the freedom to decide if it was a positive or negative consequence. It was excellent to see students challenging themselves, taking inspiration from the book to create detailed meal descriptions. We had a variety of three course meals to choose from and lots of different effects, including turning into a balloon animal!

Students have thoroughly enjoyed reading the novel and using it to inspire their imaginative writing.

Alex Nicholls

What's Happening in the Blazing Flames?

5_6CH_The_Blazing_Flames.pdf

Corinne Hannan

P&C News

P&C AGM, Canteen Treasurer Wanted!

It was so wonderful to see so many families join us for the welcome back picnic last week! So many happy students and everyone looked to have a great time. Thanks to all the teachers who made time in their Friday afternoon to come and say hello.

The P&C AGM is on 21 February

Our next meeting is the Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 21 February, commencing at 6:30 pm in the school library. We will elect office bearers for 2023 at the meeting, and with 2 year term limits and a few parents having ‘graduated’ from Weetangera we will be needing some new office bearers (although outgoing office bearers will provide a full handover to their successors). Below is an outline of each of the P&C positions we will be looking to fill.

President – Leads the team, oversees and runs meetings, is the P&C spokesperson, manages contracts with paid employees (Canteen staff).

Vice President – Supports the President and steps in when they are unable to make meetings, helps coordinate fundraising events.

Treasurer /Assistant Treasurer – Manages the finances for the P&C, pays the bills, counts and banks takings from events, keeps records and prepares reports.

Secretary/Assistant Treasurer – Organises meetings and the papers for meetings, looks after correspondence, takes minutes of meetings and keeps the committee organised.

Public Officer – Lodges returns with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.

We also have Ordinary Members, who help with organising events and provide a hand to the office bearers where needed, and a Canteen Coordinator who is the liaison between the Canteen Committee and the P&C. Any member of the school community is welcome to come to any meeting, so even if you aren’t quite ready for the status of “Member” please feel free to join us, hear what’s happening and share your views.

Canteen Treasurer wanted!

We need a new Canteen Treasurer, who is responsible for making sure all of the canteen bills are paid, the Canteen Manager and Assistants are paid their wages and superannuation entitlements on time, and looks after the Single Touch Payroll and Workers Compensation Insurance requirements. The role can be done remotely and outside of business hours. If you would like to know more or are ready to jump in and be our new Canteen Treasurer, please email our Vice President at weetangera.pc.vp@gmail.com.

We will also be looking for new Canteen Committee members. Led by the Canteen Coordinator and our Canteen Manager Martina, the committee is a team that helps plan special lunch orders, canteen days, and helps out with special events like sports carnivals or special lunch days. If you are interested in supporting the canteen as a volunteer please join us at the Canteen Committee AGM, which will be at 3:15pm on Wednesday 22 February, under the trees on the school playground.

Let’s be social!

Like and follow our Facebook page – www.facebook.com/weetangerapandc

Join our mailing list to stay up to date on meetings, events and opportunities to get involved, email weetangera.pc.secretary@gmail.com

Coming late Term 1: School discos are back!

Canteen News

2023_Canteen_Menu.pdf

Community Notices

_ASC_3_DAY_CAMP_ACT_FLYER_AUT_23.pdf

Weetangera Primary School Newsletter | Week 3, Term 1 2023