Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Julie

Dear Families

BOOKPACKS & VOLUNTARY CONTRINUTION PAYMENTS

Some families will receive a paper copy of outstanding amounts owed for the 2023 BOOKPACK, VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS and EXCURSIONS already attended, but not paid for.

It will greatly help our school funding if you could PLEASE pay for items that your children are already using.

I understand that for some families this is a financial challenge, you can always pay in instalments.

Additionally, some families will notice a CREDIT from the BOOROWA Carnival 2022, indicated by an amount in brackets. Please let the front office know whether you would like this amount to be credited to your current outstanding balance.

Your support with these payments would be greatly appreciated

Thank you on behalf of the SCHOOL BOARD and myself.

Who are we when we are at school?

At the senior school assembly last week I had a very serious conversation with our students. The need for this conversation came about due to an increase in observed, troublesome behaviours. Quite a few of our students are impacting the learning time of their peers in a few different ways. At the heart of the challenges, as I pointed out to the students, is a lack of awareness around what it means to be kind to others. It really is as simple as that. At no time is there an expectation that we will all ‘like’ each other, but there is an expectation that we will respect, acknowledge and work with our peers who are from many different language and cultural backgrounds, many different economic experiences and many different ways of being in the world. BUT if we look at our place of learning as an opportunity to learn and progress with care and kindness we also build upon the shared human experience of school.

I am including below a copy of my speech.

What will your legacy be? What are the footprints you leave behind and what story do you want to tell of your years at primary school?

We say this about our school; Weetangera Primary School - Our place of learning. Our students and staff will be passionate, connected and successful learners who have empathy for others and a strong sense of identity, purpose and well being.

School is so much more than a place of learning, between the hours of 9am and 3 pm it is our second home, the place where we all come to explore learning, to practice being a good citizen, to explore friendships and to understand the driving values of our school: Respect Responsibility Resilience and Inclusion.

BUT when I meet with Glen our BSO and we talk about some of the challenges he has in his day; food stuffed down drains, poo smeared on walls, tan bark shoved into urinals, soap dispensers pulled off walls, toilet seats removed I wonder…. why? And I wonder who does this? And I wonder what cry for help is this. And I think… would you do this at your other home!

Recently you will have heard some music playing at the end of the day, for the last 8-10 minutes of the day. This is a time to reset your learning spaces, make the most of the opportunity to show your respect for yourself, your peers, your teacher and your learning space and make everything nice neat and NAVY (As a friend of mine so often says)so that when you enter again the following day you know where your learning tools are.

Kindness is never far from my thoughts. Because on many occasions during the day Mel and I support students who have been unkind to others or students who have experienced an unkindness. And students who don’t realise that targeting, taunting, name calling, harassing others all of these are some of the many forms of unkindness and again I ask myself why??? What is missing in the learning of those who are unkind, harassing, intimidating, or bullying others?

So I have some messages and reminders:

School is for learning and living the values of our school
Speak up when you see, hear or experience something that is not okay. Every time we walk past, look past or pretend it didn’t happen to yourself or to someone else we are sending the message that bad behaviours are acceptable. They are not!
We have made adjustments and changes to the playground, the great outdoor areas of playing and socialising. The community oval is open at lunch time. If you intend to play on the oval you will need to be waiting at the senior equipment, not the synthetic oval. And the important word here is waiting…. teachers are coming from various classroom across the school you may need to be patient, you will need to wait until a staff member says… you may go.
Be kind to each other. Be respectful. Be responsible
Take care of your stuff!
Take care of our school. Together we can do great and wonderful things, enjoy this place,
For students in Year 6, you are in your eighth year of being in school you cannot use the excuse I didn’t know no-one told me. You are our guiding lights and lead examples of how we do things around here, please continue to shine.
Year 5, close behind, you are in your seventh year of schooling. Continue to model how it looks to be successful in our place of learning.

And most importantly we are a TELLING school. You MUST all tell someone, and keep telling until you are heard, are supported and issues sorted.

Be in the right place, at the right time doing the right things with the right people.

And you will have a truly awesome day of learning.

I modified the above conversation for the K-2 students today and spoke of kindness and a reminder that when you bump into someone pick them up, ask if they are okay. Be a kind friend. And also explained to the students that we are a telling school. We tell when there is a problem, when we are worried, when something has happened. And we tell both sides of the story and tell about our part in challenges. And together we all repeated: We are a telling school (3 times).

And my thought for the week:

Have a fabulous long weekend, enjoy the additional day with your children.

Regards

Julie

Julie.Cooper@ed.act.edu.au

Chief Minister's Reading Challenge

Book Fair Lucky Draw Prize

The following are winners of the lucky draw winners

1^st – Phoebe in 4 AN

2^nd – Patricia – Admin

3^rd – Harriet F – 4 LT

4^th – Amina – Year 3

5^th – Adeline V – KLO

Please collect your prize from the front office

What's Happening in The Galahs

For reconciliation week, the Galah’s used ‘Why I Love Australia’ by Bronwyn Bancroft as the seed for our writing cycle. After reading the book and exploring different Australian landscapes, we chose our own Australian landscape and created a picture based on her design using patterns and shapes. We then crafted one really good sentence to go with our picture, using our knowledge of adjectives and interesting verbs to create imagery. After editing and recrafting our writing, we published our artwork using oil pastels.

We hope you enjoy reading our sentences about Australian landscapes below.

The tall mountain has soft white snow on top. - Sava
The golden sunset reflects on the water. - Suki
The pattern rainbow moon was shining bright in the starry night sky and the beautiful starry sky was too. - Zara
The crop is growing in large amounts creating a shadow from the sun. - Nivon
The swaying coral sea has lovely, bumpy beautiful coral and rocks. - Alice
The glittering city was shining with sparkling jewels on top of the city. - Niamh
The rainbow city is colourful and it looks like christmas. -Owen
The rainbow coral was swaying in the ocean. - Ahmed
The spikey cactus stands still in the dusty desert. -Callum
The rainbow coral was swaying in the clear blue sea. - Anaga
The wet birds came out of the glimmering shiny water. - Mila
The colourful coral is shining like gold in the beautiful water.- Hasan
The colourful fish glide through the lines in the coral sea. - Himani
The flowing waterfall was shining in the beautiful sun. - Edith
The pretty scene of the rocky mountain, Uluru, standing still. - Bella
The clear blue water shines on the Samoan reef. - Neve

Tarnii Boland and Sarah Masling

What's happening in The Dragons

Hello and welcome to the Year 2 Dragons,

As we quickly approach the end of term two and semester two, we have enjoyed our regular routine that is necessary to work on skills in PE, literacy, numeracy, inquiry, and social-emotional learning. We focus on reading and text comprehension during reading groups and silent reading. We spend a large part of our day focusing on writing and writing skills in our Draw-Talk-Write unit.

During our Draw-Talk-Write unit we examined and learned about different animals. We began with predators, friendly animals, and reptiles and we have moved on to insects for the next fortnight cycle. Our last topic will be birds. We have used the resource Wonderopolis to discover new facts and insights we did not yet know about our topic. After we investigated our topic, we chose words that we would focus on for our spelling and added them to our alpha boxes. Our next step is creating, colouring and labeling an incredibly detailed drawing about our topic to form the basis of our pieces of writing. Later we discuss what we know and create a notes board about the topic as a whole class. Last, is writing editing and publishing our stories and ideas.

Year 2 Dragons have created stories to describe the different topics. Some of the students produced the following:

Alyssa Maley: Some dogs are called guide dogs. Some dogs are called rescue dogs. When you see a dog in the supermarket thpose dogs are allowed.
Marcus Rozitis: In topical Asian forests, you can find a gliding snake called the paradise tree snake. It can travel up to 100 metres in the air, gliding.
Piper Oldfield: A King cobra snake is a reptile. It is venomous. It makes people sick and also animals too. The snake builds their nest out of sticks and leaves.

Additionally, during our reading groups, we have enjoyed reading as individuals, together and with the teacher. In the activity stage, we have been looking at predicting, word knowledge and understanding, making connections, summarising, synthesizing, and making inferences. Working on these tasks has helped us to grow as readers.

During numeracy, we have been looking at chance and addition strategies, the students have enjoyed experimenting with different manipulatives and figuring out the likeliness of a situation using correct terminology.

In PE we have been focusing on fundamental movement skills. This term, we moved onto vertical jump, throwing, running and next we will look at athletics carnival skills. They would love to show you and practice their new skills at home.

Inquiry has had us focusing on the seven continents and five oceans. The seven continents and five oceans has been an exceptionally fun topic to learn about. We have begun to understand where all the large land masses and bodies of water are on Earth. We discovered natural and human-made structures in these places that are beautiful and wonderful. We identified animals and plants that inhabit these different land masses. Lastly, we discussed different facts about the seven continents and five oceans which we did not yet know about. Here are some facts the Dragons would like to share:

Pippa Fricker: Africa has the longest river.
Celeste Roberts: Asia is the largest continent in the world.
Harvey Wind: South America has the highest waterfall in the world.
Delila Lepou: Canada is the biggest country in North America.

We have also had Aaron Powell teach us on Tuesdays where we have been talking about our emotions and how we feel in SEL. We have continued to look at the Zones of Regulation and what we can do to bring ourselves back to an emotionally regulated space.

Celeste Tunnecliffe

What's happening in the Green Tree Pythons

Year 3 is zooming along to the end of a very busy term! We are looking forward to visiting the National Museum of Australia in Week 8 and participating in two programs there, “The Story of Country” and “Meet the People”.

In visual art we have been communicating emotions through the elements of art. The students created individual art works and then reflected on which elements helped them express their chosen emotion. The students then responded to a few of their classmates’ artworks, taking a guess at which emotion the student had portrayed and which artistic choices made them think that. In the photos below you will see art by Noori, Muzammil, Aryia and Eman as well as some of the reflections and responses.

In maths we have been learning about fractions. We created posters highlighting what they knew about thirds, quarters, fifths and eighths. This included the fraction as part of a whole and as part of a group/collection, the fraction on a number line, the fraction as a folded piece of paper and an exploration of the fraction represented in different ways. Maddie, Daniel and Lachie’s posters are in the photos below. Our fraction posters also included fraction stories:

Ewan: I have $32. I give half my money to my friend. I give an eighth of my money to my mum. How many dollars do I have left? Answer $12.
Connor: There are 4 people in my family, so I am one quarter of my family.
Jupiter: Jimmy had 500 multitools. He gave 100 to Daniel and 100 to Lachlan. How many fifths does he have left? Answer 3/5.
Malak: I read 8 books and a quarter of my books were ‘Wings of Fire’. How many were ‘Wings of Fire’ books? Answer 2.
Naomi: I have three friends; Ivy, Lily and Noori. One third of my friends’ names start with a vowel and 2 thirds start with a consonant.
Ivy: I have 18 lollies. I give 12 to Jess so I have one third of my lollies left.
Mariam: Three friends and I ordered 4 pizzas. One pepperoni, one cheese, one ham and one veggie. The pizzas were cut into 4 slices, so we all got one quarter of each pizza each.
Lily: If I have 8 lollies and I eat 3, I will have 5/8s left.
Max: I have 20 pieces of fruit. Ten are grapefruit, 5 are pomegranate and 10 are passionfruit. One quarter of my fruit is pomegranate.
Halimata: My sister bought a whole chocolate bar. There were 8 pieces. I ate two and my sister had four pieces. How many are left? Answer two pieces or 2 eighths or one quarter!

Jess Yeo

What's Happening in The Bilbies

Year 3 has been super busy this last fortnight. We have been working on fractions, gardening, delivering our very first rostrum speeches and expressing our emotions through art!

This past week we have been knee deep in the garden with Jo and Nicole! After our application was approved, Floriade donated 600 tulips bulbs and 600 seedlings to our school. So we have been working hard to refresh the garden beds, add new mulch and plant the tulips, violets and irises in the garden at the front of the school. We can’t wait to see how they turn out.

In maths we have been busy working on fractions. We started by decorating our own pizzas! Then we sliced our pizzas up into fractions and had to find people around our classrooms that had the same fraction as ours and share our pizza fractions with them. We ended up with some pretty crazy topping combinations!

We’ve also been exploring what we know about fractions by writing fraction stories. See if you can figure these out!

Newsletter_W5_..pdf

This term we had our first experiences with Rostrum. We all chose a topic and wrote our speeches, then the day finally came where we delivered our speeches to our classes! We learned about digging deeper, climbing, satellites and going back in time! Two finalists were chosen from each class and they had to do their speech again; this time, to the whole year three unit! Everyone did amazing, but Sachi and Darda were chosen to represent year three. They delivered their speeches to the senior school next week!

Good luck to Sachi and Darda!

Teagan Lovett

What's happening in The Wonka Bars

Last week Year 4 went on an excursion to Lanyon Homestead. The excursion was a celebration of our learning from the term one inquiry unit based on Australian Colonisation. Throughout the unit we’ve learned about different perspectives of colonisation from an Indigenous Australian view, Government view and a Convict view. We investigated how each group had vastly different outcomes and experiences through colonisation.

There were two parts to the excursion:

The first part allowed students to explore the homestead buildings and artefacts from the 19^th century. Students also analysed various objects used by convicts and free settlers, including toys, stationery items, tools, sewing equipment and various kitchen items from that era. It was interesting listening to students discuss the features of these items and what they were made from, before attempting to work out what the object was, how it was used and who would have used it.

The second part of the excursion offered an opportunity for students to experience the life of a convict in a ‘role play’ situation whereby they were given a convict identity from the historical records at Lanyon Homestead. Students were given convict clothing to wear and treated like a convict, this meant they marched in a straight line to get to different places around the farm, had to be silent – no silliness!, and they tried their hand at the different labour-intensive jobs that convicts would have been responsible for. This meant working hard building wooden fences to enclose sheep, collecting water using over the shoulder bucket carriers, gardening with hoes/mattocks, shovels and rakes, and learning hand sewing techniques required for mending clothing and hessian sacks.

The day was lots of fun and helped students have a greater appreciation of life today!

Gabe Kearins

What's Happening in the Blazing Flames

5_6CH_Newsletter_Term_2.pdf

Corinne Hannan

What's happening in The Barbeques

Hello and welcome to the Barbeques. This semester we have been learning about Change and the Australian Gold Rush. We looked at how the gold rush started in 1851. Edward Hargraves found gold in a stream near Orange. It was only a few specs, but it was the start of something big. After that many Chinese miners came to Australia. They worked in big groups which got them much more gold. This made the Europeans angry and led to anti-Chinese riots. The government also made the miners pay for licences. This annoyed the miners and so they started rebelling. In 1854 the miners made the Eureka stockade a fight of the soldiers. In the end they got what they wanted. They no longer had to pay for the government to mine and eventually got the right to vote. By the end of the gold rush Australia's population was at 1.7 million. They also paid for a lot of the infrastructure that built up Australia. The gold rush hurt and helped Australia in many ways but in the end without the gold rush Australia would not be the same country without the goldrush - By Elliot

Here are some of the paragraphs we wrote using the TEEL structure.

T= topic sentence

E= evidence and/or examples

E= explain

L= linking sentence to the next paragraph

Gold rush Chinese miner perspective paragraph:

The year is 1850 and China and other countries are informed of the Australian gold rush. Ophir is where the miners started mining in NSW, but the gold rush eventually went all across Australia. 7000 Chinese men and women came to Australia to mine for gold. The gold was probably 88.36 Yuan = 18.94 dollars for a reward. The Americans and others were racist to the Chinese miners for being more successful but not all the Chinese miners struck gold. So, in conclusion the gold rush was a great thing for Chinese miners, and many stayed in Australia - Paragraph by Louie Anthoney

The First Nations People were heavily impacted by the gold rush most mobs land was destroyed and did not understand what was happening, the experience for the first nations people was very negative. The first nations people actually led the European miners to richer deposits. Some first nations people joined the Native police corps who were the first police corps on the goldfields, The first nations people showed strength and that they could survive during tough times and shared knowledge and traded with some of the miners - Paragraph by Isaac Saunders

Chinese Migrants.
Early 1850s news of the gold rush in Australia had reached out to China. Around 7,000 Chinese migrated to NSW to work at the Araluen gold fields, the Chinese miners usually worked together in groups of 30 to -100 men - By Ariana
Woman:
The Australian gold rush, as well as having an impact on the Australian economy, changed the life of a great many families, many of those families including women.
Life on the gold fields wasn’t pleasant. Freshwater was a struggle, and fresh food supplies were low. The Men on the goldfields were starting to become weak and tired. So, when their wives back home found out about the harsh living conditions, they decided to leave the shelter of their homes and headed off to help their husbands on the gold fields.
When Women first started to help their husbands, their routine mainly consisted of making food, caring for children, and washing clothes. However, over time, more and more women started to get actual jobs. Some even started to help out on the gold fields. Approximately two-hundred and thirty worked in paid employment, and around eight percent of all the women that came over became shop keepers. Over in Ballarat, many also started to become goldminers. Women became invaluable on the goldfields, as they didn’t have to pay for mining licences. This led to many of the male diggers to become frustrated, as they were no longer the major income for their families. However, it wasn’t all happy on the goldfields. Freshwater was often a worry, and fresh fruit and vegetables became scarce. This led to many of the women who were working on the goldfields to sadly pass away during childbirth.
In conclusion, the Australian gold rush had an important impact on life in Australia, changing the way women worked and how different families operated - By Meg

Bec Spoors

What's happening in French

Kindy

Dear parents/carers,

As part of our French program in term 2, we are continuing to extend our learning in both written and spoken modes when expressing simple greetings. Kindergarten students have been identifying simple words when it comes to colours in French. They have enjoyed learning a “French colours” song which we have practised in class as well as some written work to extend their learning.

We have also enjoyed revisiting the concept of numbers from 0 to 10 in French. We will continue to explore this idea through simple games such as “building the numbers with unifix cubes” whole class games such as “Spider” where we explore how the numbers are spelt by guessing the letters in the words.

Here are some examples of ways students have shown their understanding of the different topics in class:

Year 1 and 2

This term in French, Year 1 and 2 students have been learning about countries other than France that are French speaking or Francophonie around the world and understanding that French is spoken all around the world. They have explored this concept through games such as “around the world” and “Guess my country”.

In the next few weeks, students will explore different animals (farm animals, pets) in French. Year 1 and 2 students have been supported in class through activities such as games, songs, role play and more written tasks to help build their French fluency in speaking and improve their writing skills.

Here are some examples of ways students have shown their understanding of the different topics in class:

Year 3

This term in French, Year 3 students have been exploring the concept of “house/la maison” in further detail. They have revised their knowledge of rooms in a house and looked more into the items in a house and the vocabulary that's involved in describing them. Students have put their knowledge into practice by designing their own houses in French and have made captions and labels for the different sections in their houses. They have been creating this mini project using words in both French and English. Students in year 3 have been supported and extended in their learning using ICT, Education Perfect, games and other role play scenarios.

Here are examples of the students’ house designs:

Year 5/6

This term in French, Year 5 and 6 have been extending their knowledge of self-introductions. They have also been learning more about different family members and how to introduce their own family members. Students used their knowledge of family members and self-introductions to create a mini profile about their favourite characters from movies, shows/games etc on different. Students in year 5 and 6 have been supported and extended in their learning using Education Perfect, online French activities and games in class.

Here are examples of the student’s self-introduction profiles about their favourite characters:

Screenshot family characters

Shamim Sabetraftar

Belconnen Cross Country

On Thursday 25 May the Belconnen Cross Country Carnival was held at Stromlo Forest Park. Congratulations to all forty-seven of our students that represented Weetangera Primary for running your best and for being good sports throughout. With in excess of one hundred runners in each race the competition was intense and the racing was frantic! We had a number of runners in the first twenty such as Aaron G- 18th in 11-year boys, MJ J- 17th in 11 boys, Teddy K- 12th in 8 boys, Ava L- 12th in 9 girls, Willow D- 11th in 9 girls and Olive K- 11th- 8 girls. To qualify for the ACT Championships requires a top ten finish and we had six students qualify:

Madeleine B- 9th in 9 Years 1500m (Unable to compete at ACT and absent for photo)
Jacob H- 7th in 8 Years 1km
Joe P- 6th in 10 Years 2km
Harriet O’S- 3rd in 12 Years 3km
Kai M- 2nd in 11 Years 3km
Callum M- 1st in 10 Years 2km

`Well done and all the best for a successful run at next week’s ACT Championships!

Thank you to the parents and carers that were able to be at Stromlo to cheer on our students, we appreciate your support.

Erwin McRae

We need your input! WPS 50th Birthday

Weetangera Primary School is turning 50!

To celebrate this milestone, and in conjunction with our Positive Behaviours for Learning journey, we would like input from the wider school community about what Weetangera means to them.

Please find time to answer the questions in the survey below!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxRBcnN_YOPKYtfabeBE8GTc-D6rDa60X1LVk0FmBrklkb1g/viewform

Our aim is to collate the information gathered and use it to revamp some of the, shall we say… outdated, aspects of the school.

You know what they say – a change is as good as a holiday – and at 50 we are feeling ready for a change.

We are also on the lookout for ex-students and previous members of the Weetangera Primary School community for some events and activities we are planning for later in the year. If you can help us with this, please email info@weetangeraps.act.edu.au.

P&C News

Trivia tickets on sale Monday!

Our trivia night is on Friday 11 August, and tickets go on sale Monday! Tickets are only available from EventBrite - Weetangera Primary Trivia. We have a special early bird rate of just $10 for the next two weeks, so be sure to get your tickets soon and beat the price rise. You can buy a table of 10 seats, or buy just the one spot and make some new friends.

We’re excited to announce that our Principal and Deputy Principal, Julie and Mel, will be our trivia hosts with the most on the night, and give all our parents the modern-day school experience of the Principal monitoring you for sneaky mobile phone usage! As some of our school staff will be joining the night will be only for the over-18s, so please line up those grandparents/babysitters and join us to enjoy a child-free night.

Donations wanted

To help make our trivia night a big success, we are also looking for sponsors and donations of prizes for the trivia night – we’re looking for items that can be raffles or silent auction prizes, or part of prizes for our winning teams, such as goods, gift vouchers or discount certificates. If you have a small (or big) business, or work for one that would like to support us, please contact our Secretary Susan at weetangera.pc.secretary@gmail.com for a copy of our sponsorship pack to find out more about how you can get involved and what recognition we can offer for donations.

The P&C is also looking for donations of used mobile phones that we can use for taking card payments on a Square platform. If you have recently upgaded, but still have an old working phone with Bluetooth that the P&C could put a SIM card in, we would love to give it a second life! Send an email to weetangera.pc.president@gmail.com or send us a message on one of our social media profiles to get in touch.

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