Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Julie

Dear Families

As the end of the semester draws near the important work of reflecting upon your children’s learning success is concluded and the semester one reports are provided to families.

You will notice that, for the first time in the last few years we have also included a reporting comment. The comment is designed around an agreed protocol and covers the following:

Acknowledgement of students’ areas of strength in learning. This list comprises some of the notable achievements across the first two terms of the year.
Areas for development looks at where a student is at currently in their learning and what the next steps are that need to be taken to continue the positive learning trajectory.
Improvement strategies is the final aspect of the comment. In this section, connected to areas of development teachers will describe what will be done, actions that will be put in place and particular techniques for learning that will support a student’s success.

Bringing all this information together has taken much thought, care and attention from teachers. In conjunction with their teaching teams, when they moderate learning to ensure consistent application of the five-point scale, and team leaders who provide an editing lens for final comments the final comment has been scrutinised to ensure clarity.

I have read all of the reports looking at the learning outcomes and the comments and commended our staff on the positive, insightful and well-constructed reflections on each student.

PLEASE NOTE: If you do not receive your child’s report by Sunday 25 June please let Mel Bezear know: Melanie.bezear@ed.act.edu.au

As we come to the end of the term there are changes ahead. Two of our leadership team have been successful in achieving appointments outside of our school. While this is of course a sad day for us it is also an aspect of leadership that staff move on to other positions.

The two staff members who are leaving WPS are the Kates; Kate North and Kate Harvey-Sutton.

Kate North is leaving Weetangera to take up a role at Kaleen Primary School. In the time that Kate has been her she has been the team leader for Years 3-6 working closely with the teaching staff and supporting the work of the school across all areas. Providing insights and support to a broad range of teaching staff, students and colleagues. Thank you Kate and good luck with your next adventure.

Kate Harvey-Sutton has been at Weetangera PS for almost 14 years! Let us just think on that for a minute… wow 😊 Kate has had the role of teacher, parent , fete supporter and school leader. Kate has a deep knowledge of our school, students, families, and a depth of knowledge about connections and a historical perspective that we have called upon to understand the processes used previously and the invigorations required to connect new processes to previous ones. Kate is leaving to take up a position at Canberra Grammar School. Kate’s warmth, kindness joyful participation and knowledge will be greatly missed. Thank you Kate, good luck with your new adventures too.

Next week parent teacher meetings will take place. As usual all meetings occur in the Library. While you are waiting for your meeting or at the conclusion of the meeting please take the time to peruse, and purchase from the de-commissioned library books on offer. All proceeds will go towards continuing to build our current collection. Books will be sold for a generous gold coin donation.

We are having a final, end-of-term assembly next week but NOT at the usual time. Next week’s assembly will be a Specialist Assembly at 11.30am.

My thought for this week:

Have a fabulous weekend, embrace the chilly weather and have adventures in the snow!

Regards

Julie

Julie.Cooper@ed.act.edu.au

Chief Minister's Reading Challenge

What's Happening in The Koalas

The Koalas have been hard at work being Mathematicians, Artists, Writers, and Readers this term. In Maths, they have been learning how to share collections equally. The Koalas are making fantastic progress unpacking the language in their learning intention and connecting this to everyday activities that involving giving, sharing, and making things fair. This week we have been drawing and designing cakes and cookies for a teddy bear picnic.

In Art, we are experimenting with the elements of art. The Koalas created a beautiful piece of artwork showcasing their knowledge of warm and cool colours. It was exciting to see the students connect their knowledge of patterns (red, orange, yellow, red, orange, yellow) and primary colours in this task.

The Koalas have been learning about burrowing owls this week during writing. We collected our existing schema (knowledge) of burrowing owls and recorded this in our schema file. Some interesting facts we have learned are:

The Burrowing Owl has excellent vision and hearing for capturing prey
They live on the ground and nest in burrows
These owls live in colonies
It has a very distinctive call coo-cooo

We look forward to another semester of fantastic learning in the Kinder Koalas!

Rosemary Kingelty

What's Happening in The Lorikeets

The Rainbow Lorikeets have been very busy in term 2 learning lots of new skills and applying their knowledge. In Geography, they have been learning to describe how places can be cared for. They are now reflecting on their learning and are currently creating their own mini story about Caring for Country, encouraging others to care for the natural features that surround them and become custodians (look after and protect) of the land (country).

As part of their story students must use a place in nature that they feel connected to and use this as their setting (for example, forest, ocean, desert, rainforest) and then include an animal/s they feel connected to, including them as the characters in their story.

Some of the topics that have been highlighted so far include; the importance of keeping oceans clean and protected, why it is important to put rubbish in the bin, what oil spills and poisons can do to our marine and wildlife, how to protect the coral reef and finally, why if a tree gets cut down it is so important to plant a tree to replace the destruction of another.

Once final publishing has been completed, Lorikeets look forward to visiting the preschool and sharing their stories.

Hayley Dix

Over the past few weeks, Year Three has been working on their social and emotional learning and focusing on the behaviour of kindness. For the first week, we read the story Kindness Grows by Britta Teckentrup. The story discussed how angry words can ruin friendships, but a gesture as simple as a smile can cause kindness to bloom and friendships to mend. We looked at ways we can spread kindness instead and make friendships stronger. We answered the following questions:

What does it mean to be kind?
Tell me about a time when someone was kind to you.
How do you feel when someone is kind to you?
What is something you did once that showed kindness?
How can you be kind at school/home?

Here are some of our responses on what it means to be kind:

“Being helpful and sharing.” Eli
“Sharing your love and heart.” Abby
“Being inclusive and helping others.” Anthony
“Using nice language and making someone happy.” Eve

After our discussion we spread some kindness by writing positive and kind messages around the school playground using chalk, to help brighten up someone’s day.

The following week, we read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? By Carol McCloud. A story that discusses how everyone has an imaginary bucket that needs to be filled. We can fill someone’s bucket by showing acts of kindness and appreciation. We wrote down ways in which people can fill someone’s bucket. After our discussion, we wrote about when someone had filled our bucket and made a display. The students are able to continue to add to this display as others fill up their bucket.

Last week we discussed the importance of being able to fill our bucket and how we can do that. Some great examples were:

Believe in yourself!
Keep trying!
Playing with friends.
Playing sports.
Saying kind things to yourself.
Remembering happy memories.

We decided to share these messages by creating posters to be placed around the school.

Last Friday, we were all very excited and went on an excursion to the National Museum of Australia. We participated in two guided tours, ‘Meet the People’, exploring Australia through key objects and storytelling and ‘Story of Country’, exploring the Australian continent as an ancient and powerful place. We also spent time exploring the First Nations Gallery and the Garden of Australian Dreams.

We reflected what we enjoyed most about our excursion:

“I really liked learning about the people who helped build and listening to their stories. I enjoyed learning about Phar Lap's heart and The Royal Flying Doctors.” Tahlia
“I liked learning about the whales and video that showed ‘Aboriginal’ children from the past and children in the present ‘on the same screen” Ava
“I enjoyed looking at the ‘artefacts’ the museum had, partially the killer whales. I liked seeing the animals made out of fishing nets.” Lorenzo
“I enjoyed listening to the tour guide talk about the bushfires and seeing how the fire melted the phonebox.” Jack. D

Megan Ferdinand

4LT have thoroughly enjoyed the projects we have been working on throughout this term.

Our Design Technology Unit centred around the cotton farming process and the impact on our environment, was a great platform for students to investigate ‘Fast Fashion’ and how we can upcycle, to reduce the amount of cotton going into landfill. All students designed, made, and reflected on a t-shirt bag and considered a message that could remind the community of the importance of looking after our planet.

In writing, we have been exploring the purposeful ways to structure information texts for a range of topics. Our first attempt was on an animal of choice and our second publication was on a topic of choice. We had some real challenges trying to find information on topics, such as famous singers and sportspeople. We learnt about the purpose of creating a contents page and glossary, and how this helps the reader find and understand specific information.

In mathematics, the year 4 cohort have been participating in rotations across the unit, going back over our learning from the semester and building on our understanding and gaps to ensure we are ready to move into next semester’s content. We have been lucky to have our University of Canberra student teacher, Emily Michell, with us till the end of term. Students have enjoyed a range of art, spelling and P.E. lessons being led by Emily. We are looking forward to more lessons from Emily over the coming weeks.

Loiuse Tominich

What's Happening in the Survivors

Newsletter_T2W8_Google_Docs.pdf

What's Happening in Year 5 Band

The Year 5 Band has started the year with a bang! In week 4 of term 2, the students were allocated their instruments and have learned the foundational skills needed to play and read music. Since picking up their instrument for the first time, the musicians have learned 7 notes, countless songs, rehearsed with another brass band and played their very first performance at assembly.

In week 6 of this term, the Year 5 Band hosted Macquarie Primary School for a combined band rehearsal. They participated in sectional rehearsals to learn more about their instruments and ways to improve their playing skills.

To add to the wonderful start of their musical journey, the year 5 band performed at assembly. They played three songs: Merry-loony-bells, a medley of well-known tunes including Merrily We Roll Along, Au Claire De Lune and Jingle Bells, Penguin Parade and Munchkin March. Their playing was exceptional, and they received many well-deserved compliments.

Sarah Masling

What's Happening in Year 6 Band

This year, the year 6 band were introduced to a new conductor. Susan from the Instrumental Music Program (IMP) has provided the students with a catalogue of new music that they are excited to learn and love to play.

The musicians have had many opportunities to perform to the community and their peers so far this year. During the warmer months, the band set up outside of the new hall at lunchtime to rehearse in front of the students here at Weetangera. They often attracted a large bunch of adoring fans from the junior year levels. In week 4 of term 2, the year 6 band travelled to Hawker Primary School to participate in a combined band rehearsal accompanied by Fraser Primary School. Weetangera were the only brass band present, and they had a great time listening to different instruments from a woodwind band play the melodies.

Another performance opportunity found the students performing at the Rostrum finals, where they had the pleasure of introducing the instruments to the audience. A glissando from the trombone section had the audience captivated.

The year 6 students wowed the audience at the senior assembly performance last week. They played the theme from Spiderman and cave man gets a haircut.

Both the year 5 and 6 musicians look forward to learning new music and sharing it with the community.

Sarah Masling

Cross Country Championships

Last week we had five students represent the Belconnen region at the ACT Cross Country Championships at Stromlo Forest Park. Well done to our students for qualifying for this prestigious event and for representing our school with pride. All students ran well and put in their best effort on the day with many running a lot faster than they did at the Belconnen event to ensure they finished high up in the field.

Jacob H ran a solid race in his debut at ACT Cross Country in the 8 years 1km.
Harriet O performed well to finish 15th in the 12 years 3km where she was competing against many Year 7 students.
Joe P ran a great race to finish 9th in the 10 Years 2km and was nearly one minute faster than his run at Belconnen, well done Joe!
Callum M in the 10 Years 2km and Kai M in the 11 Years 3km both ran approximately 30 seconds faster than their respective runs at Belconnen to each finish in third place.

As a result of their performances Callum and Kai have now qualified to represent ACT at the School Sport Australia Cross Country Championships to be held in Canberra in August. Congratulations Callum and Kai!

Erwin McRae

Athletics Carnival

Yesterday we held our athletics carnival at Charnwood. Well done to all our students for participating with enthusiasm and striving to do their best in all events. Ribbons for the placegetters in events for 8 years and above will be given out at an athletics assembly early next term. We were fortunate to have the Year 10 Sports Leadership class from Belconnen High School helping to run our carnival and they did an exceptional job!

I would also like to thank Raj Guyes who provided the timing equipment and his skills to do the recording of the track events and provide highly accurate results for us as well as Sarah Slade who was an invaluable assistant at the finish line to help ensure the races ran smoothly.

Erwin McRae

Athletic Carnival - Canteen

Hello Weetie Families

We in the Canteen had an amazing event at the Athletics Carnival, everyone LOVED the Iced Donuts and Lolly selections we had available.

This was my first big event as manager and I want to thank a few special friends that shared their time and helped make yesterday the amazing event it turned out to be.

Neredah, Joanne, Hayden, Max, Danielle, Zoe and our lovely Belinda, each took time to create a fun, and much more relaxed day for me, our hungry kiddos & teachers.
They each stood in the cold and took part in providing all your beautiful children yummy treats and their hot dog lunch.

Thank you all, you each did a great job and I really appreciate you chipping in.

We in the Canteen are so glad with the support of the school and community that we can be here on days like this making the fun just a little more with treats and hot lunches.

Martina Fleeton
WPS Canteen Manager

School Photos

School photos will be sent home with students today. There are extra photos available for students that participated the following activities: School Leaders, House Captains, Year 5 Band, Year 6 Band. For information on how to order these photos, please see the flyer linked below.

Special_Photos.pdf

P&C News

It's time for the parents to have some fun!

Our trivia night is on Friday 11 August at Belconnen Labour Club from 6:30-9:30pm.

As some of our school staff will be joining the festivities, the night will be only for the over-18s. So line up those grandparents/babysitters and join us for a child-free night!

Early Bird discount on Trivia tickets ends MONDAY 26th.

Tickets are only available from EventBrite, and going FAST:

https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/weetangera-primary-school-trivia-night-tickets-644721337877

Don't have anyone to go with? No worries! This night is all about making new friends and having fun 🎉

Let’s Get Social!

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