Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Mel

Hello Weetangera families.

I thought I'd be a bit sneaky and steal Julie's newsletter spot this week. :)

It’s hard to believe that we are already halfway through term 3! As it always is, term 3 is a busy one. So far, on top of the amazing learning our students do every day, we have had kindergarten health checks, a year 2 excursion, a combined band rehearsal/performance, and this week has been a week of curiosity and wonder as we explored the Science Week theme of Innovation: Powering Future Industries. You'll see a wrap of what students discovered in our next newsletter.

Yet to come we have a Father’s Day Stall, the Great Book Swap for Indigenous Literacy Day, Wear it Purple Day, more excursions, AquaSafe Swimming, RUOK? Day and visits from Kenny Koala. Phew! Don’t forget you can always check out the school calendar on our website if you’d like to know what’s coming up.

Next week is Book Week. We all look forward to it each year, with the chance to read some amazing new books with our students and if course the opportunity to dress up! On Wednesday next week (23 August), families are invited to read with their children in the old hall from 8-9am. This will be followed by a whole school dress up parade from 9.15am. Students are encouraged to dress as a character from their favourite book. Families are most welcome to attend.

Last Friday, our P&C held what we hope will be an annual fundraising trivia night. I was delighted to have the opportunity to host what was a very fun evening. Thank you to everyone in our community that came along and helped us in our fundraising efforts. See the P&C update below for how it all went.

School Satisfaction Survey

The annual School Satisfaction and Climate Survey opens today, 18 August 2023. Each year, the Education Directorate surveys all parents and carers, school staff and students in Years 4 to 12 about their experience of public education. The survey results will help us to continue to make quality informed decisions about how to improve our school. No personal identifying information will be provided to any school or college. Genuine survey invitation emails will have the title "The 2023 School Satisfaction & Climate Survey is now open!" and will be sent from EDU Surveys & Evaluation with 'from' address EDU@qualtrics-survey.com. If you do not receive the survey invitation, please check your Junk email folder; if it is not there, please contact us via email: info@weetangeraps.act.edu.au.

The Parents and Carers Survey will be available online in other languages: Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Urdu, Vietnamese, Punjabi, Bengali, Spanish, Telugu, French and Italian. Respondents can select their preferred language when they start the survey. A shortened paper-version of the Parents and Carers Survey is also available in the following 5 languages: Dari, Dinka, Farsi, Karen and Mon. These surveys are available at the Front Office. For the results to reflect the opinions of our whole school community, we need as many parents and carers, staff and students as possible to complete the survey. Your feedback is important, and we hope you will take part. For more information, visit: https://www.education.act.gov.au/public-school-life/school-satisfaction-and-climate-survey

Finally, some sad news. This week we farewell Caitlin; one of our amazing Learning Support Assistants who is moving on to a new adventure interstate. Thank you to Caitlin for being a steady, calm and caring support for our students over the past 18 months. We wish you well!

Have a wonderful weekend.

Regards

Mel

Melanie.Bezear@ed.act.edu.au

Playground Masterplan

Thank you to those of you that have provided your feedback and input into our Playground Masterplan. According to the feedback we have received, the three most popular zones are:

Nature Play Zone
Treehouse Zone
Oval Zone

Next steps

We will seek quotations from some local companies to commence work on the Nature Play Zone.
We will continue to fundraise within the community. Please keep an eye out for opportunities to support our fundrasising efforts.

You can still use the online form to find out more about the Playground Masterplan, ask questions and give feedback. If you would like to get involved in raising money for our playground upgrades, you might like to consider joining the P&C at their next meeting; Tuesday 29 August, 6pm at the Canberra Southern Cross Club at Jamison.

We will keep you updated via the school newsletter. Please do not hesitate to contact the school if you have any questions, ideas or feedback.

Playground Masterplan FAQ

How soon can you start?

We are hoping to start one of the projects this year (the Nature Play Zone). Of course, this is all dependent on cost and the availability of tradespeople.

How much has been raised to date to fund the playground project?

Our school community has already raised $30,000 for the playground upgrade.

How many years will this project take to complete?

The Masterplan is a long-term plan. It could take up to 10 years to complete and some of the designs may evolve as we progress to the project stage for each one.

How will disruptions to the playground be managed during the construction phase?

This is sometimes beyond our control, as we need to work within the schedule and space considerations of those doing the construction. Because the Masterplan is broken into different stages, we hope to be able to limit disruption by containing construction to different areas of the playground. One area may be fenced off for a time, but the rest of the playground will be available.

How big will the grass area be (Grass Play Zone)?

According to the plan, the flat grass zone is 20 x 30m. This may change slightly once the area is prepared and developed.

What's Happening in the Koalas

The Koalas have been writing superstars this week as we have been innovating the text ‘Our Island’ by Alison Lester and the students of Gununa (Mornington Peninsula). We have been inspired to create a book about our school and write all about the ways it is special to us. To begin this process, we brainstormed the places in our school that we like to spend time in and what we hear, see, feel and do in these spaces. So far, we have written about our yarning circle, the synthetic oval, the junior playground, and our library.

The Koalas have been spending some time in the library and in our classrooms reading shortlisted books for this years Children’s Book Council of Australia ahead of next week’s Book Week celebrations. Last week we joined 3MF in the library for some buddy reading before we picked up Sean E Avery’s picture book ‘Frank’s Red Hat’.

In Maths we are learning to understand how to use maps to give directions. Students co-constructed a classroom map before independently having a go. The Koalas have a great understanding of maps already and spent this week exploring a provocation to create a map for. One group created a map to find dinosaur fossils, another group created a map to help their friends find their bakery and the last group created a story map of We’re Going on A Bear Hunt.

Rosemary Kingelty

Over the past two weeks, year one has been focusing on learning to recognise Australian coins according to their value. They started off by applying their prior knowledge of coins and notes and identifying how they are different to each other. They then analysed the features of Australian coins and notes, making coin rubbings and labelling the features. Up next, they evaluated how different coin combinations can equal the same amount, followed by ordering coins according to their value and choosing the coin with the highest value. This week is the third week of focusing on money during maths and all the year ones are excited to be involved in a special money project. Students have been given a budget of $5 and so far, they have had to pay $1 to adopt a desk pet and spend 50 cents to buy a habitat for their pet. As the week progresses, they will have to use various coin combinations to buy materials to create food and accessories for their pet, all of course without going over their budget!

Check out the Rainbow Lorikeets in action and marvel over their money skills!

Hayley Dix

In year 2 the students are exploring “Now and Then” in their inquiry unit. The students are exploring how and why the lives of people have changed over time. While also identifying how some things have remained the same. They have begun and will continue to compare objects from the past and present. To assist students in this process all of the students from year 2 went to the Hall Museum on Monday this week. During their time there they stepped into a classroom from days gone by and experienced what school would have been like 100 years ago. The inspector was very strict and stern. They also spent some time playing some games that the students of the school would have engaged in such as hopscotch, knucklebones, quoits, hoops and some skipping games.

After these experiences the students were then able to explore two rooms full of artifacts, talking about how they were used and how they have changed. One room housed objects that would have been found around the house, including irons, meat safes, ice boxes, kettles and phones. The other room housed items that were used to build houses and build a life for the peoples who settled in Hall.

Upon their return to school the students were asked to complete their draw, talk, write cycle on their exploration at the museum.

It is wonderful when students are able to make connections through all of the learning areas and produce such terrific pieces of work. We hope you enjoy reading these as much as we enjoyed writing them.

Kate de-Mey & Lauren Domio

This term we have been engaging with drama and learning how we can use drama to express and communicate ideas. We have played a variety of drama games to help us, one game we have enjoyed is ‘Pass the Clap’ and seeing how quickly we can communicate to pass the clap around the circle.

As a part of this drama unit we have started reading the text 'Fox' by Margaret Wild and looking at the different characters in the story, Magpie, Dog and Fox. We have discussed the characters' personalities and how they behave. Last week we looked at Magpie and this week we looked at Dog. We thought about how these characters moved, one as a sad bird with a burnt wing and the other, a happy dog that was blind in one eye. We then acted these characters out around the room. We also played ‘Hot Seat’ an activity where we pretended to be the characters, Magpie or Dog and had to answer questions asked by the audience. There were some great questions and responses happening. We were able to find out more about each of the characters and how they were feeling.

Another interesting activity we played was ‘Conscience Alley’, after we read the following text from the story, ‘Fox’.

That night, when Dog is asleep, Fox whispers to Magpie, “I can run faster than Dog, Faster than the win. Leave Dog and come with me.”

We had to stand in two lines to make a ‘Conscience Alley’. Students were chosen to play Magpie and had to walk down the alley asking the ‘Conscience Alley’ if she should stay with Dog or leave with Fox. One side of the alley was ‘For’ Magpie to leave with Fox and the other side was ‘Against’ Magpie going with Fox and to stay with Dog. The chosen Magpies were able to explain which side of the alley had persuaded them.

In writing, we have been focusing on narratives, looking at the structure and identifying key features of a narrative. Last week we started to use a ‘six senses chart’ graphic organiser to help us plan writing narrative, particularly a setting. We had to choose a picture ‘seed’ and then start completing our graphic organiser. The pictures we chose from were a haunted house, a bushfire, divers and a shark and a girl with a unicorn.

Here is some writing from our six sentences chart.

Haunted House
An abandoned haunted house with bats lurking in the sky. Jack D
A bat screeching and a hard breeze of wind brushing against my face. Max
I smelled smokey air and a touch of blood. Mila
I could hear footsteps and a door slamming. Elijah
I see bats flying in the night sky and flashing red lights through the windows. Tahlia
I heard a ghostly moaning coming from the dark spooky house. Sarah
I heard a wolf howl. Anthony
I could smell rotten flesh. Sasha
Unicorn and the Girl
I can see a girl petting a unicorn. Abby
I can see clouds, the sun and the beautiful trees. Nila
I can smell the salty sea. Ava
I can hear the unicorn breathing. Ananya
Divers and Shark
The shark has snappy teeth. Eli
I smell the salty seaweed. Lorenzo
Bushfire
I could hear the crackle of the fire and helpless birds cry for help. Beatrix
I can see the bright burning fire. Eve
I see a hot fire burning down all the trees in its way. Jack G

We will continue working on and adding to our graphic organisers then using the planning to help write a narrative setting.

Megan Ferdinand

4LT have been having an amazing time exploring all the ways we can solve multiplications sums. Each morning we practise our mental facts with some speed work, then we unpack a strategy and put it into good use. By the end of the term, we will have a good bank of strategies to answer multiplication and division sums efficiently and effectively.

Throughout the term the students in year 4 have been taking on a role of a bird persona from Cockatoo Island. This is a mock land similar to Australia where the birds all need to live, share and get along. We have been exploring the ideas of a democracy, parliament and the election process. This learning is all part of our Civics and Citizenship HASS unit of study. We look forward to the coming weeks where the students learn how to have media conference and take on roles of a journalist or member of parliament and demonstrate how the media is used to convey decisions made by the government so that citizens feel their voices are heard and requests are actioned.

Another area of the Arts we have been exploring is dance, so far we have been learning about the 5 elements of dance; action, body, space, time and energy. We have investigated a range of dance styles and looked at how they incorporate the elements and locomotor and non-locomotor movements to engage and entertain an audience. We are moving into our dance creation phase over the next few weeks, we look forward to showing you what we come up with on Seesaw.

Louise Tominich

What's Happening in the Storms

This term 5/6 Storms aka 5/6EM have completed work in a range of learning areas. Some of the highlights have been:

Watching the two versions of the Storm Boy movie and comparing these to the story
Starting the book Boy Overboard by Morris Gleitzmann and learning more about refugees
Comparing 12-hour and 24-hour time and reading and interpreting timetables in Maths
Year 6 students successfully preparing for and running the bake sale as a part of their Business unit
Participating in Aussie Rules clinics run by ACTAFL
Revisiting our class motto and designing a poster for their own personal learning motto
Running the senior assembly last week with 5/6EC

Students were asked to choose and write about a highlight of their work in 5/6 so far this term:

At the end of last term I made a piece of art. We made the piece of art to show people what animal we would choose if we had to choose an Australian animal to represent us. I picked a magpie because I have two little sisters I have to look after, I’m just like the dad magpie protecting my two little sisters. The making of the magpie was hard but fun. It took me four days to finish it.
Siddhik
Earlier this term the Year 6 students did a bake sale to raise money for the Year 6 Fun Day, a charity and next year's year 6 class. There were so many yummy cakes, jellies, brownies and slices. As a year 6 student I enjoyed the experience and the food!
Henry
Morris Gleitzmann is the author of ‘Boy Overboard’ and he took upon the challenge of creating a book about the struggles of refugees from Afghanistan and their harsh life. The class has looked very closely at the title: Boy Overboard and the blurb: ‘Sometimes to save the people you love you have to go overboard.’ We came up with some ideas like him on a ship and pushing himself overboard or going overboard in his mind. The book’s blurb also tells us that the boy’s name was Jamal who has a sister called Bibi and they are planning to escape to Australia with their family to lead themselves into soccer glory, but on the journey they encounter landmines, pirates, storms and assassins. We have started the book and it leads you into a rough environment while kids make use out of a rocket crater for a soccer goal. Bibi comes outside without a burqa which is a garment that covers your hair and your skin, Jamal and his friends get cross at her for doing this because of the Taliban. She scores a goal and chases after the ball into the landmines. I am very interested to read, hear and listen to what happens next.
Emily DB
In term three we finished AFL clinics and started reading the book Boy Overboard by Morris Gleitzmann. Earlier in the term we watched the second Stormboy movie. Did you know that Fingerbone was in the second movie as well as the first one? That was cool. Last Friday we hosted the senior assembly. At the assembly Mrs Cottom’s class did a dance, the song that they danced to was called Marryuna by Baker Boy which means in his language lets dance. In maths we have been learning about time and how to read 24-hour time and 12-hour time.
Dion R
On the day of the athletics carnival we had to be at school by 9:00am and on the bus at 9:10am. When we got there I was the first person to get to the tarp and I sat down and prepared my things first. After everyone got there we got set up to do the 800 metres sprint. After a while it was my turn to go, the warmup was running to the shed and back. I came 12th place out of forty-six. After that was recess and then a couple of activities then it was lunch. For lunch I had a lunch order which was a hot dog, a popcorn packet and a juice box. After that we did a bunch more activities and then went home, it was a really fun day.
Archie B
The AFL clinic at school has been a fantastic experience for me as I have gained valuable knowledge about playing the game including various techniques and strategies. One of the highlights for me was playing a match with the class and kicking the ball to each other.
Ian M
At the start of this term the Year 6 cohort held a bake sale for the whole school community. The bake sale was very successful. The Year 6s were very proud of the effort they had put into the bake sale with an array of sweets for everybody. All the year sixes made food and happily brought it to sell at the bake sale and everybody tried to bring a range of foods!
Harriet O’S
On Thursday of week one Year Six hosted a very successful bake sale. We had lots of cakes and cookies, we sold a lot of them and raised a lot of money. The bake sale was fun for the year six students and helpful for later life when selling things and running a business. We also had a junior and senior table, there was shifts and there different jobs like survey people before the day to find out what the people wanted to eat, there were poster teams to make the advertising posters and there were shift managers to make the shifts. It was good fun and a productive day.
Patrick K
Year 6 band spends lots of time practising for fun performances. Recently we had the opportunity to perform with Hawker Primary School and Fraser Primary School. We started by preparing the old hall for our performance and then the two other bands arrived. We warmed up then started practising. We enjoyed giving each other feedback and learning more about our instruments. Then some of our family members arrived and the whole school watched us perform six pieces: Chariots of Fire, Man from Snowy River, the Forest Gump theme, Drums of Corona, Pirates of the Caribbean and finally Potato. We had a lot of fun and it was a great way to collaborate with other schools.
Violette B
During week one we had a bake sale. First we had to make posters, rosters and foods. My jobs were to make posters and I made the best one! I stuck food on businessmen's heads and drew faces on them. After the posters were made we stuck them up. Next everyone cooked food and put them on tables. There were three tables, one for juniors, one for seniors and one for students with dietary requirements. Most of the food sold out and we made more than one thousand dollars. In the end it was very successful!
Bennie B
This term in unit 8 AKA The Outback we have been learning about several subjects such as: Time in maths (12 and 24 hour time and timetables), we finished our AFL lessons from last term, we redid our class start-up program primarily for our class mottos, in Literacy we are reading a new book called “Boy Overboard” by Morris Gleitzmann, we just started to do typing.com for typing lessons and we have just started on our division and HASS. (Humanities And Social Sciences). In division we are learning how to do long and short division as well as reverse multiplication. To do reverse multiplication we make up a multiplication problem, solve it and check our answer by doing it in division.
E.g. Question: 5 x 4 = 20.
Solution: 20 ÷ 5 = 4. Or 20 ÷ 4 = 5
Charlie B
At WPS it has been a tradition for students in Year 5 to be given a preschool student as their buddy and to have them in Year 6 as well. You did fun activities with them and got to help them make friends. Sadly for 2023 Year 6s and 5s did not receive buddies but a range of students in Year 6 went to Mel and Julie asking if they could give up their lunchtime to organise buddies for the Year 6 students and recently we got them. Each Year 6 student was assigned a buddy and a day they got to eat their lunch and talk to them. The whole cohort was so excited and glad that the tradition survived through Covid. Overall everybody is happy to have the honour to have a buddy!
Carla

Erwin McRae

Canteen

Yuma WPS Families,

As you may be aware this term our lovely assistant Belinda has been absent.

In her absence I've had some incredible Year 6 helpers and mamas joining me to help with the fun duties of our canteen.

I couldn't have done the last few weeks without you AWESOME PEOPLE...

A special shout out to the mummys Zoe & Catherine and students Krish, Aarav, David, James, Izumi, Evie & Ella you have each been amazing help and Belinda would be so proud of you all chipping in.

A reminder we are open for Flexischool and cash sales on Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday.

We now have $4 recess deals that can be ordered via our Flexischool menu.

Counter Sales are served during recess every open day.

Items always range from 50c-$2, cash sales only. Please keep the money to loose change its disappointing for you kiddos, when i cant break change for a $20 note.

Follow us on Facebook, its a great way to stay updated on the happenings of WPS P&C & our Canteen

https://www.facebook.com/WeetangeraPandC?mibextid=D4KYlr

Our WPS Canteen has been running amazingly, I feel so privileged to be working alongside our incredible WPS team, students and families.

As always Thank you everyone for supporting our P&C canteen with your purchases.

WPS Canteen Manager

Martina Fleeton 🌻

Communication at Weetangera

Communications_at_WPS.pdf

P&C News

Father's Day Stall

It’s time to get ready for Father’s Day, and we are here to help! Once again Angelina has put together a range of fantastic gifts for your children to choose from for the special father, grandfather, sporting coach or other paternal figure in their lives. The stall will run on the morning of Friday 1 September at the school. All gifts will be priced between $2 and $10 (cash only), and the parent and year 6 volunteers who will be running the stall would be super grateful if you could be sure to send coins and small notes.

We’re also still looking for some donations of gifts to sell. If you’re a baking whiz or know how to make some neat homemade gifts that could be sold for $10 or under, we’d love for you to send us a message, or just drop them in to the new hall on the morning.

Join us for P&C at the Pub

We’re taking this P&C show on the road! The next P&C meeting will be held at the Jamison Southern Cross Club at 6pm on Tuesday, 29 August.

We’ll be talking about Term 4 events (if you know the date of the referendum could you let us know? We’d really like to know so we can plan the BBQ and cake stall), and some of the teachers helping to organise the school’s 50^th birthday party will be joining us as well. But otherwise, it will be even less official than usual, and a chance for you to come along and ask us anything.

A number of long-standing P&C committee members are reaching the end of their time at Weetangera Primary School, and we’d love to meet the next generation of parents on the night (but no pressure to sign up to anything at the meeting – we just want you to see that we are neither beasts nor trolls).

While there, why not ask the friendly staff at the Southern Cross Club to make the Weetangera Primary P&C your Community Rewards partner for your membership? Every time someone makes us their community rewards partner, 7.5% of what they spend on food and drink at the Southern Cross Club when they swipe their membership card comes back as a donation to our school. Why not jump online and nominate us as your community partner now?It’s truly the laziest way you can raise money for our school.

Trivia results are in!

Congratulations to one of the three tables called “Weetang Clan” for their victory at our trivia night on Friday! And congratulations to the teachers on their second place result – all of your baby photos on the night were simply adorable!

We simply cannot thank Mel Bezear enough for deploying her hosting and zoo management skills on the night. Thanks also to Ben, Susan, Alison, Gab and Nicole for organising and running the night.

You all dug deep into your pockets to play silly games, purchase raffle tickets and bid on our auction items, and the night raised over $4,500 towards the new school playground.

Thanks Russ

We’d like to give a big thank you to Russ Livermore who has stepped down as the Canteen Treasurer after providing his professional services to make sure our canteen staff are paid and our ATO requirements met free of charge for the last few years.

Let’s Get Social!

Follow our social media pages to stay up to date with the latest from the P&C and canteen.

Facebook: www.facebookcom/weetangerapandc

Instagram: www.instagram.com/weetangeraschoolpandc

The P&C Committee can’t wait to see you at the Southern Cross Club!

Community Notices

Art_Gym_flyer_A.pdf

Tennis ACT is excited to announce that entries are open for the North & South Canberra Todd Woodbridge Cup.

The Todd Woodbridge Cup is not just about selecting the best students, but encouraging participation, providing a positive experience playing tennis, growing friendships, and giving students the opportunity to represent their school in a team environment. For the majority of students, this may be their first experience representing their school.

Dates & Location

North – Thursday 14^th September at Belconnen Tennis Club

South – Friday 15^th September at Canberra Grammar School

Holiday_Happenings.pdf