Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Julie

Dear Families

Weetangera Primary School is now officially 50! A great achievement and an excellent week of celebrations.

During my tenure at WPS we have not had a concert so it was refreshing indeed to be able to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary, the Seventies, in all its glory and to re-interpret what we thought may have been happening 50 years ago.

With several hundred people in attendance to help celebrate all things from the seventies I would like to acknowledge the showstopping musicality of the combined Year 5/6 band, the ‘smooth’ moves of the staff and the delightful entertainment provided from the preschoolers all the way to the year 6 students.

This was the view from the concert stage @ 5.36pm. Wonderful to see so many families in attendance.

As we enter Week 6 of Term 4 teachers are preparing end of year reports. Capturing the learning accomplishments of each student and reporting this to parents is an important ‘end of year’ area of focus. Teachers pull together the learning data that demonstrates student starting points and then they continue the process of ongoing assessments, meet with year level teams to moderate outcomes and achievement, and supported by year level team leaders discuss the progress that each student has made. The comments on the report at the end of the year focus upon each student’s learning accomplishments and this is followed by an outline of the goals for learning for 2024. In this way when teacher’s ‘handover’ a student’s progress from one year to the next the 2024 classroom teacher has an understanding of the next steps in each student’s learning pathway.

Are you leaving? As the end of the year approaches families may be considering a move; across town, interstate or to a new home. Decisions are made to change schools for a wide variety of reasons and if your children are moving from Weetangera PS in 2024 could you please let the front office know. This knowledge assists us when constructing classes, planning teaching teams and for general funding purposes. The front office number is: 02-6142 2600.

Thought for the week:

A truth indeed.

Have an excellent week

Regards

Julie

Julie.cooper@ed.act.edu.au

What's Happening in the Alpacas

What an exciting and busy term it has been. We can hardly believe we are nearly at the end of Kindergarten! This week we had our final Footsteps session. We have learned some really cool dance moves. Our favourite move was making a rainbow with stinky fart fingers! We also just experienced our first ever Weetangera Concert and had the best time hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock!

The past few weeks we have been learning about measurement. We are currently exploring length and have been using different objects from around the classroom to measure and compare various items. As a provocation, we looked at The Book of Comparisons by Clive Gifford, to think about the size of different living things by comparing them with things we are familiar with, such as the size of children in kindergarten. Check out the photos to find out what AMAZING things we discovered.

Our Inquiry topic this term is called ‘Scientists at Work’. We have been delving into the things scientists do. Surprisingly, it’s not just making potions or making things explode! We have learnt that scientists ask questions. Here are some questions we asked about snow peas before we looked at them closely:

What is that green thing on top? - Harrison
Why is it called a snow pea when it is green, not white? - Chloe
Why is it green? - Tasha
Does it only grow in a green colour? - Ermuun
Why does it have bumps on both sides? - Lexi
Why does it look like it has veins? - Indra

Lauren Domio & Michelle Robinson

What's Happening in the Kookaburras

The 2023 school year is almost done,

A summer break creeps closer by every rising sun.

It’s time to look back on the things we’ve learnt,

And celebrate the progress that we’ve earnt.

The Kookaburras know more sounds than they did before,

We can segment, manipulate and blend for sure.

Whether its digraphs, long vowels or something odd,

With practice and patience we’re a super speller squad.

We can use this spelling knowledge when reading, it really is great.

To connect the sounds we know to the stories we rate.

Being a good reader means choosing a strategy from C.A.F.E,

And off we go, you can’t stop us, we’re readers, HOORAY!

Writing can be where pressure starts to mound,

Sometimes it’s hard to remember the letters for all the sounds.

This year we used our skills to draw, write, edit and publish,

Our writing goals have helped us make sure it’s not rubbish!

A different type of thinking is required for maths tasks,

Games have helped us answer questions the teacher asks.

We’ve measured, collected, identified and worked out sums in our heads,

We’ve added to our skills, Year 2 maths isn’t something we dread.

On top of all that… we’re geographers, historians, athletes and artists.

The Kookaburras have worked hard this year to be their very smartest.

“I’m so proud of you!”, that’s what Izzy said.

In Year 1 we’ve built a solid foundation for all that lies ahead!

Izzy Dunn

What's Happening in the Butterflies

In the Butterflies this term,

We have been doing some very exciting learning! Sam and I have been getting to know all our beautiful butterfly students and can’t believe how lucky we are to be teaching such amazing students!

Our literacy focus has been comprehension strategies for reading, long vowels for word work and information reports for writing. We have had lots of fun revising and extending our knowledge 🙂

In maths, we have been covering money, length, time and as always number, with a focus on division and multiplication. It sure has been fantastic to see the students solve numerous problems using new and already known strategies.

In addition to all of this action packed learning we have been investigating how to use digital technologies in our everyday learning. We have been using Chromebooks to research and inform our knowledge to aid us in writing an information report. We have also been using them to publish written work and extend our mathematical knowledge. Here we are researching the seven wonders of the world to learn about the best places on earth.

Thankyou for being so welcoming 🙂

Laura Vernon and Sam R Williams

Year 3 students have been focussing on using descriptive language and interesting vocabulary when writing. We designed some Haunted Houses and drew four special parts of each house. We shared our ideas about interesting words we could use to describe our houses. Then we wrote a persuasive sales pitch to try to sell them. Here are some snippets of our work in 3JL Falcons. Would you buy any of these?

Francis
If you dare to buy this haunted house, you will look forward to lots of ghosts moving around. If you want to come in you will see a deadly blood tree that died a million years ago.
Willa
Down the portal you will fall into a beautiful garden. Inside you will see the delightful spiders - the type that eats redbacks.
Ruby
Don’t forget the terrifying tunnel to get down to the kitchen with a bubbling pot of green goo and the bedroom with the screaming ghost and the worms that poke out of the walls.
Ebony
The kitchen comes stocked with an assortment of delicious, crunchy, squirmy bugs so you are never going to be starving and there is an immortal butler to serve you.
Jack J
I feel like master bedrooms are going out of fashion at the moment. Not to worry, this house has a wonderful master “deadroom” instead. It comes equipped with antique oak coffins for extra comfort when sleeping. A blazing chandelier hangs above and will turn on and off at your command, but be careful, because the screws attaching it to the ceiling are a bit rusty and loose.
Lousia
There’s a blood room with a blood pool, blood bath and don’t forget the blood fountain. There’s blood stained walls too. There’s heaps of creepy, deadly dolls that will haunt you.
Sachi
Dear Mr Addams, I heard that you are looking for a new spooky house. As you know, I have a mansion ready for you on 13 Skeleton Road, Pumpkinville.
April
Buy now. You will get a shock every day. Only $500 will get you the creepiest house on Spooky Lane.

Joanne Lawson

What's Happening in the Rainbow Drops

As we creep up to the end of the year, 4LT have had an amazing time engaging in our Sustainability to Survive unit.

First, we looked into what Global Warming, Fast Fashion and Ocean Pollution was. Then each student chose an area of interest to conduct further research by identifying what they already knew, what they wanted to find out then carrying out some targeted research. This newly learnt information was then put into a poster to promote knowledge about the current impact and solutions we in the community could implement to help support change. From here, each student designed a solution whether it be a machine, shop, device, app, tree planting group etc. to support with their topic. Each design was labelled, its purpose was outlined and we finally shared our ideas with the class. Positive and negative feedback was considered for each of their designs to acknowledge how feasible their innovation would be. Here are some photos of the students engaging in parts of this learning:

Louise Tominich

What's Happening in the Blazing Flames

Blazing_Flames_Term_4_Newsletter.pdf

Corinne Hannan

OzSpike Beach Volleyball Tournament

Congratulations to the OZSPIKE team of Weetangera PS

In very exciting news, the Weetangera Primary volleyball students competed in the OzSpike beach volleyball tournament today and not only did they play some wonderful games of volleyball, they won the trophy!

The last time Weetangera won the trophy was in 2018 so there was a lot of excitement as the trophy will now have a new home at Weetangera until it goes up for grabs again in Term 4 2024. The Canberra Times will also be covering this news.

It was great to again see so many Weetangera families come out and cheer on the students. Teams were coached by elite athletes from the Australian Volleyball Academy and Canberra Heat and the students looked like they really enjoyed the fun on the sand! Our Year 6 students did especially well with great serving and consistent dig/set/spikes in their rallies.

We’re looking forward to play in more tournaments in 2024!

PBL News

Newsletter_Communication_PBL.pdf

Book Fair

Book Club

Orders are due by Friday 1 December

Book Club | Scholastic Australia (link to issue 8)

2024 Student-free Days

Get planning for 2024 with upcoming student-free days
From 2024, there will be 4 student-free days for ACT public schools. These are the first day of each
school term:
• Term 1, Monday 29 January 2024
• Term 2, Monday 29 April 2024
• Term 3, Monday 22 July 2024
• Term 4, Monday 14 October 2024.

We use student-free days for staff development, enabling us to plan in a student-free environment.
Student-free planning days have been expanded from 1 to 4 days from 2024 as part of our new
Teaching Staff Enterprise Agreement which prioritises better teacher workloads for educational
leadership, teaching and learning.

For all school term dates, visit the Term Dates page: https://www.education.act.gov.au/public-school-life/term_dates_and_public_holidays

Library Volunteers

If you have an hour or so to spare and would like to assist in our library please contact Stephen James via the front office.

Any assistance provided is greatly appreciated. Contact: 6142 2600.

Please note this does not include covering books.

Communication at Weetangera

Communications_at_WPS.pdf

P & C Update

With the end of the school’s 50^th anniversary celebrations, the P&C major events for 2023 are all finished. We’re looking forward to having a little celebration of the year that was at our final meeting for the year on the evening of 5 December.

Our canteen and uniform stalls will continue until a little closer to the end of the school year. For your second hand uniform needs contact Weetangera.uniforms@gmail.com. And be sure to use the canteen while you can – don’t forget once holidays arrive you’ll have to make lunch every day for six weeks. Last canteen sales are in week 9.

If you forgot to hand in your lapathon money it’s not too late! You can still pay via direct deposit to the P&C bank account or drop your cash in to the front office in an envelope marked ‘lapathon’. We’ve already raised $6,700 from the event this year, which will all go towards the school playground upgrades.

It’s almost time to think about 2024

Did you know that all of the P&C events in 2023 were organised by just 10 people? We’d love to give an enormous thanks to this dedicated crew: Ben, Susan, Gab, Alison, Zoe, Georgina, Ruth, Nicole and especially Angelina and Kate who after many years of service to our school community have retired from P&C duties.

We are super appreciative of this group, but each of them has a family of their own and a paid job that they squeeze P&C commitments around. Some of our long term volunteers are about to ‘graduate’ as primary school parents, and it is not sustainable to hold the number of big events our P&C has run in past years unless we can share the work around a larger group.

Organising an event doesn’t mean you have to come to every meeting. Please give some thought to whether you might be able to step up and plan one of our events in 2024. It could be putting your own spin on the disco, welcome picnic or trivia, or inventing an entirely new event to take their place! We’d love to hear from you – send us an email or Facebook message, join us at a meeting, or just chat to one of us at dropoff, pickup or a birthday party sometime.

2024 fete

As we mentioned earlier in the year, the Weetangera fete is moving to an every second year model to ensure that we can continue to make it the biggest show in town. That means the fete will be back in 2024…

IF we can get a team of people together who can bring the whole thing together.

We’re on the lookout for the 2024 fete coordinators. The last three fetes have been organised by two absolute legends in Kelli and Kate, who are now looking forward to enjoying the 2024 fete with their families.

We would love to share the role around a bigger team in 2024. You could call yourselves the ‘Fete Sub-committee’ or the ‘Fabulous Fete Facilitators’, we don’t mind. A team could split the load in many different ways and have planning meetings online, at a pub or around someone’s kitchen table, here’s just one idea of what it could look like:

Volunteer coordinator
Sponsorship coordinator
Stalls and vendor coordinator
Marketing and social media officer
School liaison officer
P&C liaison officer

We’d love to hear from individuals who want to express interest in being part of the team as an individual, or a group of people who might like to be the team together – after all, if you’re going to organise a fete with some people you want to be sure that you like them!

The previous fete coordinators are happy to provide some handover and training, and to offer words of wisdom and guidance. Our P&C Executive will also be with you the entire way. If you would like to know more, or are ready to commit, email Ben at Weetangera.pc.president@gmail.com, have a chat to any member of the P&C any time or any place, or join us at the next P&C meeting on 5 December.

(And if you organise the fete we promise not to ask you to do anything else for the P&C in 2024, or 2025 for that matter.)

Stay social

Stay in touch with us through our social media pages – even when we’re on break over summer we promise to schedule some excellent memes:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/weetangerapandc

Instagram: @weetangeraschoolpandc

Community Rewards

Through November the Southern Cross Club is doubling the value of their rewards points! If you haven’t already, head to www.cscc.com.au/rewards and nominate Weetangera Primary School P&C as your community rewards partner.