Weetangera Primary School eNewsletter

From Julie

Dear Families

Welcome to Week 3 of Term 1.

A huge shout out to Kindergarten from Heidi, who does an awesome task of sorting through all of the lost, misplaced, named and unnamed items of clothing, not ONE SINGLE item in the already HUGE pile of clothing that is our ‘lost’ clothing, not one of those items belonged to Kindergarten. A great reminder to all of our students is that if Kindergarten can keep track of most of their stuff, most of the time, then everybody else should be able to do the same. I look forward to the day when the only items in the clothing pool are recycled, second hand items looking for a new home.

And if you can spare some time Heidi is in the Hall every/most Friday mornings after drop off and would very much appreciate your help.

Coming very soon is a new tool called the Parent Portal. This is a secure on-line platform used to share student information between families and teachers. You will be able to

Notify us if your child is sick or to explain an absence
Book parent /teacher meetings – NOT the ones coming up next week though. Please continue to use the current process
Receive academic reports
Receive our school newsletter
Receive messages from your child’s teacher
Make payments
Access the school calendar and timetable

Shortly you will receive further information describing the sign up and identity verification process.

Please keep an eye out for the next steps.

Next week teachers begin the process of Getting to Know You Meetings. These meetings are designed for families to share information about each of their children. They are not designed for teachers to report on progress to date but an excellent opportunity to share with staff the things about your child that make your heart sing, your eyes lights up and gives teachers a deeper insight into their interests, areas of expertise and other aspects of your child as a learner. As usual the meetings take place in the library. I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible joining the conversation.

This week you will note that staff are beginning to write their newsletter items, an opportunity that enhances your understanding of what students across the school are doing when they are engaged in that long list of nothings that take up 6 hours of their day each day of the week.

My thought for the week:

Have an excellent weekend.

Enjoy the fast and the slow bits of spending time with your families

Regards

Julie

Julie.cooper@ed.act.edu.au

Parent Portal at Weetangera

We think it's important for everyone in the Weetangera Primary School community to understand how things work. Each fortnight we will share some information about our processes and procedures for lots of different things at school.

This week, please read below to find out more about how we support each of our students to make sure they can learn in the best possible way.

Student Support at Weetangera Primary School

Differentiation at Weetangera Primary School

Document archives

What's Happening in the Caterpillars

Hello and Welcome to the Caterpillars class,

We have spent the first few weeks of school getting to know each other and exploring places we feel we BELONG.

This started with us brainstorming our ideas about belonging. Lots of the caterpillars could explain that a belonging is something that you own. After some more questioning and an activity called ‘What doesn’t belong?’, we came to the conclusion that belonging is when there is something in common.

Our next few sessions we explored Google Earth and added different points around the world, within Australia and within Canberra. We discovered that the place we belonged had a lot to do with where our families were from, where we spent special times with our families, and places we visited for different reasons. We shared stories that connect us to these places and show we belong.

During our belonging mapping activity, we discovered the WHOLE Caterpillars class belong in Canberra, because that is where we live and we all belong at Weetangera Primary because that’s where we go to school! Once we discovered this we investigated how our school values of RESPECT, RESPONSIBILITY, RESILIENCE AND INCLUSION help us belong at school.

To show our remembering and understanding about BELONGING, we have created a minibook. After each lesson we fill one page with our ideas, answering the focus questions for that session. At the time of writing this piece, they are still under construction. But please enjoy a few photos of what we have completed so far!

Izzy Dunn

What's Happening in the Wedge-Tail Eagles

Welcome to a new year, new class, we are The Wedge-Tail Eagles getting ready to soar into our learning and success.

Over the past couple of weeks, The Wedge-Tail Eagles have been focusing on the Global Concept of ‘Belonging’. We have been setting up our classroom by completing the ‘Start Up’ program which is a whole school approach. The ‘Start Up’ program looks at how we belong to our class and school. As a part of this program, we discussed who we are, the five whys (why do we come to school?), the school's values, what makes an inspired learner and teacher, and what we need in our survival kit when we come to school. Before we thought about what we would need in our ‘School Survival Kit’, we did an activity where we pretended we were stranded on a deserted island and we had to work in groups to decide what we needed in our deserted island survival kit. We had to think of reasons why we needed to take certain items and why we wouldn’t take others, resulting in some really interesting discussions. We then discussed what we needed in our ‘School Survival Kit’, some of the ideas we came up with were;

Making sure we brought our school bag with food and water.
Being dressed and being ready for school in the right clothing.
Materials for learning.
A positive attitude and a smile.
Personality and happiness.
A thinking brain.

During Reader’s Workshop, we have been developing our knowledge of the reading strategy, visualising. We know that good readers read for a variety of purposes. They use different strategies to help them connect with their text. For one of the visualising activities we listened to the text ‘Imagine’ by Alison Lester. While listening to the text we didn’t look at any of the pictures, we used the visualising strategy to imagine what the pictures might look like by tuning into key words. Afterwards, we created an image to suit the text and then we shared our images, while reading the text again with the pictures.

During mathematics, we have been learning about place value; knowing how to read, write and make numbers. We have also learnt a few maths games to help develop our understanding of number and mathematical thinking. Ask if we can share some of the games we have learned with you!

We’ve had a great start to the year!!

Thanks for all your support!

Megan Ferdinand

Welcome to 4AS ‘The Wishing Spells’ named after the novel, The Land of Stories by Chris Colfer. To begin the year, 4AS have been focusing on setting up our classroom for a successful year of learning. We have been learning about our school values and how we show them in the classroom and around the school. Learning all about each other and the things we share in common help us identify the type of class we want to be.

At the beginning of the term, we created ‘all about me crocs’! Students decorated their croc shoe and then designed gems to be stuck on the croc shoe as decoration. Each gem represented something about their personality, such as their favourite book, colour, subject or animal. We had lots of fun sharing our favourite things and making our croc shoe unique to us.

We also did some Pete Cromer inspired artwork. This was based on the birds that stand for the school's four values. Students chose either a cockatoo for resilience, galah for respect, magpie for responsibility and an eastern rosella for inclusion. Students designed their own bird and then wrote a reflection about why they chose that bird, and how they demonstrate that value in the classroom and around the school.

We have had a great start to 2024 and are looking forward to a fantastic year.

Alex Spencer

What's Happening in the Thingamabobs

5_6CH_Newlsetter_Item_Term_1.pdf

Corinne Hannan

Canteen

Happy 3 weeks of school 2024!!

The canteen has been thriving with our counter service and the kiddos have been buying out the stock EVERYDAY.

This week I wanted to do a shout out to our new Canteen Helpers which started up this week.

We have introduced year 5s to this year's roster and it looks like everyone should 2 turns this year joining me in the kitchen.

The kiddos help with counter service, trash removal and delivery of lunches to classrooms.

This is an awesome way to promote contributing to our school community, building their confidence and the ideas of work & team practices.

I encourage the children to be respectful and responsible while at "work" and I love how enthusiastic they are to help me out however they can.

I'll try post photos in the newsletters so you can see your little/big ones being the amazing Helpers they are.

This week I had Vix, Misghana, Tom, Gus, Lucy & Lara

As I always say THANK YOU for each and every order, they all go towards supporting our WPS canteen which provides the children of Weetangera with fresh healthy lunches and all profits go straight back into our beautiful school.

Martina 🌻

School Photography Day

Given below are the dates for upcoming School Photography Day for 2024

Friday 15 March 2024 (Term 1/Week 7) – Preschool Photo Day, End of the Week Preschool Group – (Sibling photos will be taken between 8:45am and 9:00am Location - Preschool)

Tuesday 19 March 2024 (Term 1/Week 8) – Main School Photo Day (Sibling photos will be taken between 8:30am and 9:00am Location – New Hall Unit 7)

Monday 25 March 2024 (Term 1/Week 9) – Preschool Photo Day, Beginning of the Week Preschool Group - (Sibling photos will be taken between 1:00pm and 1:30pm Location - Preschool)

Students will not receive individual envelopes. Parents are encouraged to use the online school order code to order student photos and sibling photos.

Online Payments - We encourage parents to pay online before the School Photography Day. An online school order code is located on the flyer - www.theschoolphotographer.com.au.There are no individual student order codes.

Sibling Photos – In order for The School Photographer to provide the school with a list of sibling orders, the online ordering of sibling photos will be temporarily disabled one working day prior to photo day and re-open after all photo days are finalised. All students & families (if presented) will be photographed regardless of payment.
Sibling Photos are taken of siblings who attend the school only. Time and location for sibling photos are given above.
Cash Orders – via envelope. Please see Front Office
ALL STUDENT PHOTO ENQUIRIES – Parents to contact The School Photographer.

Email enquiries@theschoolphotographer.com.au or call: 02 9674 9824

Weetangera_School_Elite_FLYER_A5.pdf

Weetangera_School_Elite_SAMPLE_ENV.pdf

Christian Education in Schools

Christian Education in Schools volunteers will provide a session on Weetangera PS on Monday 25 March, 1.45-2.45pm. This session will be provided only to students that have opted in via the permission note. Please visit the school front office to get a copy of the permission form.

Library News

Scholastic book club issue one orders are due by 19 February

Book Club | Scholastic Australia (link to issue 1)

Volunteers Wanted

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.

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

P & C Update

Hello, and well done to you all on another week of uniforms, lunchboxes and tired afternoons!

First up, a big thanks to all the families who stuck around for a chat, a play and to snag a free snag at our Welcome Back to School picnic last Friday - it was wonderful to spend some time together. A special thanks to Blackshaw Real Estate for their help manning the hotplates and feeding our hungry kiddos.

Our Annual General Meeting will be held next Tuesday, 20th February, at 6pm in the school library (enter via the front office). P&C meetings are friendly and informal; a chance for us to collaborate on ideas for school events, hear first hand from our school Principal and Deputy about what’s happening on their end, and connect with each other all for the benefit of supporting our children to have the best possible experience at Weetangera PS.

At the AGM we will also be re-filling the positions of President, Vice-President, Secretary, Public Officer and Treasurer. None of these roles are onerous, nor will their occupants be expected to work in isolation. They are, however, a great way to contribute to our school community. For anyone not seeking a title we always need as many general members as are willing!

We welcome and encourage (plead with) you to come along.