Weetangera Primary School Newsletter | Week 1, Term 2 2022

From Mel

Dear Families

I hope you had a safe, happy and restful school holidays. It's been a nice start to term two, with our students excited to see their friends and get back to learning. Things are starting to look a little more normal, and we are very happy to be able to open the library next week during lunchtime Tuesday-Friday. 

It was an absolute pleasure to participate in our two ANZAC Day assemblies this morning. The students were very respectful and settled, especially as it's been a long time since they have participated in any assembly. For our little ones, it was their first! Well done to everyone involved. 

Update on transportable building

As you may have noticed, the brick foundations have been laid for the new transportable building, and at this stage we are hoping to be able to use the building by the end of May, with students moved in before the end of term. It will be wonderful to be able to use the space differently in our school. 

COVID-19 Restrictions

Last week, you received a letter from the Education Directorate's Director-General Katy Haire regarding COVID-19 restrictions. Please see the link below for this document. While we are still unable to have parents attend inside the buildings, we can have parents and carers attend events such as the cross country carnival, being held next Tuesday 3 May. If you are able, I encourage you to attend to see our students in action. As always, if you do attend, please observe COVID-safe guidelines and maintain appropriate physical distancing. 

Also a reminder to please ensure that your children do not attend school if they are demonstrating any COVID-like symptoms. Please contact the front office to let them know if this is the case. 

There are some events coming up that will give you an opportunity to support Weetangera School and get involved in our school community. Please see below information about the upcoming Mother's Day raffle which helps raise money for our school, and see below how you can get involved in the P&C's election day fundraising BBQ. 

I have enjoyed meeting more people in our school community over the past few weeks, and I am looking forward to meeting more of you. Please don't hesitate to say hi or stop for a chat if you see me out on the playground. 

Have a great weekend. 

Mel 

What's happening in Preschool

Making Friends and being at school  

In Preschool we have been learning all about making friends and being at school for the first time. We have worked on setting up class expectations using the text; The Wild Guide to Starting School by Laura and Philip Bunting. The story goes through a super-simple guide to prepare for all of the new things that school brings. From first-day feelings to making friends, drop-off to home time, and everything in between.

We are learning to…

• Share, take turns and work collaboratively with others 
• Become aware of, and use the social language associated with making friends, sharing and turn taking 

So we can… 

• Work effectively with others 
• Communicate my needs with others 
• Share, take turns and cooperate

We do this when… 

• we play “Get-to-Know-You’ games as a class 
• we observe teachers role playing social situations using puppets and participating in follow up discussions 
• listened to stories about friends and sharing 
• participate in a variety of planned and spontaneous learning experiences involving others

Preschool has been enjoying starting school and is looking forward to this big year of learning to come!

Sofia Ritman and Virginia Hambly

What's happening in The Peanuts

At the end of last term during our writing sessions we unpacked how authors effectively write to inform their audience. 

Together our class read through and unpacked a variety of information paragraphs and came up with our own success criteria. As readers we could identify the elements that made the example paragraphs effective. We used this knowledge to clearly outline what we needed to do to be successful when writing to inform. 

This is the brief outline of what our class thought was the success criteria when writing to inform:

We then specifically looked at creating a clear and engaging topic sentence. Here are some examples of how we recrafted simple topic sentences to become more specific and engaging.

Next we used our collated success criteria to start drafting a paragraph. We began by researching the Sumatran Rhinoceros. We organised our notes together as a class and came up with three clear topics:

-what is the Sumatran Rhinoceros

-its population and endangerment

-and genetic diversity. 

Independently we chose one of these topics to create a draft paragraph of. Here are some of our examples:

Where to next?

We will be using this to create paragraphs linked to our geography unit of work on Asia. We will each select a country to research and will create paragraphs to inform our audience about some of the natural and man made features that can be found in our selected country. We will go through the writing cycle of planning, researching, drafting, recrafting, editing and publishing. 

Watch out for our updates on Seesaw of our fantastic writing!

ANZAC Day Assembly

On Friday 29 April, we held ANZAC Day assemblies for our junior and senior cohorts. These are the first assemblies that we have conducted since 2020. Despite this, Weetangera students were patient, engaged and respectful as we commemorated ANZAC Day. 

NAPLAN 2022

Students in years 3 and 5 will be undertaking NAPLAN Online Testing this term. During weeks 3 and 4, students will be completing various tests. A timetable will be sent home in the coming days.

NAPLAN Online allows for tailored testing. This means that student are presented with sets of questions based on their performance during the test. This model provides students with the opportunity to better demonstrate their range of literacy and numeracy skills and it is more engaging for students. Further information explaining tailored testing can be found at https://bit.ly/2PgG7rL.

If you have any questions or wish to discuss your son or daughter’s participation in this event, please contact Erwin McRae erwin.mcrae@ed.act.edu.au or Kate North kate.north@ed.act.edu.au.

Further information on NAPLAN Online, including the public demonstration site, is available at www.nap.edu.au/online-assessment/naplan-online.

Privacy

The Education Directorate collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information to carry out its functions. Personal information about students and parents/carers will be used as part of NAPLAN Online testing and readiness tests. The use of this information is required for students to participate in NAPLAN testing, provide reports to parents and schools and to undertake research and compile statistics using anonymised data. More detail on how we handle your information is available in the Education Directorate Privacy Policy available at https://bit.ly/2ZYzdtn

As part of undertaking NAPLAN Online, the Education Directorate works closely with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) and Education Services Australia (ESA). ESA operates the NAPLAN Online platform which will contain personal information. ACARA will collect anonymised information about each student who takes the test online from the Education Directorate.

Further information on how ACARA and ESA protect privacy is available through the ACARA privacy infographic https://bit.ly/3uA6YiR and ESA Privacy Policy www.esa.edu.au/other/privacy.

Mother's Day Raffle

Our Mother’s Day raffle is now live and our four gift hampers are just what mum needs.  We have received some amazing donations from local businesses, To All My Friends, Astral Float Studio, Quintessence Nail & Beauty, Wattlebird Canberra and Hide ‘n’ Sew. The first prize basket is work over $350 so don’t miss out!

Canteen - Position Vacant

Canteen casual paid position - vacant

The Weetangera Primary P&C Canteen is looking for someone to fill a regular Friday shift working from 9.00am to 2.00pm during the school term and ideally be available on-call for Wednesday and Thursday if other staff are unable to fill their shifts.

The work is quite physical and requires a lot of time on your feet, so you will need to be fit and healthy. It would be great if you had an interest in healthy food and enjoy working in a school environment with children.

You will need to be hold a Working with Vulnerable People (WWVP) Card, or be eligible to receive one and have applied for it.

Please send expressions of Interest to wpscanteen@gmail.com or weetangera.pc.president@gmail.com

P&C News

The Weetangera Primary School P&C is up and running for 2022, with lots of wonderful stuff planned already. Please see below for an update. 

HELP REQUIRED! The P&C are looking for volunteers to help with the Election Day BBQ on Saturday, 21 May 2022. If you can lend a hand please send an email to weetangera.pc.president@gmail.com

Community Notices