Weetangera Primary School Newsletter | Week 11, Term 1 2024

From Mel

Dear Weetangera Families

What an amazing term 1 for all of the learners at Weetangera Primary School. Every day I am amazed by the fabulous things our learners do, create and learn.

Weetangera Primary School Board

Recently, we held an election for the Weetangera Primary School Board. It is a pleasure to introduce your School Board for 2024:

• Julie Cooper - Weetangera Primary School Principal 
• Yehuwdiy Dillon - Board Chair
• Alison Shackleford - P&C Liaison 
• Anastasia O’Donnell – Teacher Representative – new member
• Rebecca Spoors – Teacher Representative – new member
• Vivien Bevan – Parent Representative – new member
  

We are all learners!

On Tuesday afternoon as part of our staff meeting, our teachers visited each unit so they could share the fantastic work they have been doing with their learners in term 1 and our schoolwide global concepts of Belonging and Personal Responsibility. It's always so great to see the buzz that happens as our teachers from preschool right through to 5/6 celebrate great learning. 

What a fantastic community of learners we have here at Weetangera Primary School. I'd like to thank our great staff for all the hard work they do every day, often well beyond what is expected, to ensure that our students have the best opportunities every day. I'd also like to thank our students, who are all inspired learners. And I'd like to thank you, our community, for supporting us in everthing we do. 

Even though the weather seems to be turning now, hopefully there will be enough sunny days for you to enjoy some time together as a family. We look forward to doing it all again in term 2. Happy holidays!

Mel

MelanieBezear@ed.act.edu.au

Parent Portal at Weetangera

Parent Portal is now available. It is a secure online platform used to share student information between you and your child’s teachers.

Some reminders about Parent Portal:

• If you already have a Parent Portal account, use this Parent Portal access link to start using the great features.
• You can’t access Parent Portal directly through the ACT Digital Account website, you need to use the link above.
• When you are logged into Parent Portal, we recommend saving the browser as a favourite or to the homepage on your mobile phone for quick access in the future.
• The website can only be viewed using a web browser on your computer, mobile phone or tablet. An app is not available at this time.
• If you still need to register, you will need an access key and a Parent Portal registration link via email to link your existing account to your child’s records. If you haven’t received this, please contact the school’s front office team for assistance.

Head to our website for all the details:

https://www.weetangeraps.act.edu.au/For_Parents/parent_portal

What's Happening in the Creative Kookaburras and the Curious Cockatoos

It has been a very exciting start to 2024 in both the Creative Kookaburras and the Curious Cockatoos. Our focus to start the year has been to create an environment where the children feel safe, secure and supported in their transition to preschool. The children have engaged in many activities that were designed to assist in developing a sense of belonging in the classroom, including creating a Cockatoo and Kookaburra nest that they helped to design, create and collect the resources for.

Making amazing artworks to depict themselves in a variety of medium.

And sharing with the teachers and the other children All About Me Boxes.

As the children settled into the routines at preschool, we have begun looking at the idea of exploration through dramatic play and have turned our meeting room into a pirate space. The children have explored the high seas by creating maps to show other children where their hidden treasure is, gone on treasure hunts around the preschool yard where following directions was key, battled sea beasts in their play and so much more.

Kate de Mey

What's Happening in the Koalas

“If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise
If you go down in the woods today, you'd better go in disguise
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain because
Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic

Every teddy bear who's been good is sure of a treat today
There's lots of marvellous things to eat and wonderful games to play
Beneath the trees where nobody sees
They'll hide and seek as long as they please
That's the way the teddy bears have their picnic”

Teddy Bear’s Picnic – Henry Hall https://youtu.be/dXldrIVtRRM?si=u6Q9pTr7sMEOUg5j

Wow first term of Kindergarten done! We have achieved so many wonderful things this term. We’ve done a lot of learning around the school values of respect, responsibility, inclusion, and resilience. This has been highlighted in our Class Dojo rewards! To get to our Teddy Bear’s picnic the Kindy Koalas reached 1,000 points!!

We had all our Teddy Bears join us for a day of learning, we taught them many things over the day.

In the morning, we introduced our Teddys to the class and then took them all out for a game. We have been working on our throwing and catching skills. Our poor Teddy Bears were thrown around on the oval.

We have been working hard on labelling our drawings and learning beginning sounds of words, we drew a labelled diagram of our Teddy Bears and showed them how we use Three Star and WOW drawing techniques.

For Maths, counting and recognising numbers to 10 has been our goal. In the Koala’s class we have been learning how to play Dominos. Our Teddy Bears were very keen to play alongside us in Maths.

We love our Brain Breaks in Kindy, our Teddy Bears helped us move our bodies and boogie before our next lesson. Our learning of the Global Concept of Responsibility has helped us feel to stay calm and feel supported in the classroom. We showed our Teddy Bear’s some strategies on how to stay In the green zone.

By now, our Teddy Bear’s were starving!!! We took them all outside for a picnic lunch together.

After lunch, we read to our Teddy Bears and showed them how we explore play during Inquiry time.

We can’t wait to see what the Kindy Koalas learn during our next Global Concept, Community.

Wishing all families a happy and safe holidays!

Sofia Ritman

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What's Happening in the Clever Crocodiles

The Clever Crocodiles have been very busy over the last few weeks.

We have been learning about time and how to read clocks and calendars. We have been calculating the time between important dates and events in our lives. We have also been focusing on reading time on an analogue clock and we created our own individual anchor charts to remember all the important aspects of a clock face. We decided the easiest way to remember where quarters on a clock are, is to imagine cutting a pizza into four pieces and having one quarter of a pizza at a time!

We have been learning about our zones of regulation and how to recognise what we are feeling and when. One of the ways we have been identifying our emotional triggers and regulation tools was to create a toolbox filled with our own strategies and safe places around the school.

In P.E we have been practising our forehand strike with a tennis racket. We have been practising this through a range of games and activities but on Thursday we put our skills to the test and played a version of baseball but used tennis rackets and tennis balls! We had such a fun time and almost everyone in our class made it home at least once!

Reading and writing we have been focusing on adding adjectives to our writing to make our stories more interesting. We practised this using small sentence strips. We wrote the basic sentences on a strip, folded the paper so some of it was hidden and then wrote our strong adjectives in the hidden section. We ended up with basic sentences that folded out to expanded, strong and descriptive sentences. 

Teagan Lovett

What's Happening in the Froggies

4TB ‘Froggies’ have had a great start to Year 4. Our term has been busy with lots of fun learning.

Our ‘Personal Responsibility’ unit focused on the zones of regulation and different types of responsibilities. The students used Powtoons to create short animations that could teach younger students about the different emotions in the four zones, triggers and strategies that could be helpful. We used a range of images, text styles and effects to make a creative but educational slide. We brainstormed the personal qualities, attitudes and values that we think are important. We used these words to design, on the Chromebook, a creative word cloud that is unique to us.

We have started our ‘Community’ global concept focusing on what we can learn from the First Nations Australians and their connections to culture and country. We have explored the cultural identity elements of ceremony, law, kinship, language and land. The students chose one element and wrote why it was important to them.

Our work in Science has been linked to both of our global concepts. We have learnt about the water cycle and have been able to replicate aspects of it in our cloud and evaporation experiments. We created diagrams to show how the urban water cycle works alongside the natural water cycle.'

Tricia Butters

What's Happening in The Shadows

Emily Dziubinski

Futsal Championships

Weetangera had teams compete in the ACT School Futsal Titles in both the Year 3/4 and Year 5/6 competition in recent weeks. Well done to all our representatives the way they conducted themselves both on and off the Futsal court, all students are congratulated on being good sports and always playing with enthusiasm. There were over thirty teams in each competition and to qualify for the knockout stage teams had to finish first in their group which meant winning every game.

Our Year 3/4 Girls team had two exciting wins and played particularly well in their last game in a 1-0 loss to the eventual champions, Gold Creek. Congratulations to our team who showed great energy and some dynamic individual skills in their games! Thank you to Zoe Cameron who coached the team for fostering an excellent team spirit amongst the players. The team was: Olive K, Celeste R, Julie M, Maddy B, Willa M, Ruby K, Eden L and Nila O. The Year 3/4 boys team played well to win all four of their qualifying games with some great individual skills and teamwork on display. Their first knockout game was a great battle with Jerrabomberra which ended in a one-all draw. The match was then decided by a penalty shootout and unfortunately we lost- well done to all players on the manner in which they handled this challenging experience. The team comprised of Teddy K, Henry K, Jensen I, Jack D, Lorenzo vdB, Jack G, Beau B and Archer S. Thank you to Rudi van den Bos for helping coach the team and preparing the players for each game.

The Year 5/6 Girls team started the tournament with two closely fought battles which both ended in 1-0 losses. Their last two group games saw the team click into gear, playing with great purpose and scoring some excellent goals. Congratulations girls on being competitive in all games and displaying solid defensive skills which was even more impressive as a number of the team had never played Futsal before. Players in this team were: Harriet F, Samantha H, Lucy D, Fatimatu B, Maddy O, Vera S, Misghana T and Victoria F. Our Year 5/6 Boys team won all four of their group games to qualify for the knockout stage. They played some brilliant attacking football to win both their quarter final and semi-final in commanding fashion scoring a number of exciting goals with all team members playing a role. In the final against Telopea Park, Weetangera scored an early goal and played with determination to end up one-nil winners! Congratulations to each member of the team for the way in which you played, while there were numerous excellent individual moments and Futsal skills shown, the teamwork and combination play was a standout. The team members were Lukas A, Ahan M, Kai M, Siddhik P, Aaron G, MJ J, Ejay O and Marley B. A big thanks to Nate for coaching the team, we appreciate your expertise and positive approach.

Thank you to the parents from all four of our teams for providing transport to the MPowerdome and for your great support to our players throughout the competition to help them enjoy the experience, this was much appreciated.

Erwin McRae

Belconnen Swimming Championships

At the end of March twenty-two Weetangera students competed at Belconnen Swimming at the AIS. Congratulations are extended to all our representatives for qualifying for this competition.

Students that managed a fourth or fifth place finish and who may qualify for the ACT Championships include:

Charlie J: 5th 11Y 50m Breaststroke

Kevin C: 5th 10Y 50m Backstroke

Steven Q: 4th 10 Years 50m Breaststroke

Alex B: 5th 12Y 100m Breaststroke and 100m Backstroke, 4th 50m Backstroke

Charlotte P: 5th 12 Years 50m Freestyle

Maddy B: 4th 10 Years 50m Breaststroke

We had four students who secured a top three finish to earn a Belconnen ribbon- fantastic effort!

Poppy P: 3rd 11Y 50m Butterfly

Charlotte P: 2nd 12Y 50m Breaststroke

Henry M: 1st 11Y 50m Breaststroke

Madeleine B: 1st 10Y 50m Freestyle and 1st 50m Backstroke

Other students who represented our school at the competition were: Skylar S, Alexa B-W, Celeste R, Ruby Kelly, Olivia L, Vera S, Henry G, Owen L, Jacob H, Ethan W, Charlie C, Max M, Jensen I and Ahan M.

Thank you to Tricia for taking the team and to all the parents for your support and encouragement.

Erwin McRae

Library News

Holiday Reading:

Did you know students have access to hundreds of e-books through our library system?

To borrow e-books and audio books visit https://soraapp.com  or download the free Sora app for android or IOS.

To access click on Find My School and select ACT Education and Training Directorate, then sign in using your school credentials. (student ID and password)

Students can now also access SORA through the digital backpack.

Once logged in students can access 100s of e-books and audiobooks on almost any device.

Happy holiday reading!

Stephen James

Weetangera Primary School Library

Canteen

The term has ended so very quickly, I'm in shock... Seriously 11 weeks went just like that. 

I just want you all to know we had to make some big changes this year to make sure our service could continue to stay open, supporting our school and serving our beautiful students.

Changes like Price increases, Cutting staff, Altering menus, Creating extra special lunches/fundraisers and through all of this, you all have continued to support our canteen. I say this often and mean every word, 'every lunch order keeps our window open'.

I value my role in our community and can assure you all, the children get the BEST lunches I can prepare, its my pleasure to serve your children. I treat every day in the Canteen as a privilege 🙂

This term my Senior Helper's have been incredible, eager, helpful & so very responsible.. Thanks Kiddos, you're all my favourite assistants.

The parents that have chipped in to support our canteen by volunteering are beyond Amazing.

I feel so privileged, you all deserve a biggest THANK YOU!
Without Zoe, Ivy, Paul & Alisha, I know my days would be CRAZY

I just Love being the Canteen Lady at Weetangera and know that Tina wishes you all a HAPPY, SAFE holiday break friends, I'll see your smiling faces next Term.

Martina Fleeton 🌻

PBL

Communication at Weetangera

Community Notices

The Canberra Raiders are offering a discount on tickets for their Round 6 clash this weekend.

https://premier.ticketek.com.au/shows/Show.aspx?sh=RAI0624&ep=CANGOLD24

Coming soon to Weetangera, the Physical Activity Foundation brings an amazing opportunity in the form of FOUR FUN FREE FAMILY FRIENDLY PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES

The Canberra Raiders and the NRL Canberra team are hosting our annual Maccas Masterclass Holiday Clinic on the first day of the holidays Monday 15^th April 2024. Registrations are still open and will close next Thursday. 

https://events.humanitix.com/maccas-masterclass-holiday-clinic

Futsal School' program starting on week 1 of term 2.

https://austfutsal.formstack.com/forms/actprograms24