Weetangera Primary School Newsletter | Week 9, Term 2 2024
From Julie
Dear Families
As we head into the depths of winter, the end of the term, the holiday period, and the addition of more warm layers I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to reflect upon Term 2 and where we are up to.
I would like to begin by acknowledging the work of a small band of parents who consistently provide interesting activities and opportunities to connect, the very resourceful and supportive P&C.
Last Friday, 21 June this band of committed connectors conducted a ‘Movie Night’. Perhaps you were thinking … goodness, it’s cold, I’m busy and going out again after coming home can be a challenge. And yep, it can be! But there they all were setting up the fairy lights, ensuring the movie was ready to go, putting out chairs, mats and fancy bean bags, making popcorn, preparing snacks to purchase and generally getting ready for the gathering.
Why do they do this? Because they have a strong belief that the building of community in our school is an important opportunity. And while they may have wondered at various stages….. who is really listening to the movie …. what the fabulous team of helpers did was to embrace the community of parents, students and families that attended on Friday evening. Did they make any money? I am not sure, their purpose was supporting our school and doing something a little differently. So, from me to the P&C I thank you for your work.
Please know that there are opportunities for you to be involved; you will see their contact details and notifications every fortnight in the newsletter. Remembering many hands make light work and with a fete coming up in Term 4 I look forward to another unique experience for our school. So ask them what can you do to help?
Thank you P&C, you all ROCK!!!
The Athletics Carnival was an excellent experience. It wasn’t too cold, it didn’t rain, the buses arrived (mostly on time) and at the Charnwood Oval the students in Years 2 to 6 gathered and got ready for the races, the long jump, the discus, the shotput and the javelin. The day was incredible, and many many students rose to the occasion and participated in the events of the day. Back at school the juniors also had excitement and I have heard that there is a queue of students who are now very capable egg and spoon racers. And again, the P&C Canteen was in attendance providing scrumptious goodies for your children.
Semester One Reports are completed, with a great feeling of relief from all of the staff. The reports will be sent, electronically, to families on Friday, 28 June and barring challenges with the SAS Data tool that dispenses the reports, every family should receive their child/ren’s reports by Friday evening. Please note if you do not receive the report over the weekend, let the front office know on Monday morning. Monday morning also being 1 July 2024.
Please ensure, in line with the reports, that you have booked in for your family meetings. These will occur, as per usual in the Library and are an opportunity to discuss your child’s learning and progress over the period of 2024.
The very first section of the playground upgrades have been completed. Thank you to Mel Bezear for leading the way with this work. As we work through the design, the next steps, ascertaining directions and planning forward to build and enhance the playground you will see requests to consider; What will we do next? The students and staff will also be consulted regarding the plans and we look to everyone having a say in what’s next. Again thank you to the P&C whose active involvement in the process and the fundraising has been a most important component of getting the planning from stage 1 and then into the making of a plan for stage 2.
Term 2 has been a productive and informative one and our students have continued to build their learning capacity. Understanding their obligations as learners and developing skills that will go with them from now and into their futures. The PBL Team; Positive Behaviours for Learning team, have actively supported and enhanced the work of learning at Weetangera through their guidance in deepening our understanding and application of the schools inherent values of Respect – Resilience – Inclusion and Responsibility in all setting at school.
An enormous thank you to our families for your generous support of the staff at Weetangera from the respectful communications in the front office through to your communications and support of your children and our staff. Together we all make a high-functioning team with the very clear purpose of ensuring that each and everyone one of our students has the most successful and engaged day of learning possible.
My thought for the week was this:
So for all of us…………… we can’t really ask for more than this:
Have a great holiday when you get to it at the end of next week and please put this in your diaries: Monday, 22 July is a PUPIL FREE Day. Each day one of every term each year is now a pupil free day.
To email me directly, for any reason, please use this address: Julie.cooper@ed.act.edu.au
Regards
Julie
Julie.cooper@ed.act.edu.au
Playground Update
In case you missed it in our last newsletter, we are now looking to stage 2 of our playground update. We will be talking to staff, students, the P&C and our community to work out what will be our next best step. If you would like to have a say, please complete this survey.
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
School Photos
School photos were sent home last week. There are extra photos available for students that participated in the following activities: School Leaders, House Captains, Year 5 Band, Year 6 Band. For information on how to order these photos, please see the flyer below.
Parenting Programs
What's Happening in the Beetles
This term, 1HD Beetles have been busy focusing on the global concept ‘Sustainability’. As part of our learning, we have discovered:
- why different places are located where they are
- how to represent natural, managed and constructed features on a map
- what are the natural, managed and constructed features in our community
- why places change and how to care for them
- how Weetangera School has changed
- why nature is important to First Nations people
- ways to care for a place
- what plants need in a place
- how the seasons impact plants.
Through this learning, we have had opportunities to create maps of the school and use symbols, colours and labels to show natural, managed and constructed places, make a promise stone to pledge how we will be custodians (look after and protect) the land, create an informative poster demonstrating the basic needs of a plant, using visual art techniques, perform scientific investigations into what plants need to survive in a place and we are excited to be going on an excursion to the Australian National Botanical Gardens later this week to add to our knowledge of sustainability.
We hope you enjoy the photos of our learning!
Hayley Dix
What's Happening in the Elves
4LT have been totally engaged in the Global Concept ‘Community’. Throughout the term we have been unpacking how our First Nations People had a sense of community and connection to each other and the land. We also explored ways that we now use the land and our community to connect and come together. You will see a lot of visual art and posters around our rooms expressing our interpretations of indigenous artworks and how we can be inspired to create our own art using similar concepts and methods. We have just started our next Global Concept of Sustainability, where we are exploring the properties of materials such as paper, plastic, metals, wood, glass and fabrics for their environmental impact and suitability for different purposes. Keep a look out for photos on Seesaw of the experiments we are conducting to test the properties of some materials for strength, absorbency and usefulness. Our next step is to investigate the rubbish situation that the unit is collecting over a day and come up with a lunch box design to minimise our global footprint. Feel free to send in any unwanted boxes and craft supplies, as the students will be making a blueprint then a prototype of their lunchbox. We can’t wait to see what the students come up with!
Louise Tominich
What's Happening in the Green Machines
This term Year 5/6 have been studying biomes as part of the Global Concept of Communities. We learnt about various biomes on earth and studied topics such as the main characteristics of the biome, animal adaptations, plant adaptations and how the land has been used by human communities. Students researched their chosen biome, took notes and tried to find relevant information. With these notes they then transferred their dot points into paragraphs with the goal being to write in student-friendly language. Students placed their information into paragraphs on the four main topics and then used the Thinglink website to create a diorama for their final product. Below are some of our reflections on this unit or a summary of the key features of the particular biome they studied.
Elva CB -Located in North Africa, the Sahara is the world's largest hot desert, and the average highest temperature can get up to 30c. Every 20,000 years the Sahara goes through the monsoon shift, causing the desert to turn into a savannah. A savannah is a grassy area of land. This monsoon shift is due to the angle of the earth's axis change, which causes Africa to monsoon shift. The Sahara is teeming with life, thousands of animal species living within its borders. The Sahara Desert is slowly growing, currently covering eleven countries, and soon to cover more. If the Sahara keeps growing it will take up all of Africa, leaving no resources for humans to survive. In the Sahara there is very little rainfall, coming to about 25 millimetres each year. The Sahara possesses topographical features such as shallow basins, large oasis depressions, plateaus covered with rocks, and mountains. The majority of the Sahara is made up of barren rocky plateaus as well as salt flats. It is covered in hamadas or rocky deserts due to sand deflation. The highest Saharan feature is a volcano called the Emi Koussi Volcano, standing at 3,415 metres tall. While learning about the Sahara, I learnt about monsoon shifts, what features a desert may have, and that the Sahara used to be a grassy oasis. I found all of this information very interesting, and would especially love to learn more about monsoon shifts, and where else they happen.
Kevin C - In Year 5/6 we have been focusing on the global concept of Communities. Looking into communities, we found out that many animals have adapted to survive in their environment. These adaptations include behavioural adaptations, structural adaptations and last but certainly not least, physiological adaptations. We researched how animals have adapted to survive in different environments and this took us on a journey into the incredible climate, history, animals, vegetation and human impacts to the different biomes of the world. After our research we decided to treat ourselves with a little fun, so we created a virtual diorama on Thinglink and an information report on our chosen biomes. Overall it has been fun and interesting to research the different characteristics of different biomes and the problems causing the animal life in them to decrease. Great work Year 5/6!
Dora SF - The Amazon Rainforest is a unique biome with several million varieties of flora and fauna. It is centuries old and was created in the Eocene era (56 to 33.9 million years ago) during a global reduction of tropical temperatures. Being the biggest rainforest in the world it has a big role to play with climate change and other environmental issues. It is shrinking and we are slowly losing animals and plants to invasive species, and it's playing quite a big role in global warming. The Amazon has four main tribes that live there including the Yanomami tribe and the Kayapo Tribe and they do some really interesting things to survive. But it's not just the indigenous that use the Amazon, Brazil gets most of its crops and natural resources from there. The climate in the Amazon is challenging, this means that during the day it's hot and humid but dipping a lot at night, relief from the overwhelming heat of the day.
Lottie F - A biome is an area of land/nature. It is a natural area of land that could have a hot dry climate like a desert or cold and snowy climate like a tundra, and may have many animals or not many, lots of vegetation or none. A biome could be any type of natural land. I've chosen the Canadian Prairies, a grassland biome in Canada. The Prairies take up 20% of Canada’s land area. Canadian Prairies grow some of the most important crops for North America, e.g. wheat, oats, barley and mustard. The Prairies have amazing plants and animals and the northern plains are as big as California and Nevada (two large states in the USA). I was shocked to find out that only 18% of short grass remains in the prairies due to over-farming and crops! Biomes are found all over the world and I enjoyed researching and putting all my ideas into my information report and using Thinglink, that was really fun!
Alisha A - The Sahara Desert is a well known desert located in North Africa, in fact the Sahara takes up 25% of this region. The Desert’s climate varies from 30°C to -2°C at night and that’s why most animals have made adaptations according to the weather and that’s not even it! Animals including crocodiles, lions, Fennec foxes, camels and many more have various other adaptations such as having fur the same colour as the sand, long eye-lashes to keep sand out and fur-covered feet to keep their feet from burning and many more that help them survive. Animals aren’t the only thing that have made adaptations, plants have adapted to their environment too, but how? They are just plants! Well, plants in the Sahara have various ways of adapting including adapting to extreme weather, drought resistance and roots that go well into the ground in search of water. These are some of the adaptations that plants and animals have made to survive and obviously it depends on the biome.
In Maths this term students studied topics such as mapping, area and perimeter, volume, angles, grid coordinates and cartesian coordinates and we learnt skills such as connecting objects to their 2D nets and how to calculate the area of a 2D shape and the volume of a 3D object. The project that went with this study was to design and create a mini-golf course with these features. The photos show some of our creative and interesting designs!
Other topics studied in maths in recent weeks include factors and multiples, prime and composite numbers, square numbers before we moved on to multiplication including solving written word problems. Some of the key components of this include interpreting the question, finding the relevant information, working out which operation to use and then combining all this with accurate working out to solve the problem!
Well done Green Machines on a successful and enjoyable first semester and I can’t wait to work with our class into the second half of the year!
Erwin McRae
Tennis
A huge congratulations to Alex B from Year 5/6 who has been selected to represent the ACT at the School Sport Australia 12&Under Tennis Championships in Darwin in August. Alex will play a mixture of singles and doubles matches and have the opportunity to play against some of the best young tennis players from all over Australia. All the best for an enjoyable and successful tournament Alex! We hope you enjoy the experience and look forward to hearing about your adventure!
Erwin McRae
Library News
SORA e-books
Don't forget over the holidays you can borrow E-books and Audio books through Sora.
The Sora Sweet Reads free promotions is continuing until August 26. There is no limit to the number of times a title can be borrowed during the SORA Sweet Read promotion. Students can borrow up to 10 titles at one time and the loan period is for two weeks.
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. Once logged in you can access 1000s of e-books and audiobooks on almost any device. Sora is also available through the digital backpack.
Communication at Weetangera
PBL
P&C Update
Weetangera adults, the best night of the year is here! Tickets for the Weetangera Primary Trivia Night are on sale now.
Put your thinking caps on and gather your friends on Friday, 9th August from 6:30-10pm, at the Labor Club Belconnen.
Featuring a wide range of trivia categories and hosted by our very own Deputy Principal Mel, this promises to be an unforgettable night with questions, games and fantastic prizes. So get your table of 10 together (or buy a smaller number of tickets and let us match you with some new friends) and book now!
Tickets are $15 each and only available at EventBrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/weetangera-primary-school-2024-trivia-night-tickets-927208183637
Movie night – thank you!
What a great (and LOUD!) time we all had at the movie night last week. Everyone had a great evening, and we raised over $800 towards our school playground upgrades. We’d especially like to thank Paul and the team for organising such a great event, LSA Brennan for being our IT whiz and the tireless Glen for helping us with getting into the space and all set up.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can make this night even better in 2025. Send us a message on Facebook or Instagram, or just grab a P&C member at drop off or pick up sometime to share your views.
Are you our White Elephant Stall Coordinator?
No school fete is complete without the White Elephant (or Bric-a-Brac) Stall, so that fete attendees can come with nothing and leave with everything that they never knew they needed. We’re looking for a volunteer to coordinate this stall in 2024. This role is mostly limited to fete weekend and involves:
- Setting up the stall the day before the fete
- Accepting donations (or politely saying no thank you to things we can’t sell)
- Leading a team of volunteers on fete day to sell items
If this sounds like something you can help with, contact Susan at weetangeraprimaryfete@gmail.com for more information.
Thanks Year 5 and 6
Over the last term our year 5 and 6 students have been busily making and voting on designs for our new school fete logo. Introducing our new fete logo and motto “Come with nothing! Leave with everything”. Keep an eye out for this on signage around the school and suburb in the coming months.
Do you know how to write grants?
The P&C would love to be able to write applications for more grants and help turbo charge our fundraising for the playground upgrades, but we need help from people who know a bit about how to successfully write a grant application. If this is you, contact our President Akshay at Weetangera.pc.president@gmail.com and we’ll be in touch when we could use a hand.
Stay in touch!
To keep up with all the latest from the P&C, like and follow us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/weetangerapandc) and Instagram (@weetangeraschoolpandc).
Canteen
Families & Friends,
I want to express deep gratitude to our school community, our dedicated senior helpers, and my amazing canteen friends who volunteer their time at events and within our kitchen. Together, we've made our canteen a special place for our beloved children. A space to pop in for chat when we can't find our friends, a place to buy treats and get hot lunches, a safe place that guarantees a fresh lunch of our choice when something unfortunate has happened to ours from home.. a place that brings smiles and enjoyment with the service and food provided.
Let's cherish these moments with our families during the holidays, they're what matter, making positive memories. These holidays spend quality time together, get some inspiration from Tina and whip up a batch of our fruit muffins together. Enjoy your children because we won't have these kiddos at home forever and that's a thought that is only a blink away. Be safe, Be Kind to one another, role model the adults we want our children to become.
Love, Martina aka Cantina 🌻
Community Notices
Family-friendly programming at the NFSA
The NFSA in Acton is screening a selection of sports classics and well-loved family movies during the July school holidays, including A League of Their Own, Cool Runnings, Bend It Like Beckham, Howl’s Moving Castle and Lilo & Stitch. The NFSA building is open daily to explore before or after the screening, including pop culture curiosities on display in The Library and locally roasted coffee available to enjoy in the onsite cafe or sunny courtyard.
A League of Their Own | 6 pm, Fri 5 Jul
Two sisters join the first female professional baseball league and fight to prove that women have a place in sports in this critically acclaimed hit inspired by true events.
Cool Runnings | 1 pm, Thu 11 Jul
A feel-good family film about striving to achieve your goals – no matter the odds – loosely based on the true story of the first Jamaican bobsled team to compete at the Olympics.
Bend It Like Beckham | 1 pm, Fri 12 Jul
Sporting talent, family expectations and friendship collide in this heartfelt coming-of-age comedy about two young women who bond over their shared love of football.
Howl’s Moving Castle | 1 pm, Thu 18 Jul
The Wizard of Oz meets anime magic in this heart-warming fantasy adventure from Studio Ghibli. Selling fast!
Lilo & Stitch | 1 pm, Fri 19 Jul
Extraterrestrial experiment Stitch and young Hawaiian orphan Lilo find unlikely connection (and much chaos) in this treasured Disney animation.