Weetangera Primary School Newsletter | Week 9, Term 2 2025

From Julie

SEMESTER ONE REPORTS:

This afternoon you will receive your child/ren’s semester one report into your inbox. Please let the front office know if you don’t receive the report and this will be rectified ASAP. Occasionally this occurs because you may have changed the email address that we have on our records, please ensure that you update any changes ASAP and this enables the correct information to reach you.

Additionally, you will have received an invitation to choose a time to meet with the teaching staff next week. Parent teacher conversations provide opportunities to celebrate the student’s success, ask questions about the work of learning and provide input into the next steps in learning for semester two. All parent teacher conversations occur in the library and we look forward to seeing you there.

GEOTHERMAL DRILLING:

The drilling continues and I understand that many of the holes have been drilled. It has been a slower process than anticipated and consequently drilling will now continue through the holidays and into Term 3. I appreciate that the play pod area now looks like an enormous mud pit, it will be rehabilitated once the drilling is complete.

Setting the parameters for acceptable noise in our school has been a key challenge for the construction project and for the school. Recently ‘noise blankets’ have been added to the external fencing in the hope of reducing the ongoing noise, other solutions are being sought to contain the impacts both within our setting and in our community.

A message from the ACT CBR team responsible for the electrification of gas assets should have been delivered to families within the immediate area, from their communication I have copied this information:

We understand that construction can cause temporary inconvenience and we are working closely with contractors to minimise disruption to the school and community.

If you have questions about this project, contact us by calling 1800 956 409 or emailing infrastructurecanberra@act.gov.au

To speak to someone in a language other than English, telephone the Telephone Interpreter Service (TIS) 13 14 50. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

As usual it has been an incredibly exciting term of learning for our students. From the usual work of learning that occurs in classrooms every day to the events that make time at school a memorable one I wish to thank everyone involved in ensuring that school proceeds smoothly and school is a safe place for everyone.

But I do have to get on my soap box… again! Some of you are not behaving sensibly in the car park! There are rules! There are regulations!

• Don’t speed through the car park, you won’t save yourself any time.
• Don’t double park, it’s scary and dangerous for a small child to get out of the car and navigate between cars so that you can dash off to important places.
• Don’t do a rolling stop and ask your child to Get out quickly.
• Don’t stop near the bollards – where it also says: Don’t stop near the bollards.
• And please don’t park in the disabled zone, that really is poor form.

I’ll stop now, but you I think you all get it.

The first day of each term is a pupil free day therefore Monday, 21 July is a pupil free day. Families will therefore need to make alternate arrangements for children on that day.

My thought for the week:

A conversation starter, an important concept to understand for all of us; what is it that keeps our eyes down and madly scrolling.

Have a fabulous week…

Regards,

Julie

Julie.cooper@ed.act.edu.au

What's Happening in the Snow Leopards

We have been so busy in the Snow Leopards this term!

Onomatopoeia Art –

All term we have been learning about onomatopoeia and how to use it in our writing. Another way we have been using onomatopoeia is in our art. We learned about Pop Art and how that style of art makes words stand out and how layering of colours makes our artwork pop.

We each chose and drew a fruit or vegetable and then wrote an onomatopoeia word that related to that fruit or vegetable. Here are some examples.

Making our writing more interesting –

Another way we have been making our writing more interesting is by adding descriptive language and experimenting with adjectives. One example of this has been through stretchy sentence strips to make simple sentences better.

The tall child sat on a great bench and ate a yummy sandwich. – Olympia Daley

The rich man wore a golden watch and sat on a soft couch with a pretty bunch of flowers. – Juniper McGloughlin

The scared monster held a bright torch so he could see clearly in the dark and scary church. - Harrison Chambers

The mischievous man wore a fancy watch and sat on an old couch with a beautiful bunch of flowers. – Luke Carmichael

AI Monsters –

We have been experimenting with the use of AI technologies and with our work on adjectives and descriptive writing, we challenged ourselves to create characters to write about. First, we started off by writing a short description of an image we wanted to see. Then, using Canva AI we generated images. Once we had images we were happy with, we wrote short stories about our creations, including adjectives and onomatopoeia too. Here are some examples:

Yayoi Kasuma -

In art, we have been focusing on the work of Japanese Artist, Yayoi Kasuma. Her work with dots, shapes and colours inspired us to create our own mushroom artworks. Here are some of our masterpieces.

 Teagan Lovett 

What's Happening in the Seals

It’s been a wonderfully productive term in the Year 3 Seals classroom, full of hands-on learning and creative exploration!

Mathematics
Our number focus has been on subtraction. Students have been building their confidence with different strategies, including counting back, using number lines, and solving word problems. It’s been great to see everyone challenging themselves and explaining their thinking clearly.

Global Concept & Writing
In our Global Concept and Writing lessons, we’ve been diving into the fascinating world of rocks, minerals and soils. Students have been learning to identify different types of rocks and understand their properties. We’ve also been exploring information texts, using facts we've learned to structure our own writing – including headings, diagrams, and labelled drawings.

We’ve also been exploring procedural writing in a fun and engaging way! Students wrote step-by-step instructions for making fairy bread, then followed their own procedures to create the tasty treat. This hands-on activity helped them reflect on and edit their writing for clarity and accuracy—while enjoying a delicious reward for their efforts!

Art
In Art, we’ve taken inspiration from Indigenous Australian artworks, learning how stories can be told through symbols and natural materials. Using soil paint, and traditional techniques like dot painting, students created their own story artworks, connecting beautifully with culture and country through their creativity.

It’s been a joy to see the curiosity and enthusiasm in the classroom.

 Jo Lawson and Jo Burns

What's Happening in the Squirrels

4LT squirrels have been having an amazing time learning lots of multiplication tricks to help us find our answers the quickest way possible. We are now moving on to learning a variety of division strategies such as arrays, groups, repeated subtraction among others. In writing we have been super enthusiastic about writing our own information report about a chosen animal from the continents of Africa or South America. As we have been researching into what similarities and differences these places have and taking a closer look into the countries within them. Ask your student to show you their Google Site, they are extremely interesting and detailed. We also look forward to publishing our information animal reports so we can go and read them to other year levels.  In science, we have just started to unlock the idea of consumers, producers and decomposers. Over the next few weeks, we will look at how all of this is interconnected, which ties in perfectly with this terms Global Concept.

Louise Tominich

What's Happening in the Quakenators

Photography is when you take a photo that has either meaning and emotion, line and shape or perspective.

We had to take photos on our chrome books then we had to pick our favourite one and edit it on canva.

I learnt that photography is really fun and can be used to express emotions and bring others together.

- By Abby

In maths we are doing division and multiplication. What we have to do is divide a number but also multiply. E.G:

185 divided by 3. That equals 071r2. But multiplying it is 71.2 x 3 =185. Something I have learned is that you need to know multiplication for division because it's the opposite. I like doing multiplication and division because they work together.

- By Amber 

For our project we are making a house that would stay strong during a natural disaster, and we would choose a place on planet earth and we are researching the average minimum and maximum temperatures by months, average rainfall by months, average rainy days, temperature of ocean and daily sun hours and i chose Japan. After we do that then we have to make it into a graph on google sheets, because we need to make a mini house. We will need to know what natural disasters Japan has so we had to make a big paragraph on what natural disasters Japan has. Then we would have to write the human responses to the natural disasters. When we finish we will build a tiny house out of paper and cardboard and it will be the best mini house ever!! 

- Project by Archer

This term my favourite thing was our harmony project. We got to pick which town or city we are going to ,then we collected the weather data to turn it into a graph. The city had to have at least one natural disaster and you had to make your house proof of those natural disasters. My city is Daru in Papua New Guinea. They are prone to cyclones, floods, earthquakes, droughts, tsunamis and volcanic activity.

After all that is done then we get to make the house out of paper and cardboard.

- By Avery

This term, I have enjoyed Maths. We have been learning about division and multiplication. We have been playing games and solving problems. My favourite maths game is a board game called ‘Multiplication Squares’. You roll a dice, figure out the answer and then you colour the square that matches with the number.

Photography

In 5/6  we have been looking at the elements of photography and how we can use them.

The elements of photography are meaning, emotion, perspective and line and shape .For example you could use the element perspective in a photo by doing a birds eye view or an animals perspective. Below the perspective is looking up at something.

- By Connor

The element line and shape is looking at strong shapes or lines that the viewer can see. The one below obviously shows squares and lines. 

The last element is meaning and emotion in which the photo has a meaning behind it or it portrays a certain emotion when it is looked at. For example: this picture shows that some trees are dropping their leaves and some aren't meaning that it is autumn for some people and not others.

I found photography fun and I learnt that there are different elements which I didn’t know before. There are also different types of photos and learning that through experience makes it a new level of fun.

- By Elena

My Favourite Things This Term

School this term has been very fun as usual, so I have a couple of favourite things. One of them is playing my first assembly in Yr 5 Band. I'm also liking the algebra we’re starting, and I can’t say no to P.E.

- By Ewan

Scratch

This term I liked doing scratch for French because I could do the story about whatever I want and i could still incorporate French words.

I decided to go with my duck  who tries to find a croissant but he has to take a detour.

- By Jack 

This term my favourite thing was our harmony project. We got to pick one place in the whole world to collect data about it so we could build a tiny house. But the place we picked had to occur to any natural disaster. The place that I chose for my tiny house was Perth Australia and the natural disaster that I chose for Perth was bushfires. We had to collect a lot of data so we could create our tiny house. When we collected all our data we had to list down some human responses about our chosen city. When we finished, our human responses were going to build a tiny house out of paper and cardboard.

- By Malak

PHOTOGRAPHY

My favourite thing during this term that I have enjoyed was photography. So first things first you need to know what photography is at our school. Photography is when we do slides of photos we took around the school. Now that we are done with that, let's talk about why I like it. The reason I liked it was because I could take really nice photos, only with my Chromebook! Imagine if I did it on an actual professional camera! What I learnt is that I have two cameras and I realized that I am really good at taking photos too! Now that we are done let me show you the best photo I have ever taken in photography!

- By Max

Photography by Rivennie

In 5/6, one of the things we’ve been learning about is photography. Photography is the art of capturing live moments in the world. The word ‘photography’ is derived from the Greek words ‘photo’ which means light, and ‘graph’ which means drawing, directly translating to ‘drawing with light’.

In ⅚, we had to take pictures of parts of our school based on an element of photography. Some of the elements were; perspective, lines and shapes, and meaning and emotion. Based on these prompts, we were able to capture moments in time that correspond to these and hold some sort of meaning to us. We were then told to paste the images to Canva and attempt to improve them. Some things people did were; recolouring photos, retouching and refocusing, and even deleting some unnecessary parts we didn’t need.

During these sessions, we learnt how to capture photos, and how to find meanings in them no matter how meaningless they may seem. We additionally learnt how to edit and improve photos in Canva, which will certainly come in handy later in life!

Here are some examples of some pictures we took based off of the three different prompts:

                                           Meaning and Emotion                                                   

Perspective

Line and Shape

Project (tiny house making)

This term we have been doing tiny house designing first we had to pick a place with one or more natural disasters then we had to research the temperature in that place and make it into a graph and after that we had to do my favourite part which was researching about what people have done to there houses to make them withstand all the natural disasters and design a floor plan of our house including all the things we researched about what people have done to to their houses then we are going to make them out of paper and cardboard.

- By Ruby

My favourite thing this term was doing drama with all of my besties and how in drama you could be creative and come up with your own ideas for plays and getting to share it with the whole year 5 was really fun for me especially watching others plays and seeing what they’ve come up with, Also getting to to do with Sasha was really fun because we agreed on pretty much everything and were laughing so much I felt like my lungs exited my body because I couldn't breathe…

- By Sarah

In 5/6 we learnt about photography. In photography we have been taking some really cool photos with our Chromebook and then making google slides with them.   

- By Lachlan

This year in year 6 I loved doing Warhammer because me and other people got to paint Warhammer models with each other while everyone else was doing photography or drama. We got to have access to a lot of tools because the Warhammer store sent us tools for the club.

- By Nash 

Bec Spoors 

Library News

SORA SWEET READS 12 May – 25 August, 2025

OverDrive’s annual reading program, Sora Sweet Reads, is designed to encourage students to keep reading all year long. They’re offering a collection of free, simultaneous-use ebooks (and select audiobooks) for primary and secondary school students. These titles are prominently displayed in Sora so it’s easy for students to find their next sweet read.

To borrow e-books and audio books visit https://soraapp.com  or download the free Sora app for android or IOS. Students can also access SORA through the digital backpack.

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)

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

P&C Update

WPS Movie Night

Thank you to everyone who was involved in organising and helping out at this terrific event, to ensure the night was 'Despicable' in the best possible way! 

P&C General Meeting held this week

The P&C holds meetings in week 3 and week 9 of the school term, usually in the school staffroom at 6 PM on Tuesdays. It's a great chance to get together and discuss upcoming events, ideas for funding and various other matters of concern to the school community. If you couldn't make the meeting but are interested in viewing the meeting minutes or would like to be added to our mailing list, contact weetangera.pc.secretary@gmail.com 

Canteen Update

Hello from your new Canteen Lady, George. I'm very excited to take on the role of canteen manager and I'm looking forward to strengthening our service to meet your family's needs. If you have a minute or two I would love your feedback about our canteen, even if you never, or barely ever use it. You can complete this 2 minute survey, email me at wpscanteen@hotmail.com or come in on a Wednesday or Thursday and have a chat! 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5SQV8RB/

Christian Education in Schools

Christian Education in Schools volunteers will provide a session on Weetangera PS on Monday 30 June. 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.

2025 Uniform Price List

Workin' Gear Schools is the new uniform supplier for Weetangera Primary School. New uniforms with the new SPW logo can be ordered using the link. Students are still able to wear uniforms with the old WPS logo. There are still limited sizes available for sale at the front office. Please contact the school after 22 January to organise a time to purchase these. 

Parent Portal at Weetangera

News Flash! Our school calendar is now available through the parent portal. Please keep an eye out for upcoming events. 

Parent Portal is a secure online platform to share information between parents and carers and their student’s teachers. It’s available via a web browser and a mobile app.

Parent Portal has been rolled out across all ACT public schools and allows parents to:

• notify the school when their child is sick or to explain an absence
• book parent-teacher interviews (coming soon to WPS)
• receive academic reports
• receive the school newsletter
  
• make payments
• access the school calendar and their child’s student timetable  (coming soon to WPS)
• update their contact details.

One of the many benefits of the Parent Portal is that it is used by all ACT public schools from preschool through to year 12, so there will be no need to use a different system as children change schools during their public-school journey.

If you have children attending other public schools, you don’t need to sign up to the system twice.

Parent Portal is linked to the Student Administration System (SAS) used by the ACT Education Directorate for administering student data at ACT public schools.

How to register for Parent Portal

1. Sign up for an ACT Digital Account if you do not already have one. This is an important step in securely verifying the identity of parents and carers. It will not be possible to set up an account without undertaking this step. Detailed instructions including identification documents required to verify your account are listed on the Education Directorate's website in the Frequently Asked Questions.
2. You will be sent an access key (code) and a Parent Portal registration link specific to Weetangera Primary School via email to enable you to link your ACT Digital Account to your child’s records.

Sentral for Parents app

The Sentral for Parents app is the mobile app version of Parent Portal. You can access Parent Portal through the Sentral for Parents app, or using a web browser on your computer, mobile phone or tablet.

You can download the Sentral for Parents app for free from the App Store or Google Play Store.

Parent Portal – Changes to ACT Digital Account ID requirements

The ID requirements for accessing Parent Portal have changed to make it easier to register your account.

If you have had trouble signing up to Parent Portal because of the ID requirements, we invite you to try again.

To access Parent Portal, you need to verify your identity via the ACT Digital Account. Previously you needed two forms of accepted ID and now you only need one. To register, use the Parent Portal access link and create or log in to your ACT Digital Account.

Please contact the front office via Email: info@weetangeraps.act.edu.au if you haven’t received an access key.

Communication at Weetangera

Community Notices

The Raising Healthy Minds app is a free, personalised, pocket resource to help parents and carers raise confident, resilient children. Co-designed with parents and experts and funded by the Australian Government, Raising Healthy Minds aims to support children’s social and emotional wellbeing with evidence-based information.  

You’ll find information on topics like dealing with worries and making friends, as well as ideas for day-to-day life, like creating family routines, looking after yourself as a parent, and building strong relationships.  

The app offers a mix of quick-read articles, videos and animations aimed at parents and carers of children aged 0-12 years. You can tailor information to the age of your child and opt-in to receive helpful tips.  

Raising Healthy Minds provides simple-to-use information at your fingertips with clear actions you can start today.  

Download from Google Play or the App Store or go to raisingchildren.net.au/rhm to learn more and raise a healthy mind 🧠 😊  

Piano teacher in the local Belconnen region.

Piano tuition. Beginners welcome. All ages. All styles.

Ph. (02) 6278 7382.

Mob. 0409 151 887.

Craig Mewett