Week 6

 7th August - 18th August

PRINCIPALS REPORT

I hope everyone is well, and looking forward to some warmer weather, I most certainly am! I have family currently visiting Queensland and am very jealous of their daily weather updates of around 25 degrees! 

Term 3 is certainly in full swing, and we have a number of exciting whole school activities coming up over the next two weeks including Footy Day and Book Week. Our annual Book Week Parade scheduled for August 25 is already creating much excitement and anticipation in the school yard! We are also preparing for our Fathers Day stall, so please stay abreast of our Term 3 Calendar of events.

The Fathering Project

A Pizza and Paper Plane Night has been scheduled for 30  August. Rodney Eade will be in attendance to join in and talk directly to our fathers about a myriad of things, including the importance they play in the upbringing of their children. We are really looking forward to this event, so please register your interest in attending by accessing the Compass Link sent out last week, or available at our office. If you can't access the QR Code, please don't hesitate to give us a call and we will book you in!

2024 Enrolments 

Late last week we sent out offers of acceptance for Foundation 2024. This year there was a state-wide timeline, similar to how Year 7 places are allocated. We have now started forward planning for 2024. If you know of anyone who is yet to enrol their child/ren at our fabulous school for next year, please encourage them to do so ASAP, as this helps us begin the work around class sizes and structures for 2024. 

Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Opinion Survey

The Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Opinion Survey has been distributed to all families of WVPS, please refer to the Compass Link sent out last week. The Opinion Survey is an annual survey offered by the Department of Education that is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of families’ perceptions of school climate, student behaviour, and student engagement. The survey is optional but we encourage all families to participate. Our school will use the survey results to help inform and direct future school planning and improvement strategies. The survey takes approximately 20mins and closes on September 8.

Little Angler Kits 

The Victorian Government is investing $1.5 million from the Recreational Fishing Licence Trust Fund to provide up to 95,000 Little Angler Kits to primary school aged children in Victoria. The free kits provide a wonderful school holiday activity for children with their families and help ease the cost of living, providing a fun activity close to home.

Grade 5 students at all Victorian schools, including ours, will be offered the opportunity to receive a FREE Little Angler Kit. Grade 5 students have been selected based on the Victorian Curriculum focus, movement and motor development, and safety considerations.

The program is entirely voluntary. We were provided with the option to opt out of the program however, our school has opted to stay in the program so that parents can decide whether they want their child(ren) to receive a free fishing kit. Parents of Grade 5 students can advise us if they do not wish their child(ren) to participate for any reason whatsoever. We support parents in making decisions that align with their family values and beliefs. Please email the school, or call us if you wish to opt out of the initiative.

The roll out of kits will occur through the second half of 2023 (16 October - 4 December) so that all participating children will have a kit in time for the summer school holidays. The kits include a rod, reel with line, tackle tray, some tackle and information on how to use them to catch a fish. Please note that the tackle tray includes fishing hooks. The tackle tray will be wrapped in cardboard and placed inside a pocket inside the fishing kit bag, which will be sealed with a cable tie to discourage students from opening their kits until they are with a parent or carer.

Kits will be handed out to students to take home with them as soon as the school receives them. Teachers will tell students not to open the kits until they are safely at home with a parent or carer, however parents can contact the school and request to collect their kit from the school themselves if they prefer.

The Victorian Fisheries Authority will create a Little Angler hub on their website, which will be live when the kits start being distributed. It will have useful information, instructional videos and online resources about where and how to fish linking to existing resources from Fishcare and new resources to be produced just for the Little Angler Kits program.

This initiative aims to grow recreational fishing participation in Victoria by actively encouraging primary school aged children to learn how to fish, as well as learning more about marine life and the natural environment.

Curriculum Day - 11 August

Friday 11 August was a hugely successful day for all staff at WVPS. Educational Support Staff participated in Professional Learning designed to support them to respond to students who exhibit behaviours of concern and explore the relationship between environment and behaviour. Teaching staff participated in four workshops over the day that examined NAPLAN data to better understand our school improvement work, explored the concept of differentiation, outlined and refined our reading model, and revised our instructional model. Thanks to all of our staff who participated with enthusiasm and an inquisitive mindset.

Have a great week everyone!

Tracy Wright

FOUNDATION

LITERACY

Students have been revising their initial and digraph sounds, as well as practising applying these sounds through morning reading. We are proud of how far the Foundation students have come with their reading and writing; it has been so lovely to see how this boosts their confidence in the classroom! We have continued to work on adding a full stops to the end of our sentences as well as re-reading our sentences when as we write. Students have access to their visual writing goals in their classroom, so please take the time to ask what they are working towards. We have also been looking deeper into non-fiction texts and students have LOVED learning about different animals each week. Go ahead...ask them to label an animal... THEY'RE PROS!

NUMERACY
Students have been consolidating their ability to add numbers together to make  bigger number (addition). We have now moved onto patterns and have been focusing on identifying a pattern and what it is in the pattern that is repeating.
Students have also been collecting data using yes/no questions, and recording that data using tally marks. We have also extended students by asking them to graph their data and come to a conclusion about which was most and least popular. 

INQUIRY
We have officially planted our beans! Miss Pike and Miss Ramsden worked hard to bind together the plant journals so that students could take extra pride in their word (also giving them more bragging rights over the fact that they now have a 'professional book'). We can't wait for our beans to sprout!

REMINDERS

• Reader books to come to school everyday so students can read with their teacher in the morning. 

• There are a few permission forms to be returned - Illustrator visit, Swimming, Biological Science Incursion. Please hand them in ASAP to avoid disappointment. 

• As we're approaching swimming, it is a good idea to ensure your child is independent with dressing themselves, especially the order in which things go on. 

• Library on Thursdays

GRADE 1/2

The grade 1/2s have been very busy with their learning over the last fortnight. Here is a glimpse of what they have been focussing on.

LITERACY AND INQUIRY

In writing sessions, the students have continued to focus on procedural texts. They have created and followed a procedural text for a sandwich along with an inquiry experiment called Make it Rain.

During reading sessions, there has been a focus on drawing conclusions and making inferences with words and pictures. An inference is working out something that is not completely explained in the text, where you need to use clues from the text along with your prior knowledge.

NUMERACY

The students have continued exploring multiplication and division. They have been practising reading and creating arrays through arranging objects and pictures into columns and rows.

In addition to this, there has been a focus on measurement, particularly the length and mass of objects.  The students have made estimations as well as used both formal and informal units to measure objects.

GRADE 3/4

What fun we have had in 3/4, with making Slime and attending Frisbee clinics the kids have had an incredible time! 

Literacy has been focused on writing information reports and how to summarise facts and information. While in reading we have begun reading books that have been Shortlisted for Book Week. Each class has been focusing on a different book and completed Cereal Box Book Reports and craft activities. 

In numeracy we have continued our learning of Fractions and Decimals with the students increasing their knowledge of these on number lines. 

In Science last week the kids had fun making slime! (see below photos). They then wrote up a procedural piece explaining how they could make it at home and summarised  their results. 

GRADE 5/6

LITERACY

The Year 5/6 students have been reading a fantastic class novel by Colin Thompson called How To Live Forever.  The story is about a boy called Peter who lives inside a museum and gets transported into an alternate world full of strange characters who live in giant books.  Students have made connections with other known stories such as Alice In Wonderland, Jumanji and Night At The Museum, as well as making predictions and visualising from the author's vivid descriptive language.  We've worked in small groups to compare and contrast themes, characters, setting and plot in multiple books by Colin Thompson and drawn conclusions about characters' personalities and motivations.

NUMERACY

We have continued our work on measurement with some design challenges.  Students were given known areas of rectangles and explored the different dimensions that would make that rectangle.  We did some challenges around designing bumper car tracks and school vegetable gardens.  Some students even experimented with triangular shaped gardens!  We have begun looking at volume and the students were highly engaged creating four cube houses and visualising 3D shapes where not all faces are visible.  In number, students have continued their work on patterns and algebra.  We have been experimenting with number sentences where one value is unknown, working through the order of operations and evaluating and simplifying algebraic expressions.

INQUIRY

We have absolutely loved our unit on Chemistry so far in Year 5 & 6.  We began the unit by exploring some different chemical reactions such as bicarb and vinegar as well as investigating how condensation occurs on windows and mirrors.  Students then investigated different elements of specific and accurate scientific investigations.  We conducted experiments to investigate the ideal conditions to land a bottle flip as well as what affects a paper aeroplane's flight distance.  Students have been highly engaged in posing questions, considering conditions which must remain the same and the variable to change to ensure a fair test is conducted.

PE News

On Thursday 3rd August, the grade 3/4 students had the opportunity to participate in the Hoop Time basketball tournament at Nunawading Basketball Stadium. As a school, we took 5 teams of students along to all participate in the rookie competitions, which provided all students with the opportunity to learn the game with a focus on enjoyment and participation. On the day, all teams had success on the scoreboard but more importantly all students enjoyed themselves. As the Sports Coordinator I was incredibly proud of the participation levels of all students, the positive teamwork and comradery that was displayed and the excellent behaviour displayed by all students. Thank you to the coaches, Chris James, Leigh O’Sullivan, Michelle Van and Kimberly Paton, who ensured the students were well supported and all got fair game time on the court. It is definitely an event that the 3/4 cohort can look forward to next year.

Upcoming Events

Senior Hoop Time - Rookie Teams - Thursday 31st August 

Grade 5/6 Summer Sport - Tennis and Cricket - Wednesday 6th and 13th September

Zone Athletics - Wednesday 13th September

Junior and Senior Swimming - Week 9 and 10