Calwell Primary School eNewsletter

From the Principal

Dear Calwell Families,

I am mindful that there is some uneasiness within the community, and I would like to take the opportunity to assure parents/carers that the staff and I are focussed on supporting and meeting the needs of our students and school community, particularly after what has been a challenging few years.

Looking Forward 2023 and beyond

Our Calwell CARES Culture and PBL expectations of Safe, Respectful Learners aligns strongly with my personal and professional values of integrity and service to this school community. I thank everyone in our community who is supportive of the school, our teachers, support staff and volunteers. I know you are keen to see our school thrive and grow - just as you expect your children will while they are at Calwell Primary.

No school is perfect and there will inevitably be things that don’t go as we would all like. What I do know is that we can’t respond to concerns and issues that are not shared with the leadership team. I will always listen to every parent who seeks to speak with me. While I will never enter into public debate about specific matters, or children and their individual needs publicly, I believe it is reasonable to expect that parents will speak to the school directly when they have concerns. I remind all parents that you have an open invitation to meet and speak with me, to share your feedback or concerns.

I would like our school community to be based on open and honest communication and working in partnership with each other with our mutual goal being the education and care of the students, your children, who I can assure you have and always will remain at the centre of all that we do at Calwell Primary.

While the community at large has always expressed its interest in being involved and supportive of the school, historically it has been a very small group of parents/carers who have been actively involved in the P&C and led this work. Sadly, the strain on this small group (which changed over the years) led to the demise of the P&C several years ago.

We are ready and very keen to re-establish this important school community group so it can be the forum to share information and decision making, be the voice of all parents/carers and work with the school leadership and staff to organise and run community events and raise additional funds from time to time. I urge you all to consider being part of the school’s new Team Calwell Community Association. I would like to see the school and its community work collaboratively together to build and maintain a respectful, caring, considerate learning community which supports and promotes the school.

The School Board, Leadership Team and staff would like to move into 2023 with a renewed commitment to making Calwell Primary not just a good school, but a great school and we need you, the community, to work in partnership with us.

Please join us on tomorrow Wednesday 21 September as we launch the Team Calwell Community Association. 6.30pm chat and refreshments ready for a 7-8pm meeting.

Students at the centre of all we do.

I have had the privilege to lead and guide Calwell Primary for a number of years, and I am proud of the achievements and improvements that have occurred in the school over that time. I have lead teams of teachers and executive leaders who have been committed to achieving positive academic and social-emotional outcomes for all students, and our school, system and national data has shown that we have served our learners well. We should all be justly proud of our school. At Calwell Primary:

as a smaller school, the individuality of students can be readily acknowledged and fostered, and strong relationships develop between all members of the school community.
we have considerable IT resources with 1:1 access to IT devices – chromebooks and iPads
there are high quality literacy resources – class libraries, home readers and a well- resourced school library regularly stocked with new books
students use quality Maths manipulatives in all classrooms
school and system data evidence shows that PBL is highly successful in the school
students can access the CARE Rooms during lunchtime to play board games or build using lego etc. An indoor space supervised by Executive teachers where students can find someone to play with, or seek support beyond the playground duty teachers. Students can use playground equipment and super- sized games such as Connect 4 at break times. There is also a different lunchtime club available each day
we have a quality artificial grass oval and grandstand, and students can borrow sport equipment at lunchtime
we introduced and have successfully maintained Positive Behaviours for Learning (PBL) and targeted the social emotional learning the needs of our students
we have focussed on developing the school’s ability to deliver a contemporary and engaging curriculum and have integrated Learning Assets into teaching and learning
students can be enrolled with Camp Australia for before and after school care or a holiday care program operating in the school grounds

In recent years there has also been considerable upgrading and refurbishment around the school including renewal of all unit wet areas, new heating and cooling in the hall, additional playground equipment and shade structures, upgrades in the preschool with new playground swings coming soon; as well as a large shade structure about to be built over the top basketball court. Add to that significant landscaping.

I look forward to seeing you at tomorrow night’s community meeting. If you are unable to attend please contact the office to express your interest in being an active member of the Team Calwell Community Association.

Linda Neeson

Principal

CARES Awards

PBL Awards

Notes Home/Due & Dates to Remember

A reminder for parent's to please download the SZapp to view our Newsletters and upcoming events. If you access the calendar and click on the date on an excursion/incursion permission notes are attached to re-print if needed.

- Public Holiday Thursday 22nd September

- Last day of Term 3 Friday 23rd September

- First day of Term 4 Monday 10th October

It’s not too late to enrol for 2023

If you forgot to enrol your child or young person in an ACT public school for next year, don’t panic. Enrolments remain open throughout the year. You can find out more information and apply online. Support is also available from this school or by calling the Enrolments Telephone Service weekdays on 6205 5429

Assembly

Due to the ongoing covid risk we will continue to have assemblies in junior and senior groups. We are required to continue to have assemblies as ticked events. Outlined below is the schedule of hosting classes. We encourage families only to attend when your child/ren’s class is hosting. To register your attendance please book in using this link https://forms.gle/ghsgsxQPrku8WFod9

Assemblies start at 2:15pm.

Preschool

The Rosellas have been exploring number by practising counting, subitising and using different ways to represent quantity. During this activity the children took turns to count the number of patty pans needed for each numeral, then glued them in the right place.

At preschool we love to provide a variety of art experiences to enable the children to express their creativity, imagination and ideas to explore the world around them. As part of our focus on wellbeing, we invited the Magpies and Cockatoos to engage in fruit bowl still life drawings. This required the children to use oil pastels to draw a fruit bowl displayed in front of them. It was a challenging art experience which produced some amazing drawings.

Scrivener

During Writers Workshop lessons, students have been learning how to plan and write their own information reports. We have been deepening our understanding of subtopics and expanding our vocabulary with words such as; classification (what type of animal it is), appearance (what it looks like), habitat (where it lives) and diet (what it eats). Students have also created labelled diagrams to accompany their written reports.

Corin

Over the course of the year, Year One and Two have been looking at the different purposes for texts. We looked at imaginative texts, such as narratives, and informative texts when we wrote our own information reports. This week we started looking at persuasive texts and began to write our own. We have been using rhetorical questions and high modality language to help persuade our audience. Some of our topics include new toilet paper holders in the bathrooms, new limousines to drive in, more school holidays, interstate excursions, personal helicopters and even to have a pool installed in the school! We are going to publish these next week and send them to our audience – fingers crossed we are persuasive enough!

Googong

For our technology inquiry unit we have been exploring code.org and scratch to see what we can create. The students are currently programming in scratch to create games or animations.

Year 5 students have been busily working their minds to understand binary code. They have practised turning digit cards ‘on’ and ‘off’ to represent numbers, writing their name using the binary code alphabet and counting to large numbers on one hand.

“They are like switches, with 1 being on and 0 being off.” – Henry

“Using binary code you can count up to 31 just on 1 hand.” – Eddie

“Once you work out the pattern, its really easy to write the alphabet in binary code.” – Isobel

They have also been examining the work of Australian artist Carmen Hui, and recreating some of her drawings.

6G have been looking at coding for technology and learning how to program their
equipment to follow a list of commands. In Art, we created trioramas of our information reports. Here students researched key information about a European country.