Calwell Primary School eNewsletter

From the Principal

Dear Calwell Community,

Its hard to believe we are already halfway through the term and that the season is changing as we move into March. This week our Getting to know you interviews continue. Teachers have a number of times available this week if you haven’t yet booked in, please use this link to secure a time https://www.schoolinterviews.com.au/code/gzsn5. These interviews are an opportunity for you to meet your child/ren’s teacher and share any relevant information with them about your child/ren. If you are unable to find a suitable time for an interview, please email your child’s teacher to arrange an alternative time.

This week we welcome David Corcoran from Red Hill Primary School who will be the Deputy Principal here at Calwell for the remainder of the term. Dave looks forward to meeting you while he is in the school. As some of you are aware Ellen Christou has been on leave this term. Ellen has decided to take up a role at another school and we wish her every success.

This week you will receive notes for our upcoming preschool to year 6 disco, mother’s day stall and cross country. We are looking forward to families joining us for each of these events. Our first disco for the year is scheduled for Thursday 23 March. This event is being supported by our newly established community association. If you are available to help on the night please use this link to sign up volunteersignup.org/TJCYA.

Families are reminded that when volunteering you must complete the volunteering paperwork (available at the front office) and have a Working with Vulnerable People card (WWVP). You may apply for an exemption (conditions apply) and you can volunteer for no more than seven days within a 12 month period without having a WWVP card. For further information on WWVP cards or to apply please visit the Access Canberra website.

Over the coming 2 weeks our Year 3 and 5 students will participate in NAPLAN testing. NAPLAN is a national literacy and numeracy test which is conducted for all students in year 3,5,7 and 9. Students will undertake a number of assessments over the 2 weeks during class time.

I hope you enjoy the upcoming Canberra day long weekend.

Katie Brown
Acting Principal

Calwell CARES

NAPLAN

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.

- Years 5/6 Assembly Friday 10th March 2:30pm

- Years 4,5,6 Camp notes and first payment due Friday 10th March

- Canberra Day Public Holiday Monday 13th March

- Christian Education in Schools (opt in) Tuesday 14th March

- Book Club due Thursday 23rd March

- Years 3 and 5 NAPLAN 15th-24th March

Swimming Time Trials

Scrivener

Thank you to all those families that were able to come in for a catch up. It has been great finding out a little more about your child and how we can help them be successful learners. This fortnight in Kindergarten the children have been working hard on developing their early reading skills. We have been focusing on learning how predicting can help us read and understand stories.

So far this year the children have been focusing on the numbers 1-5. We have been learning to recognise them in different forms including the written name and the subsidizing dice patterns. We have also been exploring patterns and have been practicing making them using different objects, shapes and colours.

The children have also started visiting the library every Friday. Each child would have already brought home their library bag. In library we have been learning about how to read a book respectfully and have enjoyed reading new books.

Over the last 5 weeks, Year 1 and 2 have been looking at the way natural and made objects change over time. We have been talking about what will change and what will stay the same. This week the class collected their fruit scraps from fruit break and have found a place to put them in the gardens. We are going to leave them there for a whole week and see what happens! The students drew what they think the fruit will look like in a weeks time, wrote their prediction and their reasoning.

Googong

3/4 have been looking at a variety of mathematical concepts this term. So far, we have discussed the probability of an outcome occurring by using terms like impossible, unlikely, even chance, likely and certain. While also writing the probability of an outcome as a fraction.

Students have also been working hard with understanding the place values of whole numbers while, attempting to write numbers in expanded and standard form. During the next two weeks we will be looking at data, addition, odd and even numbers.

Bendora

Students in 5/6 have been continuing their inquiry into narrative writing. This fortnight they have been examining how to ‘show’ and not tell their readers what is happing in their stories. This has involved turning simple sentences that tell the reader what is happening, into sentences that include the 5 senses. Here is an example students developed:

The boy was late for the race.

A sick and nauseous feeling spread from the pit of the boy’s stomach as he realised how late he was for the Cross Country.

5/6 this week have been consolidating and extending their understanding of multiplication. Playing games to ‘warm up’ their thinking has been great fun!

Art

In Art, 1/2 students have been working on their interactive ‘Real Me’ mixed media self portrait project. They illustrated their physical appearance, created drawings and used photos to collage and communicate who they are on the inside as well.

PE and Indonesian

This term students in K-2 have been practising their fundamental movement skills of throwing, catching and bouncing a cricket sized soft ball and are starting to use these FMS with different types of balls. We have also been learning and playing different kinds of running games and relay races.

Our senior students have been learning and practising Oztag skills such as tagging, passing, performing a roll-ball, and scoring a try. They have been learning defending and attacking skills, basic rules of Oztag and playing modified games. It has been great to see students enjoying this game.

In Indonesian classes students have been learning and practising the language for saying hello, asking how someone is and saying goodbye in different ways. Students have been using an educational application on iPads for practising their newly learnt vocabulary.

Thank you to the parents and school community members who attended our Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 22 February. We are pleased to advise that we were able to fill the key office bearer roles. We do have a couple of committee member positions that would be great to fill. Committee members participate in planning and finance discussions once per term. As our association will not be doing fundraising activities, the committee work will be minimal. If you’d like to join the Committee, please email calwellpca@gmail.com.

Office bearers for 2023

Rebbecca Nudelmann - President

Daniel Hoffman – Secretary

Megan Fox – Treasurer

Tanya Goodman – Committee

Brenton Myers - Committee

Volunteering for Events and Activities

It was great to have Mrs Brown, Mrs Vince and Mrs Owens at our AGM so we could hear about the activities and events planned for 2023 and to discuss how the Calwell Primary Community Association can support these. Upcoming events include the Disco, Easter raffle, Cross Country carnival, Mothers’ Day stall and Athletics carnival. We know that for the last few years, it has been hard for parents to get involved with school activities, but this year is different. Our Association exists to provide input and support from the community to the school, so when it comes to support for events and activities, we will assist by coordinating the volunteer resources needed to make these a success. At the Meet and Greet, we collected names of volunteers for some of these events – thank you to those parents for volunteering. To make it easier for everyone, we have decided to try an online volunteering sign up system. We are testing it for the Disco on March 23 and if it works well, we will use it for other events this year. The link to sign up to help out at the Disco is volunteersignup.org/TJCYA.

There will be many opportunities to volunteer this year so if you have any free time that you’d like to give to supporting our school and the community, we would love to hear from you and we will never say that we have enough volunteers for anything – many hands make light work is our motto!

Contacting the Calwell Primary Community Association

By email: calwellpca@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cpsca

or leave a message with the Front Office team.

We are really excited about the year ahead and look forward to working with you to make our school the best it can be.

Rebbecca, Daniel and Megan

Ride2School Day

This term we will be celebrating the National Ride2School Day on Friday 24 March 2023. We will be encouraging our students to ride, walk, skate or scoot to school. National Ride2School Day is the perfect opportunity for students and school communities across Australia to embrace active travel and healthier habits. Ride or Walk to School program reminds us to consider our transport habits and try to incorporate more riding or walking as part of a healthy, active way to get around.

As part of the National Ride2School Day, we are proud to announce that we will be running a ‘walking school bus’ to Calwell Primary School. This will be held on Friday 24 March 2023. We know that walking all the way to school isn’t realistic for many of us, therefore we will meet in the park at the bottom of Casey Cres at the start of Calwell District Playing fields next to the netball courts where it’s easy to park. Staff members will meet students from 8am and will walk together to school from there. Parents/carers are more than welcome to join us on the walk. We will start the walk at 8.15am.

We hope to see as many students, teachers and parents/carers walking to school as possible.

Future of Education Equity Fund

The Future of Education Equity Fund provides a one-off, annual payment to low-income families living in the ACT to help cover the costs of education expenses such as school uniforms, school excursions, sport equipment and activities and music lessons.

The following payments are available to those who meet the eligibility criteria: