Term 1 Week 6 Newsletter
From the Principal
Dear Families,
Welcome to Week 6!
Wellbeing Week
During this week our staff are celebrating Wellbeing Week at our school. This is when we check in with our wellbeing plan and remind ourselves about what strategies we can use to help us maintain a healthy work life balance. We think about what activities help us to recharge our batteries to help us be the best we can while we are at work.
We also use our Circle Time to talk about wellbeing with our students. This is a good opportunity to remind our students about the importance of healthy eating, staying hydrated, sleeping well and participating in sport or other pursuits to help them be ready for learning at school.
Our Lunchtime Clubs program is one way that our staff can help support student wellbeing at Calwell. Our teachers volunteer to run a club at break time to offer students alternatives to the playground and the opportunity for them to develop new interests and friendships. Our clubs include Junior and Senior Sports club, Lego, Yoga, Fine Motor and Craft. Please encourage your children to access the clubs at break times especially if they are ever wondering how to fill in the time.
Inclusion Coach
This week we welcome Ginny McWhirter to our staff. Ginny will be working with us in the role of Inclusion Coach. She will be at Calwell Primary for 2 days a week and then Calwell High for the rest of the week. She will be working with our teachers to support their development of inclusion strategies and differentiation for learning. We are really looking forward to having her work with us over the year.
School Leaders
Congratulations to our Year 6 School Leaders who received their badges on Friday. We were fortunate to have many of our Year 6 students who felt confident enough to apply to be a leader. Well done to Nunzio, Lilly-Ann, Eloise, Harley, Jayden, Alexander, Noah, Avani, Bilyana and Penny. Our student leaders will meet regularly to work on initiatives for the school community. They will also be helping out with assemblies and other school events.
Excursion Planning
We are currently putting together some guidelines to help us plan for excursions and incursions across the year levels. We are aware of the increasing costs with excursions particularly around hiring buses. We are consistently trying to think about ways to lower the costs of excursions and incursions. This will include limiting excursions to one per semester and giving long term notice for activities such as camps or day camps which have significant costs associated with them. Year 6 graduation activities is one area where costs have been becoming significantly higher over the past couple of years. This year we are planning on celebrating our Year 6 students graduating with a school assembly for families followed by a morning tea with parents. Our students and teachers will then go out for a fun day and lunch rather than the dinner and disco. This will significantly decrease costs associated with the dinner at the club and I believe that students will probably have more fun.
Calwell Primary Community Group
Unfortunately we did not have enough parents at our meeting yesterday afternoon to form a quorum. We are going to try again at a different time and it will be online. The next meeting will be Wednesday 20th March at 7.30-8.00pm. We will send home an invitation for the online meeting on the day. It would be great to have at least 5 parents at the meeting so the community group can continue.
Kind Regards
Ben Roberts
Principal
CARES
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.
- Lunch order Wednesday 6th March (available every Wednesday through the FlexiSchools app)
- Stay 'N' Play Wednesday 6th March
- Swimming Time Trial Thursday 7th March
- Canberra Day Public Holiday Monday 11th March
- Years 3-6 Drumming Tuesday 12th March
- Years 3/4 Assembly Friday 15th March at 9:15
- Year 3/4 Birrigai Long Day Camp notes due back Monday 18th March
- Years 3 and 5 NAPLAN Week 7 and 8
- Book Club due Thursday 28th March
Corin
The 1/2 students and staff have thoroughly enjoyed their whirlwind first few weeks of Term 1. All of the teachers have been impressed with how the students have transitioned and settled into their new routines and procedures. During our Circle Time routine we focused on ‘relationships’ and how to build safe and respectful relationships with other students.
1/2 also have had the fun opportunity to engage in gross motor activities. This helps them to build and develop core gross motor skills such as balancing, jumping, throwing and kicking. They love the variety of different activities each week to rotate between.
In Mathematics 1/2 have been practising to count and order numbers to 120. We spent time becoming ‘human number lines’ and having a go and making our own ‘calibrated’ number lines as well! We also spent time becoming familiar with 2D shapes, looking at the features of a shape particularly; corners, sides, parallel, opposite and curved sides.
In English, 1/2 students have been focusing hard on correct letter formation and have now moved on to the first writing unit on recounts. To kick off the unit, all of 1/2 came together to play a game of stuck in the mud. Since then, students have been working on ensuring their recount is in proper story order and beginning to use the language of a recount.
PBL Spotlight
During weeks 5 and 6 students will be discussing and learning about the expectations for moving around the school using walkways. Following the All Settings and Walkway expectations keeps everyone safe, demonstrates respect and helps learning continue inside our classrooms.
National Ride2School Day
Join in the fun on National Ride2School Day where students are encouraged to ride, walk, skate or scoot to school.
National Ride2School Day is the perfect opportunity for students and school communities across Australia to embrace a healthier start and to try riding and walking to school for themselves.
At Calwell Primary, we will run our ‘walking school bus’ to our school again. The walk will be held on Friday 22 March 2024 (week 8). We are hoping to get lots of students and parents involved this term again. We will meet in the car 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 riding, walking, skating or scooting to school as possible.
Stay N Play
Lowes Schoolwear
