Newsletter 3 – Week 3, Term 3, 2021 – Message from Admin Team, Faction Athletics Carnival Parent Helpers, French Cuisine, Book Week Parade, Costume Sale, MS Readathon, Uniform Shop, P&C General Meeting, Picture Plates, Homeless Donations, Unavailable Traffic Warden Jersey St, Mark Lee Soccer, VacSwim Holiday Lessons

Message from the Executive Administration Team

Dear parents and caregivers

As we head into Week 3, our students are engaged in the initial stages of their inquiry units focused on Sustainability, which is a school-wide priority. The inquiry model, through Critical and Creative Thinking strategies, encourages students to delve deeper into topics and begin to question, analyse and discover more about the world around them. I encourage you to look closely at the Term Overviews posted to classroom blogs over the past few days. Not only do these overviews give you information on the curriculum content being taught and consolidated this term, you will also see some of the projects related to the inquiry units and the cross-curricular STEAM projects your children will be engaging in. Teachers collaborate to produce these overviews each term to ensure parents and caregivers remain connected to the learning happening in classrooms so you can have those important conversations around the dinner table. We look forward to inviting you into the classrooms in Week 9 this term for you to see the evidence of these learning programs. I know your children will be so excited to show you what they have been up to this term.

Opus Concert: Congratulations to our instrumental music students who performed at the Opus Concert last night at Perth Concert Hall. Unfortunately, I am unwell and was so disappointed I couldn’t attend. I am told their performances were outstanding and the whole concert was simply amazing. It is a huge testament to the opportunities provided by the public education system in WA that our students have access to such high-quality experiences as part of their primary school education. This simply wouldn’t be possible without the dedication of exceptional teachers such as Miss Kate Goyder, our Music specialist teacher. Thank you Kate for the hours of work that went into this event and congratulations on making your conducting debut!

New Flagpoles: You may have seen that over the school holidays, two additional flagpoles were installed next to our existing flagpole near the basketball court. We are now proudly flying the Australian flag, State flag and Aboriginal flag together. This has been a goal for the school and we are so thankful to Christine Tonkin MLA, Member for Churchlands, who donated the entire cost of $2,800 for the flagpoles and presented the school with the Western Australian flag last week. This is one small step towards the goals in our Reconciliation Action Plan and we look forward to progressing further steps towards being a more culturally responsive school in the coming years.

Leadership

Service: Congratulations to Year 1 student Heidi M who recently drew an illustration for this year’s donation campaign run by Coles supermarkets throughout WA. Heidi’s beautiful design was one of only four chosen (and the only winner under 10 years old) to be featured on cards which will be available in the lead-up to this year’s Telethon weekend. Coles will offer Ruby’s card and others for $2 or $5 at Coles to raise money for Telethon. Well done Heidi for spending your time to benefit others, showing the S in our CARES values through service to the community. We love your painting of Fat Cat! Make sure you look out for the card at Coles and support Telethon and Heidi at the same time.

 

Community Engagement

Tuning into Kids: On a blustery night last week, about 60 parents listened to the free introductory seminar with Tracy Hart, educator and School Psychologist at Penrhos College. Tracy is a facilitator for Tuning into Kids, an evidence-based, emotion-focused program from the University of Melbourne that aims to build parents/carers’ emotion coaching skills for assisting children and adolescents to understand and regulate their emotions. The Tuning into Kids suite of programs provide a way of working that focuses on the emotional connection between adults and children that also assists the adult in their own emotion awareness and regulation.

Tracy is a wonderful, empathetic presenter who understands the pressures of the home environment and provides practical ways to build skills for both children and adults for better wellbeing. We are pleased to host a five-week program at Wembley PS which will give parents the language and knowledge to navigate tantrums, common worries, friendship issues, upsets and big emotions by strengthening connections and building your child’s ability to self-soothe and independently solve problems. I know I certainly appreciated the tips and knowledge gained during the seminar for dealing with these emotions with my own daughter.

The first workshop series is for parents of 5-8 year olds and begins on Thursday evening next week if there is enough interest to proceed. We have six more spots available. The cost is $150 and is paid direct to Tracy. Please email Tracy for further information:  HartT@penrhos.wa.edu.au. If you are experiencing financial difficulty and would like to attend the 5-8 year old series, please email tamara.doig@education.wa.edu.au to apply for a fully subsidised spot. The workshop series will start Thursday 12 August at 7pm and run at the same time every Thursday for the following four weeks.

Please also email Tracy if you would like to register for the upcoming 9-12 year old ‘Pre-teens’ workshop series which already has several registered. This is likely to run early in Term 4.

The Fathering Project: Last week, this new community engagement initiative was launched at The Wembley Hotel with about 40 dads coming together to share, learn and laugh with each other. We now invite all dads and father-figures to join the group and get involved, please go to this link to join the online portal where all activities will be posted: https://thefatheringproject.org/dads-group/wembley-primary-school/. A What’s App group has been created to stay connected and the first event looks likely to be a Pizza and Paper Planes night with dads and kids together in a few weeks. So please encourage all dads to join the group through the link, a connected community is a healthy community.

Collaborate, Connect, Communicate.

Yours in learning

Executive Admin Team

Tamara, Alan, Rachel and Melinda