Newsletter Week 2 Term 4 – Message from Administration, Book Club, French Recess, Canteen, P&C , Uniforms

Message from Administration

Dear parents and caregivers

We are off to a great start for our last term of the school year. Our students have come back to school motivated, ready to learn and excited about the many events ahead. It is always my favourite term of the year, with so many celebrations of the learning and progress made by students throughout the year. It is so rewarding for our staff to see how far our students have come, socially and academically, as we near the end of the year.

Year 6 Camp: Tomorrow, our Year 6 students head off for their camp in Waroona. They have an exciting agenda of activities during their time away, including kayaking, abseiling, raft building, talent quest and more. Our Year 6s will have the opportunity to strengthen friendship bonds and keep building their independence and resilience in their time away as they approach their final few weeks of primary school and prepare to enter high school.

It takes a huge amount of planning and organisation to take 110 students to a three day camp. A huge thank you must go to the entire Year 6 teaching team for all their hard work and also to the P&C Year 6 fundraising sub-committee who have helped throughout the year to coordinate activities to bring down the costs of Year 6 camp and graduation for our families. Thank you must also go to Ms McCarthy, Mr Porteous, Mrs Thuang, Mrs Harper, Ms O’Malley, Miss Smith, Mr Bowman and Mrs Hunter for the huge commitment in accompanying our students on camp. They give up time with their own children and families (and sleep!) to make sure our students have an amazing, safe time away on camp. I’m also joining them on camp on Thursday and Friday and can’t wait to share in the memories with our graduating students.

COVID-19: As you will know, the mandatory isolation period has ended for people who test positive for COVID-19. Although isolation protocols have ended, COVID is still present in the community. As a school, we will continue to keep rooms well ventilated and ensure hygiene is a top priority. Anyone who is unwell is encouraged to take a RAT and stay home until symptoms resolve. Please register your child’s absence on Compass if your child is absent due to illness.

People who test COVID-19 positive, are encouraged to stay home until symptoms resolve and register their positive RAT with Health. Anyone who is a close contact is encouraged to test daily for 5 days and only attend school following a negative RAT result. It is no longer necessary to inform the school if your child is a close contact.

Due to isolation no longer being mandatory, the COVID-19 reporting form will no longer be used to report positive cases. If your child tests positive, it is still necessary to inform the school but please do this by adding COVID as the reason for absence when adding an attendance note on Compass. Although COVID cases have significantly decreased, we can all do our part to limit transmission by staying home when unwell.

Teaching and Learning

Scitech Challenge Day: Last week, a small group of Year 5 students represented Wembley at this annual event hosted by Scitech accompanied by Mrs Sue Webber, our Science specialist teacher.

Tyler, Archie, Daniel, Zoe, Maeve, Vikash, Claire and Miles engaged in a series of challenges and activities designed to test scientific inquiry skills, STEAM design thinking capabilities and creative habits of learning such as collaboration and persistence. Students investigated properties of rocks and meteorites, visited the Planetarium and applied their new knowledge of planets and stars and measured the force from impact after designing a test vehicle for an astronaut re-entering from space. Thank you Mrs Webber for always encouraging our students to get involved in Science and STEM!

Instructional Model: While our students and families were enjoying their last two days of school holidays, our staff were engaged in two days of professional learning, reflection and connection. A focus for our teaching staff over the past few months has been on engaging in professional dialogue and review of the research into how students learn best, including educational psychology and cognitive science.

We are nearing the end of a collaborative process to create a whole school instructional model for explicit teaching practices in the school based on the evidence, particularly for the core foundational learning areas of literacy and numeracy. The instructional model will detail the specific elements of learning sequence design that should be included by teachers when planning and monitoring engagement and acquisition of learning.

This consistent language will provide the basis for connected practices when teaching students across the school. As you saw during our inquiry learning showcase last term, we already have an existing whole school inquiry learning model, which focuses on using the curriculum to ask big questions, drive curiosity, devise creative solutions, apply foundational competencies and expand student’s thinking skills. The explicit teaching instructional model will complement this approach. We look forward to sharing this model with the community once finalised.

Community Engagement

WPS Colour Run: On the last day of Term 3, we ended the term on a high and a splash of colour. Our students and staff had lots of fun getting messy! A big thank you to the P&C Fundraising sub-committee for all their hard work organising the event, in particular Victoria Martelli. Thank you must also go to all the parents who came and volunteered on the day.

Interschool Athletics Carnival: In the last week of Term 3, the final interschool athletics event was held in Floreat with team games, individual sprints and relays to end the competition. Our students were outstanding on the day, showing such resilience and perseverance throughout each event. Wembley PS were victorious on the day, winning the Champion shield for the 11^th year in a row. A fantastic team effort.

This year, Wembley PS was the organising school and our Physical Education teachers Mr Bowman and Mrs Watson did a magnificent job. Thank you to Jayne Malone, Robin Carvolth and Anna Teh for volunteering their time on the day to assist with announcing and scoring.

Kindy Playground Upgrade: Over the holidays, an under-utilised area of our Kindergarten playground had an upgrade, with some artificial turf for an additional outdoor learning area and shade sails installed over both the turf and mud kitchen.

I would like to thank parent Shohan Johnson-Kain for partnering with the school to plan and coordinate the works over the holidays. As a landscape architect, her expertise and contacts in the industry were invaluable in getting this project done in a short amount of time. I also thank the K/PP P&C sub-committee for contributing to the costs for this upgrade, Without P&C support, improvements such as these to the school grounds are very difficult to achieve. Our Kindergarten students now have a wonderful addition to the outside area just in time for the great weather ahead.

‘Collaborate, Connect, Communicate and Care’.

Yours in learning

The Senior Leadership Team

Tamara, Milani, Stacey and Natalie