Friday, 2nd June, 2023

From the Principal

Late last week I had the privilege of watching the students who participated in the soccer at the Winter Lightning Premiership. I managed to watch one game and I could not have been prouder of each of the participants who showed great team work and pride in their side. I observed our very talented soccer players making sure that those students who weren’t as verse at playing soccer were included and encouraged with great positive language used. Mrs Hueston tells me this was the same with the group of students who played netball in Ocean Grove. When our students are out in the community, I always receive great feedback around how pleasant they are and how well they represent the school. Well done to you all!

Thanks to our Education Support Staff
On Thursday of last week we celebrated our Education Support Staff with a special morning tea. As mentioned in the last newsletter, we are extremely fortunate to have the ES team we have and we value their contributions to our community.

Our school simply could not function without our amazing ES staff!

Exciting News!
As of next term we will be joining the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program!

After much reflection, it was decided that we would adopt the widely celebrated Kitchen Garden approach to deliver pleasurable food education. This will see our senior students participating in a structured program each week, exploring food from our own garden and engaging in a dining experience, or sharing that with other people from our community. As we begin with just the 5/6s in 2023, our aim is to have the involvement of the 3-6s in 2024, and with our junior classes engaged through our garden program on a weekly basis. We can’t wait to see the new direction takes joining the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program. See the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden philosophy statement later in the newsletter for further information.

Our final whole school Cafe lunch will be in the last week of this term. This has been a great opportunity for our community to share a meal, and our senior students have done an amazing job catering for everyone. Luckily our students won’t miss out with the option of our Friday lunch orders which can be ordered through the ‘School24’ App. See the Compass post regarding registration for this, or contact us for further information.

All the best!

Steven King
Principal

Dates to Remember

Tuesday, 6th June
Cafe Lunch
School Council Meeting

Monday, 12th June
King’s Birthday Public Holiday

Tuesday, 13th June
Cafe lunch

Tuesday, 13th June
Grade 5/6s visit Belmont Kinder

Wednesday, 14th June
Grade 5/6 BioLAB Excursion

Wednesday, 14th June
AFL Football Clinic P-4

Friday, 16th June
Newsletter

Monday, 19th June
Assembly 2.45pm

Tuesday, 20th June
Cafe Lunch

Thursday, 22nd June
Grade 5/6 GSODA Excursion

Friday, 23rd June
Reports go live on Compass

Friday, 23rd June
Last Day of Term Two – 2.30pm Finish

Monday, 10th July
First Day of Term Three

Wangala Primary School acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land we are on, the Wadawurrung people, and thank them for sharing their long lasting culture with us as we learn and grow together.

Reminders

Keep well this winter
Symptoms of influenza (flu) can hit everyone quickly and may last several weeks. Vaccination is the best way to protect yourself and others from getting the flu. The annual influenza vaccination is recommended from mid-April each year and is free under the National Immunisation Program for those at higher risk of complications from the flu.

We encourage parents, carers and students to practice prevention measures, including:
– washing and sanitising hands regularly
– avoiding touching eyes, nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing
– staying home if unwell and consulting a general practitioner (GP) or Nurse-on-Call as required
– staying up to date with flu and COVID-19 vaccinations.

Wangala Take Home Reader Bags
We are very excited with the arrival of our new Wangala Primary School Take Home Reader Bags. We are encouraging students to use these for their take-home readers, diaries, Magic Words, and the special notes you might have. These durable bags have a place on the back for student names and will hopefully last for many years to come! The bags are available through the office at a price of $10 each.

Uniforms
At the upcoming School Council meeting we will be discussing school uniforms and reviewing the array of options we have moving forward. If you have any feedback for the School Council, please don’t hesitate to contact one of the School Council members, or send an email through to the school. We’d love to hear your thoughts. We will also be asking students what they think about our uniforms providing another opportunity for our students to have voice in the school.

Winter Lightning Premiership.

On Friday the 26th of May, the senior students took part in the Winter Lightning Premiership Sports Day. Wangala entered a mixed soccer team and a girls netball team. We could not be prouder of the students’ efforts and performances on the day. All students represented Wangala with great pride and showed tremendous efforts with both teams having two wins on the day. Well done senior students! It’s always a fun day and I’m sure it was a highlight of the year for many.

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

year of schooling
category of disability or need: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

In our context at Wangala Primary School, students will be included in the NCCD process if they have (amongst other things) evidence of an IEP in 2022 or 2023, notes from parent teacher interviews or emails that outline adjustments in the classroom, participation in Literacy and/or Numeracy support classes, had an educational assessment (cognitive, hearing, speech etc) that outlines particular strategies that need to be implemented, the school receives funding for a students under the Program for Students with Disabilities or Disability Inclusion Fund, etc.

This information assists schools to:

formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools
consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools
develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy.

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school.

Student Attitudes to School Survey

Each year, the Department of Education implements an ‘Attitudes To School Survey’ (AtoSS)– for primary schools, we survey students from Grades 4 to 6. We value student voice as a means to improving student engagement, wellbeing and quality instruction and so we will be conducting the survey to find out what your child thinks of our school.

The AtoSS is an annual student survey offered by the Department of Education to assist schools to gain an understanding of students’ perceptions and experience of school. Students will be asked about their thoughts and feelings in relation to their school, their learning, peer relationships, resilience, bullying, health and wellbeing, physical activity, and life in general.

While we do not anticipate many risks of participation, some students may find some of the survey questions personal and sensitive in nature. Should you agree for your child to participate, they are still free to skip questions or to withdraw at any stage if the survey makes them upset or uncomfortable. Mrs Sobczynski will be facilitating the survey for all students.

Student participation in the survey is voluntary and students may withdraw at any time. The survey will take around 20-45 minutes to complete.

Your child will be provided with a unique login to complete the survey from their teacher. The student login is an assigned identifier that may be used to link data for statistical and research purposes only. Personally identifiable data will not be recorded in the survey response file to ensure the confidentiality of your child’s responses is protected at all times.

The survey results will be reported back to the school in aggregate form throughout the survey period. All survey data that is made available in reports are for groups of students only so that no individual student can be identified.

Please contact us if you would not like your child to participate in the AToSS.

Celebrating our Volunteers

We’re incredibly lucky to have a group of volunteers who come along to help out our students in different ways, through helping with the Kitchen Garden Program, working one-on-one with students as mentors right down to assisting with our library.

Recently, one of our volunteers, Rob Bailey, was awarded the ‘Mentor Volunteer of the Year’ through Ed Connect Australia, recognising the efforts he puts in each and every week. Rob mentors many of our students through the Kitchen Garden program, namely in the garden and construction side of things, and is always cheerful and caring.

From the whole of the Wangala community, we congratulate Rob on his achievement, and thank him and all of our wonderful volunteers for caring about our students!

Senior Classroom

The 5/6 students have started a new unit on Fractions and Decimals. They spent their first lesson creating their own fraction wall by folding strips of paper, in order to consolidate understanding of fractions as equal parts of a whole. Folding the paper into 7 equal parts proved to be the most challenging.

Focus on Curriculum

Reading Together

Reading is an important way to make the link from spoken words to written words.

Reading to your child is a valuable thing to do. Here are some tips:

– Encourage your child to select the books, magazines, catalogues, or online stories
– Discuss the pictures in a book and encourage your child to talk about the pictures
– Share wordless picture books tp develop imagination, ideas, and vocabulary by naming things in the pictures
– Re-read your child’s favourite books and stories
– Look for the rhyme, rhythm or repetition in books
– Support your child to make their own books with pictures and then ‘read’ the story to you.

Doing Maths Together at Home

Measuring Things

– Use a wall measuring chart to measure the height of people in your family
– Cut a piece of string for your child, any length will do. Use the string to measure the objects in your house to find out what is longer or shorter than your ‘string measuring tape’. Ask your child to identify anything that is the same length
– Explore other ways of measuring using a cup, jug, teaspoon, icy pole sticks, foot prints or hand lengths
– Build a tower of blocks that is taller than a favourite toy. Ask your child to count the total blocks to measure the height of the tower.

Grade 5/6 Excursion - GSODA

Grade 5/6s will be going to see GSODAs production of J’oseph And His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’ on Thursday 22nd June from 12:30 – 2:30pm.

Please check Compass for more details and to provide consent.

Reminder: Grade 5/6 BioLab Excursion

On Wednesday the 14th of June the grade 5/6 students have an excursion to BioLAB at Belmont. BioLAB provides science and mathematics programs wi

th a theme of “Human Performance and Sport” for school students. All of the programs are designed around various Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEAM) career pathways and are tailored to cater for multiple curriculum areas.

The students will take part in the following sessions which are both hands on and sporting based.

9:30am – 11:30am – Skin Deep

12:30am – 2:30am – Sporty Maths

Students will need to wear their school uniform and sneakers on the day and bring a bag with their hat, drink bottle and food in it. We will be leaving school at 9:10am sharp, so students will need to be on time to ensure we don’t miss the bus and our first session which is at 9:30am. The cost of this excursion will be $10. This is a fantastic opportunity for the grade 5/6 children and it is expected they all attend.

Permission needs to be given by Monday the 12th at the latest please. This is such a wonderful opportunity for the students and I’m sure that it will be a highlight for many as it always promises to be a fun day.

If you have any questions about this excursion, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thanks Andrea Hueston.

(P.E / STEAM teacher)

STEAM

All students have been busy learning about Coding in Steam over the past few weeks. Senior students have been introduced to Scratch. Scratch is a child-friendly and fun computer platform! Students have had fun creating their own interactive stories, games and animations. They have been very quick to pick up new concepts.

The junior students have continued to enjoy using the BeeBots to further learn about Coding. Making their own obstacle tracks for their BeeBots to travel through was a highlight last week. Making the track was easy but coordinating the directions was the tricky part. This week they also enjoyed making their own Bees. We’ve been Busy Bees in STEAM that’s for sure 😉

The Wonderbox

Theodore (Also known as Teddy) the Turtle has crawled into Wangala and has become part of the Wellbeing Team with his Wonder Box. Students can write Teddy and the Wellbeing team questions, concerns, worries, jokes or exciting things that are happening and Teddy and the team will reply or visit the student.

6 Key elements that are important to wellbeing are;

Emotional Literacy – understanding emotions so students can understand themselves and others.

Personal Strength – Help build students’ ability to recognise positive qualities about themselves and others.

Positive Coping – Opportunities for students to discuss and learn different types of coping strategies.

Problem Solving – Developing critical and creative thinking skills to explore different types of problems.

Stress Management – Learning about different calming strategies.

Help Seeking – In challenging times, it’s important to normalise asking for help.

The aim of the wonder box is to create a sense of community and connection within the school and encourage all the above key elements. We hope it will encourage student voice, respectful relationships, student engagement, participation and help seeking.

The whole team at Wangala desires students to know that the adults around them care for them, respect them and want to listen to them. Most importantly the students feel safe to share and ask for help.

We hope the Wonderbox and Theodore can provide another safe channel of communication for the students and that it creates a bit of fun within the school!

Teddy will be visiting the students in their classrooms next week so listen out at home for stories of a surprise visitor in class!