Friday 30th August, 2024

From the Principal

What a busy few weeks we’ve had!

We celebrated Book Week last week with our Book Parade and Book Swap on Friday morning. Firstly, well done to everyone who got creative with the dress ups for our Book Parade. It was amazing to see people focused on the detail of characters in so many amazing books and go to great lengths creating outfits and the special props; everyone looked amazing! I was able to relive my eight-year-old fantasy of being a Jedi Knight from Star Wars, which was exciting! From memory, I went as Dath Vader to Book Week back in the 80s. I’m sure we all have amazing memories from our Book Weeks in the past. Today I love the fact that Book Week promotes the joy that the written text provides us when it comes to life off the page. That is also why we hold our annual Book Swap, sharing the books we have loved with other people who can then enjoy them. I enjoyed chatting to the students as they excitedly picked books that they swapped and could not wait to sit down and read.

I’m excited to share some news with our community. Opening its doors in 2025 on the Wangala Primary School site will be the ‘Geelong English Language School’ or GELS (interim name). This will see buildings constructed alongside the gymnasium car park, which is currently part of our site, on the stretch of grass between our car park and the Scouts facilities. The GELS will operate as its own school, with Bronwyn Smith newly appointed as the Principal. Wangala Primary School and the GELS will be linked together with fencing, with the GELS utilising the school grounds for their primary aged students, much the same as our current ‘Geelong English Language Centre’ students do. On the site we will see a number of classrooms, administration and bathroom facilities built as modular buildings. The timeline for site development is yet to be finalised and we will communicate this with you all as it happens. There should be little impact on our community during this time. This is another exciting opportunity for our students, and we look forward to welcoming the new 2025 GELS students next year.

Next week I will be participating in the ‘Strengthening Wadawurrung Perspectives Across Barwon Schools’ with other leaders from across the Barwon schools. This will see a number of on Country experiences and visits to culturally significant places around the area, listening to the knowledge and truth telling across the day. I look forward to this experience and sharing this with the community in due course.

As mentioned in the last newsletter item I composed, I will be on leave from the end of next week, taking two weeks of long-service leave. I’ll be heading to far-north Queensland to recharge my batteries and enjoy some sunshine for part of this. Rashelle Moon will be stepping into the acting-Principal role in my stead. As this is my final newsletter item for the term, I wish everyone a most relaxing holiday break and I will see you all when Term Four kicks off on Monday, October 7^th.

Regards,

Steven King

Principal

Dates to Remember

Thursday, 5th September
MARC Program at WPS

Friday, 6th September
2.45pm Assembly in the Gymnasium

Monday, 9th September
Biolab Excursion Year 5/6 Students

Thursday, 12th September
R U OK Day?

Tuesday, 17th September
Geelong Music and Movement Festival, Whole School

Thursday, 19th September
MARC Program at WPS

Friday, 20th September
Last Day of Term 3, Early Finish 2.30pm

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.

Student Star Awards

Congratulations to all of our award receivers last fortnight!

Reminders

Some friendly reminders:

– Please note, the staff car park is for staff use only. Please do not use the staff car park, disabled park or driveway, including when picking up children early or dropping off children late. Please park down on Kidman Avenue. The exception to this is for families who have disability park permits and before or after school care drop offs and pickups outside of office hours.
– If your child arrives after our school start time of 9:00am, they must be signed in at the office by an adult, using the iPad.
– The school yard is unsupervised in the morning before 8.45am, please ensure your child is not here and left unsupervised before this time. If you require your child to be here before this time, please contact our OSHC coordinator to arrange before school care. We have been seeing an increasing number of students here without an adult in the morning, sometimes requiring first aid treatment.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Upcoming Excursions and Camps:
– Monday 9th September, Biolab, Year 5/6 students, $10, payment and consent via Compass.
– Tuesday 17th September, Geelong School’s Music and Movement Festival, all year levels, $7, payment and consent via Compass.

School Saving Bonus

In Term 4, 2024, families with a child enrolled in a government school from Prep to Year 12 in 2025 will receive the one-off $400 School Saving Bonus. The $400 School Saving Bonus provides families with support for education-related costs, such as school activities and/or school uniforms and textbooks. The School Saving Bonus is not available for full-fee international students, home schooled students, TAFE students and students attending kindergarten in 2025.

Actions for parents and carers:

Before 18 October 2024, the Department of Education is asking parents and carers to:

Complete enrolment: If your child, or children are changing government school for Term 1 2025, or starting Prep or Year 7 in 2025. For more information, read about Enrolling in School.

Check your contact information: Ensure your email address and phone number is up to date with us. You can check this information by contacting us directly.

We need to ensure your contact information is up to date as the Department of Education will email you twice:

– in October, to verify your email address

– in November, with your $400 School Saving Bonus.

Please check your junk mail regularly to make sure you do not miss an important email.

To learn more about the School Saving Bonus, download the School Saving Bonus Information sheet for government school parents and carers or see attachment at the bottom of this newsletter. You can also visit vic.gov.au/school-saving-bonus.

Outside of Hours Case (OSHC)

The past fortnight in OSHC has been for baking, drawing, and group activities. We’ve absolutely mastered the art of banana bread and our resident chef Hugo whipped up some lovely blueberry sour cream muffins. In our activity rotations we challenged the groups to: build a ramp out of cardboard that was long enough and big enough to get the toy cars to reach the X on the floor, use the How To Draw book to draw fish and butterflies, make a lego creation based on the prompt they pulled out of a bag and do a big puzzle on the floor together.

Positive Behaviour Matrix Fortnightly Campaign

This fortnight’s positive behaviour focus is ‘we care for everyone’s belongings’.

At Wangala Primary School, we believe that respecting and caring for everyone’s belongings is a fundamental part of creating a positive and supportive environment. Personal belongings hold significance for everyone. We encourage our students to not only take good care of their own possessions, but to handle others belongings with care and consideration, in doing so, teaching the values of responsibility and empathy.

Book Week Celebrations!

Thank you to all the parents and carers for their creative Book Week costumes and for fostering a love of reading. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many amazing outfits. Our annual book swap was also a great success, with a fantastic selection of books to choose from.

August Edition of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program

Prepared by Judson and Kaylee, Class 4/5/6S
Season – Winter

This month in the garden, we’ve been having fun learning about worms and composting! We discovered what can and can’t go into the compost, how composting works, and why it’s important. We went on a mini beast hunt in the compost at school and in the garden and found worms, snails, beetles, and lots of fruit flies. We also explored our worm farm and learned some cool facts like, the longest earthworm ever found was 6.7 meters long and it was in Africa, and there are 6,000 different species of earthworms!

We also made beeswax wraps using beeswax that was kindly donated by a prep family. Plus, we created grass heads and are having a fun competition in class to see who can grow the most hair!

In the kitchen we’ve been using lots of seasonal produce from our school garden. We made pizzas, tacos, hummus, flatbread, and ravioli with silverbeet, spinach, rocket, bok choy, lettuce, coriander, mint, chives, snow peas, lemon, rosemary, and parsley from the garden. We made everything from scratch and loved learning how to make ravioli – it was delicious!

Class 2/3/4W

The students in 2/3/4 W have been a busy bunch this past fortnight!

They have been reading Bob Graham’s book ‘Jigsaw A Puzzle in the Post’ as part of our author study around Bob Graham. They have been creating postcards to send to their friends and letters of kindness to people who have shown acts of kindness towards them.

In Mathematics the students have been learning about money and how to add and subtract to calculate change.

In STEAM the students have had fun creating different mixtures and recording their observations!

And in PE the students have touched up on their tennis skills, with the help of a 3 week, onsite clinic!

Class 4/5/6S

The senior students have been learning about Dreaming stories, and have written their own narrative texts inspired by dreaming stories, and used some words of the Wadawurrung language. Some students have used descriptive language for their characters in order to generate AI images, as pictured below.

A wedge-tail eagle, mighty and fierce. It has sharp eyesight; he has big sharp talons and could cut a tree in half. His feathers are brown and gold.

A serpent the size of oceans. he has spikes from his head to his tail. He has red eyes and sharp fangs with a poisonous bite. He has white scales, and his spikes are green – Dylan

Drummond Street Services Upcoming Seminar

Drummond Street Services Upcoming Seminar

16th September – Top Gear – responding to aggression with children under 12

Registration link here: https://events.blackthorn.io/en/5g5EK4T7/g/64TJheb7W2/top-gear-managing-anger-and-aggression-in-children-12-and-under-4a2YOdRTNh/overview

Geelong School's Music and Movement Festival

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 17TH
Wangala students will once again be participating in Geelong School’s Music and Movement Festival. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to experience performing on a professional stage, under lights.

Public tickets are on sale now, and can be purchased through the GAC website: https://geelongartscentre.org.au/whats-on/creative-learning/geelong-schools-music-and-movement-festival/ or contact their box office on 1300 251 200.
Remember to buy these as soon as possible if you would like to attend, as tickets sell fast and some parents missed out last year.

You will need to buy a ticket for the following session time.
– Session 3 on Tuesday 17th September, 1pm-2:30pm
The student cost of $7 includes performance and transport cost.

COSTUMES
Be as creative as you wish and dress your child/ren in a costume of the following theme.
– P/1- Rock and Roll 50’s theme
– Years 2-6 – Barbie/Ken movie theme (Any character)

*Our Wangala students proudly pictured below on the Geelong Arts Centre website!