Willunga Primary School Newsletter

On our Student Free Day this Friday classroom teachers will be assessing our students’ ability to write information reports. This is the first time our site has undertaken a whole site collection of this text type. In preparation for this assessment students’ years 2-7 had to practise their note taking skills when reading and listening to texts about a chosen topic. Students were provided with three note taking sessions to collate information and these notes were then used to write an information report during a writing assessment.

The importance of skimming and scanning when reading information is critical to students being successful across all curriculum areas and are key skills necessary to undertake research. These skills need to be developed from a young age.

You may have noticed that whilst your child could fluently read narratives in junior primary, they may have had difficulty reading non-fiction texts (and possibly still do!). Often this is due to unfamiliar vocabulary. Typically, a child needs to hear a new word 4 to 12 times before it is added to their vocabulary. When you introduce your child to a new word, try to keep a mental note of it and work to use it again in your conversations with your child. Kids love to learn new words so encourage them to use these words in context and build up a bank of words with similar meanings (synonyms).

If your child is undertaking research at home encourage them to note take using these strategies. Remind them that note taking is different to the way we usually write. We only record key words and ideas.

CELEBRATING JUDY JAMES 

Thank you all for helping us celebrate the retirement of Judy James last Friday with our French themed dress up day.  As you can imagine, Judy was more than surprised to find the school decked out in red white and blue!

Judy James has been a teacher at Willunga Primary for 20 years, and with the Department for Education for 20 years prior to that.  In that time she has been responsible for educating hundreds of children and managing tens of thousands of dollars worth of site resources.  Judy's strength is that she always remained committed to ensuring that only the best quality resources would be used at our school and that processes were in place to manage them.  In 2016 Judy took on our ICT infrastructure even though at that stage technology was not her strong point!  She swiftly delivered a system that is reliable and consistent to use.  She lead the installation of 1:2 devices across the school along with excellent Wifi and back-end Infrastructure. 

It is a real testament to her drive and commitment to continued improvement that she has maintained her care of our technology and site based resources right up to her very last day on site.

Judy will be missed, although may be back to help us finish what has been a very messy year in a short term contract role later this year.  We wish her all the best for a future in which she is not responsible for our 16,209 site based resources!!!  Can you even imagine keeping track of that many items!!

Best wishes Judy, you have definitely left an indelible mark on Willunga Primary School and will be very much missed (especially at audit time!)

Alison Colbeck 

A NOTE FROM JUDY JAMES

To WPS families

Thank you for your contribution towards my French day on Friday to mark my retirement. No-one let slip about the day, and as I was assuming that a farewell was off the agenda due to COVID-19, I was completely blown away by seeing staff and students in blue, white and red, with lots of berets, moustaches and French fashion!

It made my last day very special.

Judy James - Teacher Librarian

IT’S UNANIMOUS!!

After a rigorous and highly excited vote by the students, the new equipment to replace the Monkey Bars is shown above.  These should be completed and installed by end of July 2020.  Watch this space!

Thank you again for helping us with the drop offs and pick ups by not entering the site.  Remember if you need help with anything you can ring the front office, or come to the kiss and drop.  Please remember that parents need to maintain the 1.5m physical distance between themselves and other adults (parents and teachers) at all times, including school drop off and pick up. It is something that we will need to get used to for quite some time.  

Because of the impact of Covid on our planning, we have not published a term 2 Planner this year until now!  Due to current restrictions, we are unable to hold a lot of our usual events, although we are modifying many of them on site.  The attached planner provides a brief overview of our plans for the remaining few weeks working within the current level of restrictions.

• 3rd June (then next 3 Wednesdays): Year 6/7 Kidz Biz (Growth & Development)
• 5th June: Student Free Day - still going ahead but with an altered meeting schedule...  OSHC will be open if you need it.
• 8th June: Queen's Birthday Public Holiday
• 16th June: Governing Council Online edition
• 26th June: Casual Clothes Day 
• 3rd July: Last Day of Term 2. Early dismissal 2:05pm

Same Same but Different (Part 2!)

In the last newsletter I talked about helping out at the recovery centre with regards to the bushfires during the summer holidays, then last holidays with Housing SA and how in relation to COVID-19 some of the issues faced are same same, but different.  For our students, school has resumed, but likewise it is same same, but different and we are needing to be creative in how we do things. A friend of mine who always took her reusable cup to coffee shops decided to be creative with the takeaway cups she was accumulating because of COVID-19.  She planted flowers in them then dropped them at friends' doors to brighten their day. (This is a picture of mine – most importantly it’s still alive!)   Anyway, lots of the students have been asking me in the yard are we still doing Willunga’s Got Talent this year and what about MasterChef?  Like our principal Alison Colbeck wrote in the Skoolbag message, we are going ahead with Willunga’s Got Talent - we are trying to do same same, but with a different twist!

This year Willunga’s Got Talent:

 same year levels - year 2 upwards

same price – 50 c

DIFFERENT– maximum 1&1/2 min videos

Entry names and money need to be to me by Tuesday June 9th. Entries ready to go in Week 9! 

Creativity is intelligence having fun - Albert Einstein

Willunga Primary School is proudly supported by FoodBank SA.

Are you doing it tough at the moment?

We are now able to offer vouchers for the Aldinga Mobile Food Hub and Foodbank Hubs at other locations for families who require assistance.

Each voucher entitles the bearer to 4 visits, one visit per week, free fruit, vegetables and bread, and reduced cost items from the Foodbank range.

Please contact Sue Camac or Jess Mason

0885562234

Sue.camac427@schools.sa.edu.au

Jessica.mason247@schools.sa.edu.au

 We are currently enrolling Reception students for 2021 please contact Lynda Gregory (8556 2234 and press 1) as soon as possible to receive information on how to proceed with the enrolment of your child/ren. See attached letter for further details.