Principal's Message
Dear Parents/Carers,
Welcome to the new term.
My thanks to the staff for their wonderful efforts in the first week whilst I was on Leave trekking on the Nakasendo trail.
Thank you to families for your support of the Edu-dance program. It is now in full swing.
Our concert will be held on 6 December which is in week 9 at 5:00pm.
Congratulations to everyone involved with fundraising activities centred around the Referendum, where our school was a polling booth.
Our students had the opportunity to be part of some rugby clinics this week. They were very popular covering a number of ball handling and running skills.
Recently the school participated in its school review. It looked at our school operations over a number of areas noting commendations and recommendations to promote further school progress. We had the opportunity to share with the review team the work the school is undertaking. A copy of the review is available on our website.
The school is part of the Scitech Lighthouse Maths Program which involves two staff being trained up during the year in the areas of reasoning and problem solving in order to share their expertise with all staff. Mrs Walker and Ms Foster are our two representatives.
One component of the program was a parent/student workshop. It was great to see many of our families attending the workshop after school this week using a range of resources including Ipads to solve a number of problems. The level of engagement was fantastic. This was also shared by the Scitech facilitator.
Our year three and four students, parent helpers and staff visited the Canning River Eco Education Centre recently to look at the Canning-river ecosystem using field equipment. Aside from aquatic life, water birds and local plants were also looked at.
Swimming lessons commence next week for our younger students at Fremantle Pool. The lessons will run over 10 days. Rooms 5,6 and 9 will have their lesson at 9:00am and rooms 10,11 and 12 at 9:40am.
Thank you to Mrs Walker and staff involved with the TT Rockstars program. It has been great to see the improvement of tables recall in our older students using this program. A similar program called Numbots running in the
younger classes has been promoting number understandings. Thank you to Ms Wilkins and staff for promoting this in their class rooms.
Good luck to our Numero maths team that will be representing the school at Coogee Primary School next week. Numero is a maths game involving playing cards and calculating number combinations. White Gum Valley has been involved with this competition for many years as one of our strategies for more able mathematicians.
It is World Teachers’ Day next Friday celebrating the work of teachers in schools. I would like to thank the staff here at White Gum Valley for the immense amount of time they put into providing our educational programs and activities for students.
It is a very special time for Hazel Orme Community Kindergarten on Sunday 29 October. They will be celebrating their 100th anniversary.
The Centre has, over the years, provided an excellent education for students in and out of the Valley for Kindergarten.
The parent/staff committees over the years have helped establish facilities that are the envy of other kindergarten settings! Many of the committee members have gone on to taking on roles on the P&C and School Board as their children got older.
The celebrations commence at 1:00pm and will go through to 6:00pm.
Mark this in your calendar and come along. The staff and parents have put together a wonderful afternoon of activities that will spill over into the orchard area as well.
Please pass this on to friends and neighbours who may have had children attend in previous years.
The school sump is receiving a makeover and an order has been placed for a number of seedlings to beautify the area. The Woolworths Land Care grant we received will assist in the payment of the seedlings.
The area has been reticulated and weeding has been ongoing.
A planting will be arranged one afternoon after school for anyone who may be able to assist.
Coming up over the next two weeks we have Italian Week and Outdoor classroom day along with an acknowledgement of our parent helpers, zone cricket finals, Room 7 assembly and our second Cycle to School breakfast.
Glenn Rondoni
Principal