Specialist Team News

Visual Arts

The amazing 2024 ‘Wonders of Williamstown’ Art Show was a wonderful success! I’d like to thank the school community for joining us to celebrate and congratulate all the hard work our Willy Kid artists have done over the year. This huge event would not have been possible without the help of so many volunteers and the support from the ‘Friends of Willy’ team. The day was just buzzing with families enjoying the beautiful sunshine, amazing artwork, the choir, bands and maybe a sausage or two. If you missed out on this event, there is some artwork from the Art Show up in the office. I will be returning all large pieces of art to the students over the coming weeks and keeping the others to put into the children’s portfolios ready to assess then send home at the end of the year.

All grades have been spending time reflecting and giving feedback about the art show in classes this week. Sharing what they loved and discussing if there was anything that they would add or change for our next art show. We are also doing a few assessment tasks to prepare for the upcoming end of year reports.

Warm Regards,

Marcia Evans 

Performing Arts

Curriculum Focus in Performing Arts

Prep: Students have been working well on using the correct fingers for playing chords on the ukulele. So far, they can play A minor and C major chords using an up and down strum.

Year 1/2: Students have been trying out some popular songs using body percussion to start the lesson and are learning about the dance style called ‘tutting’ which features in the dance “Uptown Funk”. They have been playing songs using Am, F and C chords on the ukulele with different strumming patterns.

Grade 3/4: Students have started each lesson using body percussion to popular songs. They have been playing a few songs on the ukulele using 3 chords with a focus on tuning, using the correct fingers and a quick and smooth change over. 

Grade 5/6: Students have been acting out the ending they have written for the play called “The Discussion Period”. Each student has worked on remembering their lines and delivering them with the appropriate expression required for their character. Here’s one of the groups performing as a character discussing their thoughts on social media.

Music Clubs

On Sunday Oct 20th the Williamstown Primary Choir and Rock Band performed to an appreciative crowd outside the Library for the Art Show Open Day. Well done to all our performers! We look forward to hearing all our music groups at the end of the year.

*There will be no band rehearsals this week due to 5/6 Camps.

Warm regards,

Faye Ferry & Lynne Georgiadis

Performing Arts Teachers   

Physical Education

Biweekly Physical Education Curriculum Highlights – Term 4 Week 4

As we move further into Term 4, each year level will be advancing their physical skills and continuing to build teamwork and enjoyment in PE.

Prep: Students are progressing to more advanced activities that challenge their coordination and agility. They’ll engage in small-group games designed to boost their confidence and refine motor skills through playful and cooperative exercises.

Year 1 & 2: Building on their skills in creativity and teamwork, Year 1 and 2 students will explore activities with increased complexity, encouraging them to apply coordination, balance, and collaboration in mini-games that promote both skill development and enjoyment.

Grade 3 & 4: This fortnight, students will participate in inclusive target games, focusing on activities that allow everyone to contribute and have fun. Through these games, they will enhance their precision, patience, and strategic thinking while building a supportive environment for all players.

Grade 5/6: The emphasis for our senior students is on tennis, where they’ll develop and refine their racquet skills, footwork, and game strategies. Students will also have opportunities to practise in friendly matches, fostering both competitive spirit and teamwork on the court.

Sports Update

We are thrilled to announce that on next Wednesday and Thursday, Willy Primary will host Wheelchair AFL clinics for students in Grades 3 to 6! This exciting program will allow students to learn about the sport of Wheelchair AFL, experience it firsthand, and gain insight into the skills, coordination, and teamwork involved. It’s a unique opportunity for students to broaden their understanding of adaptive sports, emphasising inclusivity and empathy. We look forward to seeing our students embrace this incredible experience, connecting with one another while gaining a new perspective on AFL and the diverse ways people can engage in sport.

Warm Regards,

Paddy Gallivan (Physical Education)

LOTE (French)

Le Francais

Dans La Classe

This week, Preps began their singing task on our ‘Salut, bonjour’ song. While it is rounding up words they discovered earlier in the year, it is teaching how to combine them together to create a French rhyme and how to keep the beat to it to respect the short sentence structures to retain meaning. To add to it, our youngest cohort will also be playing around with the words as those get removed from the text for students to put them back in the right places. With a trial and error approach – and a lot of fun in the process as we sing out sentences that just don’t make sense with wrongly placed words (which they will be able to pick up) – Preps will be able to re-create the song based on the French words they hear and the ability that they developed throughout the year to read and sound out simple French words. 

Year 3/4/5/6 students completed all written and oral work on their differentiated virtual trip to France pages. This required a bilingual focus while reading and copying the text from the board, after multiple class discussions on vocabulary to learn to draw mental connections in order to create meaning. Year 3s and 4s supported this process by illustrating their writing with pictures for meaning, from one week to the next, relying on their reading comprehension. Doing so is teaching them how to draw meaning back to tricky words in a short sentence from the words around it.

Across the school, students are only ever required to record information in French only in their books so as to encourage them to actively rely on their thinking and problem-solving skills which mere English translations written in their books would not support. Therefore, it is important for our Willy students to take part in our class discussions and brainstorming activities so as to awaken their brain neuroplasticity. This helps them to continuously ‘hunt for clues’ in written French in order to join so-to-speak mental and visual dots. This enables them to develop a gradual automatic sense of language translation whereby it is not necessary for them to know every single word in a sentence in order to understand it. When doing so, words begin to magically decode themselves – even the least obvious ones. Such was our focus this week with Year 5/6s and it was a delight to see and hear their light bulb moments in the classroom, pushing through linguistic barriers to empower themselves with a sense of knowing.

This next fortnight: French numeracy for language fluency

Preps – Students will continue to play around with the language by moving words around for short sentence experimentation in the context of a song. They will complete their handwriting of ‘Salut, bonjour’ and circle time class language activities on the floor to put the song back together. They will then begin working on a new song to apply the same thinking and problem-solving language activities with ‘Un, deux, trois, allons dans les bois’.

Year 3s & 4s – Students will wrap up their work on ‘Dans la video de Madame Cricri, il y a …’ with  speech presentations by volunteers to continue developing our approach to listening for meaning. They will then move onto French numeracy activities up to 50 to clearly unveil number building patterns for mindful and effortless counting. 

Year 5/6s – Students will finish off ‘Le Voyage De Madame Cricri’ with volunteered oral presentations to the class, applying the principles of ‘la prononciation francaise’ which rely on reading for meaning (hunting for clues) / applying silent letters to the text / only ever using short sounds (long sounds belong to the English language). They will complete their self-video recording process to see and listen to themselves read, replay for feedback and amend by applying the pronunciation rules followed by a class discussion on their before and after reflections. Our senior students will then move onto French numeracy with numbers up to 60 patterns. 

Madame CRICRI 😊