Principal's Message
Dear Parents/Carers,
The school recently participated in the ‘Keep Australia Beautiful’ promotion and 85 students from across the school volunteered to do a clean up around the grounds with clean up gloves from the Australia Council. We made 60 cents in recycled containers, found a Monopoly $50.00 note, a number of odd socks and some mini-Lego along with a range of plastics and paper. Our collection was sorted so we could see the volume of each type of waste. We recycled what we could and placed the rest in general rubbish or in our FOGO bin.
The Swimming training over the last three weeks peaked with 41 children training last Wednesday at the Fremantle pool under the assistance of a large group of parents including: Sherry, Renae, Dave, Ori, Kelly, Aaron, Flick, Isabel, Aurora and Meredith along with Bea one of our senior students. Everyone is very much looking forward to the Year 4-6 faction carnival.
Our beginning of year informal Welcome picnic is being held on Friday 10 March from 3:15pm. Feel welcome to come along with a picnic and catch up with other parents. There will be a few activities for students along with our ‘Tug of War ’challenge.
Our long-awaited ceramic tile mural will be assembled over the next week. It is going to have pride of place above the Friendship bench. In 2022, students produced two tiles which were fired at Jenny Dawson’s workshop at Bathers beach. Each student will have one tile on display, and another will be presented to them at the end of term in a display packet with some background of the event.
Funds for the project came from a COVID stimulus grant through Lotteries West and the Department of Local Government Sport and Cultural Industries kindly written by Nyanda Smith, one of our parents. Two other features of the mural will be larger tiles depicting two historical photos of students and buildings from the 1920s and a steel floral structure outlining the theme of the mural, ‘Celebrating Place through Ceramic Art.’
On Friday 24 March at 2:30pm, there will be a short assembly to acknowledge the work of our Artist in Residence, Mrs Henderson and others involved with the project. To finish the
afternoon off there will be an icy pole for the students as they head into the weekend. Parents coming in for pick up are invited to come down to the Undercover area to share in the event.
Congratulations to Vamuyan who received an Aussie of the Month award for the time and effort he puts into putting up the flags at the start of the week and taking them down at the end of the week. He has been very active in getting others to be involved also.
Well done to Room 10 and Mrs Rosman, Mrs Kitson and Ms Maz on their ROS themed Assembly on positive behaviours. Their skits, song and explanations were fantastic.
Students as part of our PBS [Positive Behaviour in Schools program], receive ROS cards if they show 1 or more of the themed Respect-Organised-Safe principles in class or the playground. Weekly prize draws along with faction points work towards larger whole faction points recognition goals. These may include free dress days and extra recess time.
Class teachers also give out ROS certificates to go home.
NAPLAN commences on Wednesday 15 March and involves 4 papers across, Reading, Maths, Writing and Language Conventions. Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 across all schools in Australia are involved.
Our PLAYGROUP is actively looking for new members. If you know of any new families with very young children have them, contact the school or look up the White Gum Valley Playgroup online if they may be interested in attending on Tuesday mornings.
Thank you to David McIlroy for donating a model showing the various parts of the body to assist with the teaching of Health. Our thanks also to Paul Mclean and Sarah for undertaking some oiling of our playground logs over the weekend.
Glenn Rondoni
Principal