Principal's MessageDear parents/carers, What a way to end the term! My thanks are extended to the remarkable work of the staff at UPS who have gone above and beyond throughout the term to ensure that not only the teaching and learning of all students is paramount but also their health, safety and wellbeing is a priority. Additionally, I commend our students for their amazing resilience and outstanding behaviour throughout the most challenging of weather events and the complexities COVID has given us throughout the term. A huge thank you to our parents, carers and whole school community for also supporting UPS staff unconditionally and encouraging us each day even when plans are changed, and events are cancelled or postponed. As you are aware we recently advertised for the position of Assistant Principal Curriculum and Instruction. Troy Hosler was successful in gaining this position and will begin in his role day one of term two. Troy comes with a wealth of knowledge and experience in Instructional teaching and supporting teachers and students and we look forward to welcoming him to our fabulous UPS Staff and school community. Opportunity Classes- 2023 Opportunity classes cater for intellectually gifted and high potential students who may otherwise be without sufficient classmates at their own academic and social level. Students successfully placed will usually have to leave their current school to enrol in a school with an opportunity class for Years 5 and 6. Testing and assessment Applications for opportunity class placement are considered on the results of the Opportunity Class Placement Test alone. Students who wish to be considered for opportunity class placement will sit the Opportunity Class Placement Test on Thursday 28 July 2022. How to apply If you would like to have your child considered for Year 5 opportunity class entry in 2023, you need to apply between Tuesday 26 April 2022 and Friday 13 May 2022. You will need to access the online application at: https://education.nsw.gov.au/public-schools/selective-high-schools-and-opportunity-classes/year-5 . You must not use the child’s email address. Late applications are not usually accepted. If you do not have internet access, you could apply at a public library. If you have a disability that prevents you from using a computer, you can contact the Team for assistance after Tuesday 26 April 2022. You must submit only ONE application for each student. Figtree High School Enrichment Class Applications for 2023 Figtree High School values excellence for all students. The Enrichment Class is one way we have broadened our curriculum to better support high potential and gifted students to develop their knowledge, application, thinking skills and attitudes to a degree of complexity appropriate to the student's developmental level. At the forefront of the Enrichment Classes, future-focused learning is a student-centric approach where fun, interest, wellbeing and interactivity are valued. Teachers differentiate teaching and learning to meet the needs of high potential and high achievement students across the four natural ability domains (intellectual, physical, social emotional and creative). Application forms can be downloaded from our school website. Applications close 16 September 2022 The Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) for Unanderra Public School has been reviewed by Reconciliation Australia and this has been approved. Colour Explosion and Cross Country Due to the health and safety of all students, staff and visitors we could not hold both the colour explosion or the cross-country last week which was very disappointing. The Colour Explosion will now be held on the new date of Friday 29 April. Please note that the Cross Country both K-2 and 3-6 (including 8-year-olds) will be held on the new date Wednesday 27 April as originally planned. This means that students will be required to wear sports uniform and/or house colours on the first school day of term 2. We anticipate that the grounds will be dry and safe to run on however, if the weather once again is wet and the grounds are saturated, we will plan for a competitors only cross country. Participating students will be required to wear suitable running shoes each day until they have had the opportunity to run the cross country. ANZAC DAY- Assembly This important day will be acknowledged on Thursday 28 April at school. Mother’s Day Stall This will be held on Thursday 28 April at school. Individual students will be given the opportunity to purchase a gift for a significant adult at home to celebrate this day. The maximum cost of the gifts will be $5. I thank the P&C for coordinating this event and thank them all for the time that they give to support our students. Easter Hat Parade Like all our families and school community we are disappointed that we were not able to go ahead with our famous and really exciting Easter Hat parade. We do have many great photos showcasing the great effort many students went to in designing their Easter Hat, poster, or diorama. Congratulations to you all and thank you for the amazing work you have put into these creation. Check in Assessments are nearly completed across Stage 2 and Stage 3 and we congratulate all students who participated and we look forward to using this data to continue to inform our teaching and learning programs across the school. NAPLAN practice went ahead last week and as a result we have purchased a number of headphones and mice to ensure everyone is covered. Thank you to Mrs Jackson and the team supporting her for ensuring this is being implemented efficiently. The Silly Scientist has been postponed to 27 May in term 2.Thank you to all the families who have already paid for this valuable incursion. Just a Reminder of the COVID- 19 Smart Start to 2022 (Information also on UPS website) We will continue to work in partnership with NSW Health to help to minimise transmissions at school. The health and wellbeing of our students and staff remain our priority, and these measures are designed to help to keep our school open and our students learning in the classroom. Unwell at school Any student or staff member who is unwell and/or displays symptoms of COVID-19 will be asked to go home and stay until they can complete a RAT or PCR test. If symptoms continue, they should stay at home and take another RAT in 24 hours or have a PCR test. The results of the PCR test need to be returned to the staff or student before returning to school. If the second RAT or initial PCR test result is negative and they are displaying no symptoms OR they are diagnosed as another condition such as hayfever, the student or staff member can return to school. In NSW, positive COVID-19 cases are provided a Medical Clearance Notice after 7 days and allowed to leave self-isolation as long as they do not have COVID-19 symptoms. What happens when a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19? Under the new close contact rules, schools are no longer included in contact tracing. I will inform the school community when there is a positive case in our school and advise families on public health advice, including monitoring for symptoms. Cola Cover We have been liaising with Assets and are now up to the design stage of a cola cover being built. This is still a few months away and we will advise families of the progress as we know more. Thank you once again to the school community for the support and have a lovely Easter holiday break. Anissa Rajendra Our wonderful Kindergarten students in KN have had a fantastic start to school at Unanderra Public School this term and are continuing to grow, learn and make new friendships every day. We have been learning about rhyming, syllables, words, and letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes) through a range of nursery rhymes. It has been particularly enjoyable creating actions to go with our singing and various artworks of the main characters in each nursery rhyme. We have loved counting our days at school each day as part of our morning routine. We use our class tens frames to track our days and we are getting very close to filling half of the first 100 days of learning. KN are also great at representing numbers to 10 in lots of different ways, including on dice, using tens frames, as numerals and by having the number of items needed. In KN we are very proud of the learning we have been doing and we can’t wait to showcase even more as we head into Term 2. In English, we have been learning about persuasive writing and reading the text "Boy Overboard" by Morris Glietzman. A big focus for 5/6M, this term, has been spelling with a focus on morphology and recognising prefixes, root words and suffixes to help spell and understand the meaning of a word. In maths, we have been writing the room to solve maths problems and are quickly becoming multiplication masters. In art, we have been studying artist and replicating their work. Our Picasso inspired self-portraits contained out initials. In sport, we have adapted to the wet weather and enjoyed playing in the hall. Completing the exercise circuit with 5/6D was a big hit. Speaking of sport, we have been lucky enough to have been visited by both the Dragon's WNRL players and Illawarra Hawks Basketball players this term, who talked about healthy lifestyles and ran us through a few drills. In history, we have learnt about our family and Australia's Migration, while in PDHPE we have learnt about making good decisions with Healthy Harold. We've enjoyed getting to know each other and working together on many tasks, we have even been helping Buster hand out trophies, count bees and present at assembly. We've had an amazing start to our year and are looking forward to learning more in Term 2. As part of our Morning Routine each day a different student reads out the 2L Acknowledgement to Country. All students in 2L contributed to making the personalised Acknowledgement to Country by listing why they were grateful to be able to learn and play on Dharawal Country, the document was then reviewed and finalised by Mrs Talbot. Our class has been learning about the Dharawal culture, customs, beliefs, language and seasons. Through Dreamtime stories as well as information presented in Morning Routine, we now know there are six seasons in the Dharawal calendar and that the Dharawal people identified the changing seasons for farming or to leave both fauna and flora for regeneration purposes. We have explored the many ways that information was passed down through story lines, art, secret business and ceremonies. Our artworks below represent the sugar glider (Djubi) which are found within our local area - the Illawarra, along with flying foxes (Wirambi) and lyrebirds (Wiritjirbin). One of our favourite dreamtime stories has been “The Great Eel” who carved its way through the streams to make rivers and lakes. Term 1 Gold AssemblyThe Unanderra Public School motto is ‘strive to achieve’, and the 7 students receiving their gold awards this term have certainly demonstrated their commitment to achieving their personal best over a substantial period of time. Gold Level 1 2B Amelia P 3/4D Katherine D Gold Level 2 3/4D Amelia H 3/4D Kymani J 3/4J Lincoln Q Gold Level 3 3/4S Emily P 5/6K Jacob M K-6 Assembly |
Unanderra Public School
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