Latest News

From the Principal

Dear Waddington families,

Reflecting on the fact that this is the final newsletter of 2023 is truly hard to believe! What an exceptional year it has been. The warmth and joy radiated during the Christmas Carols on Friday night were truly heartwarming. Our community, filled with the most supportive and caring individuals, came together for a memorable evening. Witnessing the smiles on the faces of our students and their families made it one of our favorite nights. Here’s to a year filled with shared moments and continued community spirit!

I have some important news to share with you all which is very bittersweet. I am the recommended applicant for the Principal role at Swan View Primary School. As you all know I live in the hills area and this school is 5 minutes from my house. If all goes well, on Thursday it will be official but I wanted to give you all as much notice as possible as I know this will be a shock that I will not be continuing here at Waddington. Ms Katherine Chivers will be taking on my role in 2024 until the position is advertised permanently. I think you can all appreciate how much I love this school and I have been committed to the students and community. I know that it will be in strong hands with Ms Chivers and the wonderful staff here who will continue with our vision of Strive to Succeed. Over my time as Principal I have wanted to ensure that the school has robust plans in place so that no matter who steps into the role of Principal, that the vision of the school continues. I have done this and I want to reassure you that the progress we have made as a school will continue. My last day will be on Tuesday the 12^th December, so please come and see me before then if you have any concerns or questions. 

To let you know additional some staffing news, we have finished our PE process and are excited to announce Mr Keith Milner will be joining us. Mr Milner is an experienced PE teacher who also works at Butler Primary School. He already has lots of ideas on how to make our PE program even better and came in last week to meet students. Mrs Ami Nguyen will also be joining us in Semester 1 as teacher of PP/1. Mrs Nguyen is an experienced teacher who is currently teaching at the Language Development Centre. On Friday this week our students will be having a transition day where they will be moving to the class they will be in for 2024. Mrs Nguyen will be joining us so that our students can meet her. Also, due to our increasingly busy office, Miss Chloe Williamson will be working in the front office 2 days a week to assist Mrs Jones. Our students already know and love Miss Williamson so this is wonderful news for all of us. 

As we reflect on the remarkable year that was, it is with immense pride and joy that we share the outstanding achievements and exciting developments that defined our journey at Waddington Primary School for 2023.

1. TheirCare Outside of School Hours Care (OHSC): A New Chapter Begins In response to the community’s eager anticipation, we are thrilled to announce that negotiations with TheirCare OHSC were successfully concluded. Starting Term 1, 2024, we will introduce after-school care—an eagerly awaited addition that brings convenience and support to our families. The potential for expansion to before-school care and holiday care exists, and interested families were encouraged to contact the front office to secure a spot. Waddington PS has proudly become the sole school in Koondoola offering this valuable service.

2. NAPLAN Triumphs: Exceeding Expectations in Literacy and Numeracy Our students once again showcased their academic prowess in this year’s NAPLAN assessments. Across Reading, Writing, Spelling, and Numeracy, our results not only met but surpassed expectations, outperforming like schools. Notably, in Year 5 Spelling, our students were a mere 0.62 points away from the National Average, a testament to the dedication of our teachers and the effectiveness of our teaching methods.

3. 12 Buckets Program Launch: Transforming Lives in Waddy Hall The commencement of the 12 Buckets program in Waddy Hall marked a significant milestone for Waddington PS. This transformative mentoring program, in collaboration with the school, focused on enhancing students’ well-being, confidence, and decision-making skills. The newly transformed space was a testament to our commitment to providing holistic support for our students.

4. New Class Addition: Meeting Growing Needs For the first time in years, Waddington PS is expanding its capacity to accommodate our increasing numbers. We are excited to announce the addition of a new class, bringing our total to five classes. This adjustment allows us to provide an even more personalized and enriching learning experience for our students, ensuring they continue to thrive academically and personally.

5. Sustainable School: Solar Panels and Resurfaced Basketball Court Waddington PS continues its commitment to creating an inspiring and sustainable learning environment. This year, we took a significant step towards sustainability by installing solar panels on our campus. This green initiative not only aligns with our environmental values but also serves as a valuable educational tool for our students. Additionally, we are thrilled to announce that the Department is set to resurface our second basketball court, further contributing to the aesthetics and functionality of our school facilities. These endeavors reflect our ongoing commitment to providing a high quality educational experience for our students, both inside and outside the classroom.

As we reflect on these achievements and look ahead to 2024, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to the entire Waddington PS community. Your support and dedication were integral to our success. Together, we Strived for Success! 

Kind regards,

Jemima Tomlinson 

Principal

Friendly Schools Plus

Navigating children’s friendships can be VERY tough! It can be hard for us as parents to know what to say when our children feel they have no friends, or are having disagreements. Friendly Schools Plus has some sound advice to help us with our children in these difficult times:

From the Administration Team

Term 4 Planner

The term planner is updated regularly and below are some important dates to be aware of for the 2 weeks of this term and the first week of term 1 2024.

Please refer to the Term Planner page under the ‘Community’ tab for the most up-to-date events for term 4 and the start of 2024 (but this may be subject to change so please check regularly).

Important Dates

7 December 2023 – Year 6 Celebration – Outback Splash (9am to 3pm)

11 December 2023 – Graduation/Book Awards and Morning Tea (9am to 10.30am)

13 December 2023 – Graduation Dinner (5.30pm start)

14 December 2023 – Term 4 ends for students

TERM 1 2024

29 January 2024 – Staff Development Day (SDD) – Students do not attend

30 January 2024 – Staff Development Day (SDD) – Students do not attend

31 January 2024 – Term 1 2024 commences for students

The importance of Water!

Breakfast Club – Thank you IGA Balga!

We would like to acknowledge with thanks IGA Balga for supporting our schools breakfast club, our students appreciate your support!

Room 1 – Prehistoric days!

As the end of the year approaches, it’s hard to believe how much our Year One and Two students have accomplished… And this last term has been no different, jam-packed with learning! Room One, you are amazing!

Roaring into action, our classroom stepped back in time to the prehistoric days where students worked on many activities all about dinosaurs. They were even paleontologists for the day and embarked on a sweet adventure, fossicking for chocolate chips in a cookie—because who said paleontology can’t be delicious?

In literacy, our young explorer put their creative minds to work by innovating a Talk for Writing text centered around a fierce dinosaur hiding in a dark and gloomy cave. The narratives they created were nothing short of dino-mite! Then just as things started to settle down, George the Dragon snuck into our classroom, left a letter, and hid his precious golden stones one last time. But wait, could there be a mischievous Christmas elf adding a sprinkle of magic to our classroom? The mystery unfolds!

In our Reading Daily Review sessions, Room One has been working hard on their literary skills. From letter patterns to nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, building up their vocabulary and high-frequency words, to writing and reading sentences for fluency, their progress has been something to be proud of.

In Mathematics this term Students have been working on division and multiplication problems through sharing, dividing sets of objects, and creating arrays. Year Twos are gearing up for their two, three, five, and ten times tables, all while mastering addition and subtraction sums. Students have also delved into investigating, classifying, and constructing 3D shapes. They even went on a 3D hunt…shapes are everywhere around us! Year One’s and Two’s also enjoyed programming Beebots to help them explore positional and directional language. Beeebots were zipping around our floor, moving in all directions!

In Geography this term, our little explorers enjoyed learning about our world and Australia, discovering our location, exploring different places, and the connections to other places. They absolutely loved the song ‘Down Under’!

Room One students should be truly proud of all they have achieved this term and this year. It has been an absolutely wonderful year, you are all little stars!

Community Notices

BRICKS 4 KIDZ Summer School Holiday Workshops

These holiday programs are designed for kids ages 5 -12 and there are many themes to inspire creativity and fun.

Online enrolment is at the following link: 

https://www.bricks4kidz.com.au/perth-midland/program-events/school-holiday-workshops-activities-lego-bricks/embed/#?secret=LLYBx2iRbl

The Summer School Holiday Workshops are located at the following locations:

• Swan Valley Anglican Community School @ Aveley
• BRICKS 4 KIDZ City West @ West Perth

Learning to use the toilet!

Please see below the details of a free online session tonight for parents of toddlers who are still learning to use the toilet.

 

Better Health Program – Term 1 2024

A 10-week free healthy lifestyle program for Western Australian children 6-12 years who are above a healthy weight and their parents and carers. 

📆 Starts 2^nd of Feb

📍 Online or in person at local communities (Cockburn, Cannington, Port Kennedy, Osborne Park)

👉 https://betterhealthprogram.org/wa or 1300 822 953 

💸 FREE 

Better Health Program focuses on healthy eating, physical activity, sleep and screentime for children in their primary years. Children receive free resources and families are support by a dietician/nutritionist each week. 

If you need guidance around creating healthy habits then this is for you. 

From the Principal

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

It is impossible to believe that we are over halfway through Term 4. This year has flown, and what a wonderful year it has been! We have achieved so much as a school and we are immensely proud at the progress students have achieved.

Last week our students in Year 1 – 6 got to experience the WA Museum organised by Mrs Reeves. They LOVED the experience! There was a huge amount of learning going on with students finding out about dinosaurs, Tasmanian tigers and getting to see a huge shark.

Looking onto next year, we are excited to announce that because of our increase in numbers, we are expanding and creating a new class. This has not happened for a number of years at Waddington, and is testament to the positive work and environment we create. Our classes next year will still be split, but will be as follows:

K / PP – Rm 9 

PP / 1 – Rm 4

Year 2 / 3 – Rm 1

Year 3 / 4 – Rm 8 

Year 5 / 6 – Rm 5

Things can still change as we all know, but we wanted to communicate the draft plan with you all. Book lists will be going out soon and we have changed to Officeworks this year in response to raising prices as Officeworks could provide stationery at lower prices than competitors. They are also very close to the school. 

Last week, as a school we analysed the data we received from our School Opinion Surveys. We surveyed parents, staff and students PP – Year 6. The results were overwhelmingly positive with some very happy feedback from everyone. Here were some of the things parents had to say about what we do well here at Waddington PS:

“Every child is treated equally and each child is taught at their individual level”

“They give their best and make sure the kids are safe and supported in every aspect”

“You are a great school and teachers are excellent. The only thing I have to say is thank you!”

Here are some comments from our students about what they like about Waddington PS:

“That the teachers treat me with respect and I feel safe” 

“I like how all the teachers respect all students opinions”

With the surveys, the closer to 5.0 the more positively the respondent feels about our school. Our average rating out of 5 for the survey was 4.4 which was even higher than last year. Our average staff rating was 4.5. For our students PP – 4 the average was 4.3 and Year 5/6 was 4.2. These scores are excellent and testament to our hard work and dedication to ensuring our students “Stive to Succeed”!  

Lastly, we encourage you to help us with our survey around Mental Health and Wellbeing. Your responses will help guide our plans for students in 2024. If you could take the time to complete the survey, it would be greatly appreciated:

https://beyou.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8BrqyFHxHoJ4DXv?survey_id=12103392677

Kind regards,

Jemima Tomlinson 

Principal

Friendly Schools Plus

Children’s friendships can be hard to navigate as a parent! We want our children to develop the skills to get along with others and to enjoy positive friendship groups. Check out the advice below on how to teach your child to be more assertive and to get along better with others.

From the Administration Team

Term 4 Planner

The term planner is updated regularly and below are some important dates to be aware of for the next 5 weeks.

Please refer to the Term Planner page under the ‘Community’ tab for the most up-to-date events for term 4 (but this may be subject to change so please check regularly).

Important Dates

13 November 2023 – Kindness Day

14 November 2023 – School Board Meeting 2pm

21 November 2023 – High Flyers WA Excursion (Wangara) – Rooms 8 and 5

1 December 2023 – Christmas Carols

11 December 2023 – Graduation/Book Awards and Morning Tea

13 December 2023 – Graduation Dinner

14 December 2023 – Term 4 ends for students

Swap Sugary Drinks

Breakfast Club – Thank you IGA Balga!

We would like to acknowledge with thanks IGA Balga for supporting our schools breakfast club, our students appreciate your support!

Room 9 – Pirates ahoy!

ARRRGGGGH, we have had a fabulous Term in Room 9!

We have sailed the seven seas and shared some learning moments to treasure.

This term our talk for writing text has been Pirate Tom. At the start of a term a huge pirate ship appeared in our class and we have been sailing the ocean, searching for treasure, fishing and going snorkelling ever since. Our focus has been on the end of a narrative. We came up with some great new endings to our story as to why Pirate Tom could be happy; he had picnic with  a mutiny of pirate friends, found an island of flowers and forgot all about looking for treasure.

In Maths we have explored capacity and mass – comparing how much a container holds and being able to share which holds more. We have compared how heavy two objects are. We learned a new technique called hefting to help us figure this out! We have also focussed on learning 3D shapes, and can now identify these in our classroom and around the school. This is a skill we are very proud of

In Science we have been learning about how things move. We have explored different types of push and pull toys and made a poster to display our findings. We are now planning a push or pull toy to put in Santa’s workshop. Lots of effort goes into this planning as we have considered what makes the toys move, the features of the toy, what materials we will use to make it. We have come up with detailed plans and cannot wait to construct them in the coming weeks.

In Geography we have been learning abouts maps. We have learned a map can direct us to a place, what features are on a map and how to read them. We created our own maps of the school, including some positional language to describe the location of buildings. We also created some fabulous treasure maps and gave detailed descriptions to create a key and instructions to find our treasure.

It is amazing to see how far our learning and skills have come throughout the year. Our Pre-Primaries are so excited to be putting those skills to use as we start reading words and writing sounds in simple words, taking every opportunity to listen out for the sounds we can hear in words and writing these all by themselves.

Community Notices

BRICKS 4 KIDZ Summer School Holiday Workshops

These holiday programs are designed for kids ages 5 -12 and there are many themes to inspire creativity and fun.

Online enrolment is at the following link: 

School Holiday Workshops and Activities

The Summer School Holiday Workshops are located at the following locations:

• Swan Valley Anglican Community School @ Aveley
• BRICKS 4 KIDZ City West @ West Perth

Athena Calisthenics – Term 4

Telethon Kids Institute – Research Project

Please see below a flyer for a project which is helping to understand the experiences of parents who have sought support for their child when they have experienced something that has impacts on their social and emotional wellbeing.

OVIS Community Services – Feeling Safe Program

Please see below information from Naala Djookan healing centre in Mirrabooka.