Grade 3

Special Events Next Week

Thursday 23rd March

Regional Swimming

Friday 24th March

Family BBQ 6.00pm

STUDENT LEADERS

Jed Buntine & Jacob Collins

Thank you for your work as Student Leaders.

Our School Values

Respect-having regard for self, others

and the environment

Inclusion-sense of belonging

Integrity-being honest and fair

Responsibility-being responsible for your actions & words

Personal Best-striving for excellence

In Term 1 our focus is on Inclusion.

Echuca West Primary School

Personal Best at the West echucawestps.vic.edu.au.

(03) 54822263

Newsletter No. 7 Friday 17th March 2017

PRINCIPAL’S REPORT

School Council AGM

On Wednesday 15th March we held our Annual General Meeting. The Annual Report was presented and office bearers elected. I would like to congratulate the following people for their appointments: Carlie Davison – President Jody Wilson – Vice President Suzy Lenne – Treasurer Judith Martin – Secretary Jodie Blachford – Buildings and Grounds Convenor Ryan Cole (DEECD representative) Erin Jenkins (Parent Representative)

Sarah McKee (Parent Representative)

Alana Rix (Parent Representative)

New School Name

Yesterday a ballot paper was sent home with the eldest child in each family. Please fill in the ballot paper and return to school by Friday 24th March. The most popular names from each school’s ballot will then be put forward as possible names for the new school. The management team and respective School Councils will then consult and decide on a short list of 3 - 5 names to be forwarded to the Department of Education and Training for a decision by the Minister.

Thanks to David Engstrom

I would like to thank David Engstrom for tidying up a fallen tree branch in record time

this week after a mayday call from his wife.

Cross Country with Echuca South—Monday 27th March

This year we are conducting our School Cross Country Run with Echuca South. All

students from Prep to Grade 6 will be participating. It will be held at the Echuca South

Trotting Track and the scheduled starting time is 9.30am. Parents are welcome to

come and watch.

Loxley Hudson, Mia Clarke & Taylor Clarke for helping a younger

student to find someone to play with.

MY SCHOOL TOO

STAR OF THE WEEK AWARD

Grade Prep/1 A— George Skerritt—George, it was great to see you really focus and apply yourself to your written work this

week. I especially enjoyed seeing your imagination shine through with the written language you used to describe the teddy

bear. It is also great to see you taking more care and pride in the presentation of your work. Congratulations you are our

STAR OF THE WEEK!

Grade 3C— Ryder Johnson—It is an honour to have you a part of Grade 3. You show nothing but respect to all members of

our school community. The determination you have applied to your maths work in the past two weeks is phenomenal! This

effort has really improved your subtraction skills. It was also great to see your positive involvement in our discussion on our

school values. Well done Ryder!

Grade 4D— Mia Mills Firebrace—Mia, I have been really impressed with the way you have been

working in class. You are settling to work quickly on a regular basis. I like the way you are showing

that you can persist at your task for longer times. You are showing great improvement in nearly all

areas. You just need to keep your locker tidy now. Great job.

Grade 5E— Shyloh Chique—This week you have demonstrated a growth mindset through all learning

areas. We love the way you are so focused and are working hard in maths. Your enthusiasm to learn

and improve in your daily 10 questions is very inspiring and a great example to others. Keep up the

hard work and continue to challenge yourself. Well done Shyloh!

Archie Childs—We have both been impressed with the extra effort you are starting to put into your learning tasks. You have

been more focused in class in Daily 5 time and been making excellent progress, particularly with your writing. You have also

demonstrated more organisation with your homework tasks and home reading. Keep up the hard work Archie!

Grade 6F— Maddi McConnell— You are always helpful in class and your reading is improving greatly. You are awesome in

the playground, making sure the little kids are happy and have someone to play with. It is a pleasure to have such a kind

hearted and happy person in our Grade 6 team. Well done and thank you.

ART STAR OF THE WEEK

Dakota Monigatti—Thank you for showing quiet determination to get your Mixed Media Self portrait finished. It looks fabulous! Keep up the great work, Dakota!

FAMILY BARBEQUE—FRIDAY 24TH MARCH 6PM

Our family BBQ will be held next Friday 24th March. It will be held at Apex Park in Echuca

and start at 6:00pm. Sausages, burgers (vege or meat), onions, coleslaw and an icy-pole will

be provided. Please BYO chair, blanket and drinks. The cost will be $15 a family or $5 per

person.

A return slip for catering purposes went home with children today. Please let us know if you

are able to make it by returning the slip to school on Monday 20th March.

CENTREPAY FOR SCHOOL PAYMENTS

CentrePay is a free direct bill paying service available to customers who receive a Centrelink payment. The deductions can be

used to pay school charges, camps, swimming, uniform etc. The minimum amount you can have deducted is $10 per

fortnight. A one off payment or fortnightly deductions can be selected. If interested, application forms can be obtained at

the front office.

BIRTHDAYS IN THE SCHOOL THIS WEEK

We would like to wish a happy birthday to Kiara Mills, John Hosking and Carter Hewish who are celebrating their birthdays this week. We hope they have a great day.

REMINDERS

Lunch Orders are Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Lost Property Box is in the Undercover area.

Student Banking Day is Thursday.

ADVERTISING SPACE

If you would like to sponsor our newsletter and advertise your business in this space we would love to hear from you. This will cost $20 each week to include your business card or logo in our weekly newsletter. If you are interested please contact the school on 54822263.

TERM DATES FOR 2017.

Term 1: 30 Jan (teachers start) 1 Feb (students start) to 31 March

Term 2: 18 April to 30 June

Term 3: 17 July to 22 September

Term 4: 9 October to 22 December

FUTURE DATES

Monday 27th March

Cross Country with Echuca South—Prep-6 starts at 9.30a.m.

Friday 31st March

School Photos—9a.m.

Easter Hat Parade

Last Day Term 1– Dismissal 2.10pm

Tuesday 18th April

First Day Term 2

Friday 21st April

Prep—6 Athletics with Echuca South

CAKE STALL—GRADE 5/6 THURSDAY 16TH MARCH

Thank you to everyone who donated the yummy cakes and goodies for our cake stall

and to the mums who manned the cake stall. We raised $180 which is fantastic.

FUTURE DATES

Tuesday 9th May

NAPLAN

Wednesday 10th May

NAPLAN

School Council 7pm

Thursday 11th May

NAPLAN

GRADE REPORTS

Grade 1A & 2B: This week the Grade Ones and Twos have been beary busy with our teddy bears in the classroom all week. We have loved having our furry friend’s join us and they have been the focus of our learning this week.

The Grade Twos used very descriptive writing to describe exactly what their teddy looks like to every last scratch and scuff. We had a lot of fun being detectives identifying whose writing was about which teddy and we enjoyed comparing the differences between each other’s teddies. The Grade Ones had a lot of fun learning about labelling this week and covered many objects in the room with labels, even the teacher! Grade Ones were also busy writing stories about their teddies and drawing pictures of them. During Maths the Grade Ones have been working with number lines while the Grade Twos are continuing to look at different strategies for addition, to make us more efficient with our adding. Both grades have had a lot of fun today measuring and comparing out teddies length with different forms of measurements. We identified the need for a base line to ensure all of our measurements were

accurate and found out that our estimates are not always what we think. Looking forward to another fantastic week in both rooms. Enjoy the weekend.

Grade 3C & 4D: Happy St Patricks day today. Grade 3 and 4 took a little time out to have some fun today. We made green pancakes, went on a orienteering course looking for shamrock clues and raced the wind powered cars which we made in STEM classes. The overall winners received a rainbow and a pot of gold. Grade 3 have been working on different multiplication strategies and Grade 4 have been fine tuning their subtraction skills in Maths. Athletics sports are looming closer and closer and we have been practicing long jump, triple jump, shot put, discus and hurdles. The paper mache has been a sticky amount of fun in the Art room. The aim is to create an Easter Hat for the annual Easter Bonnet Parade. Pen licences and learners permits are within some students grasp but the instructors are proving to be very tough this year. They like neat handwriting, ruled lines and are picky about book presentation. They can be bribed! Enjoy your weekend.

Grade Prep A: Our Prep’s are working up a storm in the Prep/One classroom. They are giving everything a red, hot go and are always trying their personal best! We read, Where’s My Teddy? By Jez Alborough and we learned about the characters in a story, the setting (where the story takes place), the problem and of course the solution. We also had lots of fun pretending to be the little boy Eddy, who was in the deep, dark wood and he’d lost his teddy! In Writing, we learned about labels and how they give the reader information about something. We labelled everything in the classroom with post it notes, even Mrs Bourke! Then we labelled a teddy bear. We wrote about our teddy bears too. Our sounds are progressing nicely. We just finished our second set of c, k, ck, e, h, r, m, d. Every day we practice the sounds, do the Jolly Phonics actions, manipulate magnetic letters to make the sounds and small words. We also practiced forming the letters on our whiteboard with our whiteboard markers. Make sure you check your child’s reader bag for the new set of sounds and word list to practice at home every night. In Maths, we are doing a great job of writing our numbers every day and trying to form them correctly. We are champions with numbers 1 to 10 and now we are zooming towards 20! We have made number lines and practiced counting with 1:1 correspondence. We looked at days of the week and what our routine is during the day too as part of our time focus. It was lots of fun measuring our teddy bears today with blocks, counters and other objects in our classroom. We have had a few cases of nits across the P/1/2 Community so please check your child’s hair and treat if needed. Notes have gone home to the eldest in the family for voting for the new school name as well as for the Family BBQ which is on Friday 24th March at the Apex Park Echuca. Have a great weekend.

Grade 5E : This week has been a busy but fun week in the Grade 5 classroom. We have been looking at what different authors do to make their writing so interesting and successful. Some of the authors we have looked at have included; Anh Do, R.L Stine, Susan Green, Emily Rodda and Jeff Kinney. We have really been enjoying

ourselves in Maths working on area and perimeter. It has been fun designing robots and calculating the area and perimeter. Logan has loved learning and playing new maths games and Braydyn likes doing the Grade 5 Beat the clock Olympics. He, Brodie and Shyloh have the fastest times so far. We have been busy working on our projects as they are due in on Tuesday of week 9. It will be really interesting to learn about all the different famous and local people who have demonstrated growth mindset when the class presents them. In P.E we have been practising our athletics skills in preparation for our South West Aths

early next term. We can’t believe there are only two weeks of term to go…time flies when you’re having fun!

By Emma Judd & Aliyah Rankin

Grade 6F: This week in Science we are finishing off our animal projects. Today we are going to Moama Bowling Club for a Leadership Day with guest speakers. While we are there we are going to have a sausage sizzle and play lawn bowls. We are really looking forward to the day.

By Jed Buntine.

COMMUNITY NEWS