24 August 2016

Newsletter Articles

Principal's Report

Dear Parents

NAPLAN

2016 has seen some extremely pleasing results in NAPLAN for Somerly students.

Our year 3 students are above Like Schools in both Numeracy and Writing, with achievement being above WA Public Schools in Reading, Grammar and Punctuation and Spelling.

Our Year 5 students were above Like Schools in Spelling and significantly closed the gap to be sitting just marginally below Like Schools in Numeracy, Reading, Writing and Grammar and Punctuation. We also outperformed the WA Public Schools by increasing the number of students in the top two bands of WA Public Schools to be 19% in Writing and 21% in Spelling.

Our results are a great testament to the dedication and commitment to the teaching and learning program at Somerly Primary by staff, students and parents; everyone is to be congratulated for their efforts.

Students that participated in NAPLAN will receive their reports along with a parent information booklet in the next week. If you should have any queries in regards to your child's results please make an appointment to meet with your classroom teacher.

Principal's Lunch

On Tuesday 9th August the administration team had the pleasure of hosting the first Principal's lunch for this term.

The selected students were served a yummy lunch of lasagne, salad, garlic bread and ice cream. Congratulations go to the students who were chosen by their teachers for displaying outstanding behaviour throughout the term.

Parent Survey

At Somerly Primary School we are committed to working in partnership with the school and wider community to provide a supportive and stimulating learning environment for all learners.

Below is a link for our biannual parent survey, we would be extremely appreciative if you could spare 10 minutes to provide the school with some feedback via the survey. The survey is anonymous and will be open for a week from 24th August – 31st August on the link below.

Tracey Renton
Principal

MERIT CERTIFICATES

Room 1: Sophie and Lewis; Room 2: Gwen and Kymani; Room 7: Room 7: Grace and John; Room 8: Beau; Room 10: Hayley and Justin; Room 12: Gracia and Rauba; Room 13: Tyler and Caitlyn; Room 14: Danielle; Room 15: Jensen and Rayden; Room 16: Matilda and Erueti; Room 17: Demi-Lee; Room 18: Mikayla and Ausen; Room 19: Mathew and Keyaan; Room 23: Cody and Universe; Art: Eddie and Praise; LOTE: Kye - Room 8, Madison - Room 20 and Room 11;

Somerly Stars!

Behaviour Focus

Our behaviour focus this week is

• Sit on chairs '4 to the floor'
• Clean up work areas
• Tuck in chairs when they are not being sat on
• Use equipment appropriately
• Walk in the classroom

Somerly Primary School App

Our Somerly Primary School App is now available.

EFTPOS Facilities

EFTPOS Facilities are now available at the school office for payment of voluntary contributions, excursions etc for amounts of $10 and above.

Kindy enrolment for 2017

We are now taking Kindergarten applications for 2017, if you have a child that was born between 1 July 2012 and 30 June 2013 please come into the front office for an application form. As Kindy is non-compulsory, enrolments will be on a first in basis. When applying we need a copy of your child's birth certificate or passport, visa if applicable, current Medicare immunisation details and proof of address.

2017 Enrolments

To assist our planning for 2017 please let the school office know if your children will not be attending Somerly Primary School next year. As you can appreciate with the opening of Catalina, the school will be under pressure to accommodate the growing population and we need as much advanced notification of enrolments as we can to plan for additional classrooms and staff. If you know anyone in the community with school aged children please encourage them to come to the school and enrol early.

Book Week

Grandparent's Morning Tea

We are holding a special morning tea for all grandparents on Thursday 25th August at 10:00am. All grandparents are invited to attend and spend some special time reading with their grandchildren.

Come to our Book Fair

To celebrate Book Week we will be having a Book Fair in the library from Tuesday 23 August to Friday 26 August. This year's theme is "Australia : Story Country" and we hope your children will find some engaging stories to encourage them to read. There will be some lovely books for sale so parents may like to get in some early Christmas shopping and students may like to start saving up their pocket money. There will also be a selection of stationery and posters for sale. Any purchases you make will be helping the school as we get to keep a percentage of the total sales in "free books" for the library.

Students: hurry and get your entry in for our Book Fair Competition. Can you guess how many students at Somerly Primary School were born in Australia? Call in to the library and drop your entry in the box. The closest guess in each block will win a $15 book voucher to spend at the Book Fair. We hope to see you there!

Free Dress Day – 26th August 2016

To conclude book week we will be holding a free dress day on Friday 26th August based on the theme of Australia – Our Multicultural Country.

Athletics Carnival – 9th September 2016

Please note there will be no lunch orders available on the day of the Athletics carnival. However, the P & C will be running a sausage sizzle and hot dogs will be available for purchase.

Block 2 - Senior Block

What a great start to the term it has been! As you pass through the classrooms of Block Two, you begin to get a real sense of what it means to be a student in their final years of primary education. There's a buzz amongst all of the students who are aware of the upcoming camp at Woodman Point – the Year Six students because of the anticipation of the event and the Year Five students who are hearing about all of the activities they will be participating in this time next year.

Before that can happen though, each class is on track with completing a range of activities in line with their year group's curriculum. Interviews, Advertising and Poetry are this term's focus in Literacy and this is heavily integrated with our studies of Colonial Australia. In addition to this, all students are wrapping their brains around the multiplication and long division algorithm in Numeracy, with studies on capacity and angles to come! Not to mention the excitement of Math Centres around the block – Maths has finally become enjoyable for even those students who may think of it as their worst enemy! (Well… if it isn't fun yet, we still have time to convince them right??)

Overall, being in Block Two is an enjoyable experience. Roll on Senior Camp!

Physical Education

Term 3 is always a busy one for Physical Education at Somerly with a big focus being on athletics. The students have been preparing for the carnival which is on the 7th and 9th September. The events they have been working on are the sprints, relays, team games, long jump and throws. Many students have been inspired after watching amazing performances by the Olympics and are excited to have their turn at the sports carnival. The long jump, 400m and throws will be on the 7th September and the sprints, relays and team games will be on the 9th September. We hope to see you there!

Maths Round Up!

Everyone in the school has been working so hard this term on so many different mathsy things!

Kindergarten students have been working on patterning. The children worked hard to see and recognise patterns. Next they tried to copy the pattern and talk about it. Finally they used two different coloured pop sticks to make a repeating pattern. You can help your children with the patterning concept by talking about the patterns they can see around them, by guessing what comes next and even playing spot the difference!

In Pre-Primary the children have been looking at shapes. They have been working on recognising and talking about the different features of lots of 2dimensional shapes including squares, ovals & triangles… They described the number of sides & vertices (corners). You can help your child by talking about these different shapes in the environment, next time you are at the shops or the park you could count how many of each you can see and talk about how some shapes have similar features but are different. Rectangles & squares both have 4 sides but they are not the same!

In Miss Hobson's Year 1 class the children have been working on addition & subtraction. They have been using lots of different hand-on equipment to help them solve addition & subtraction problems. Students naturally use their fingers to help with the 'counting on' strategy but we need to help them increase their strategies. Mrs Hobson made some math centres that helped her children including using ten frames, calculators, number lines & 100 hundred charts.

Year 2

I spent an awesome morning with Mrs Fawcett's Y2 class working with money. In year 2 the focus is on counting coins, counting notes, adding notes and coins together & ordering money amounts. Mrs Fawcett set learning centres for the children to work on these skills. The children practised adding money amounts together, playing 'shop', making money amounts using different combinations and money problems. Money can be a difficult concept for children to learn today as we usually pay by card! Let your children count the 5 cent jar or how much is in your purse or wallet. You could even play shop with your pantry contents!

Year 3 have also been working on money. In Mrs Sneddon's Year 3 class the children have also been looking at money. They have been focussing on money problems with change to the nearest 5 cents.

They have also been collecting data about shopping and putting it into pictographs with Mrs Buckley!

Year 4

The year 4's have been working on the dreaded division and multiplication! This is not just about remembering your tables' facts! In my day…. many years ago I needed a pencil & paper to work things out. Today children are taught many different ways to solve problems, which is really helpful when you haven't got a pencil & paper handy! Mrs Lipman has been showing the children a range of strategies including…. doubling and halving, partition and rearranging the parts, compensation, which the children called make friendly & fix!

Mrs Donohue' Year 4's were also working on angles and learning how to classify them! Check out this fun angle song video… it also doubles as a workout!

Year 5 & Year 6

The seniors have been working on so many different concepts in their maths rotations. There were capacity and volume tasks in Ms Ferguson's, long division in Mr Collie's, multiplication & division card games in Mrs West's. Mr Gane's students worked on math centres that included making a maths dictionary, reading books that had a maths theme, like "Sir Cumference and the knights of the round table'', playing 'Newmarket', a card game to practice mental computation and building 3dimensional models from cubes to work out volume.

P & C News

We're fundraising with Entertainment Books.

With thousands of up to 50% off and 2-for-1 offers available, the new 2016/17 Entertainment Book is available for purchase from Somerly Primary School at a cost of just $65, giving you over $20,000 of value. Somerly Primary School will receive 20% from every Entertainment Membership sold. Order forms are available from the school office. Available for use straight away (subject to availability).

Community Notices