23 September 2020

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

Dear Parents/Caregivers

Interschool Carnival

On Wednesday 9th September Somerly Primary School competed in the Interschool. Somerly Primary School competed well and came third overall. Heath from Year 4 placed 3rd and Ethan in Year 5 placed 2nd in their year level. Congratulations to all students for their enthusiasm and positive behaviour on the day. Thank you to Mrs Ochieng, Mr Stanton and the staff that attended for your work and organisation. Mindarie Primary School did a wonderful job of organising the event.

Dispute Resolution at Somerly Primary School

Since joining Somerly Primary School I have been very impressed with how the children play fairly. Sometimes things do not go smoothly and a staff member is required to step in and help resolve a dispute. Some students become frustrated with others as, in their view, the spirit of the game has been compromised. However, in the vast majority of cases, games are played fairly and disputes resolved. The dispute resolution skills the children learn through unstructured play at break times is invaluable as they progress through life.

The Somerly Primary School values of Respect, Responsibility and Safety are taught in the: Whole School, Classroom, Play Areas, Undercover Area Toilets, Library, ICT, Before and After School and Excursions.

What can parents do to help?

Were you being responsible? How could you have dealt with this in a more responsible way?

Were you being respectful? How could you have dealt with this in a more respectful way?

Were you being safe? How could you have dealt with the situation more safely?

Parent/Teacher Interviews

Last Friday we had our parent/teacher interviews. The session was very well attended. I would like to thank staff for their care and time in preparing for these and the parents/carers that came along. If you did not make it but would like to meet with your child’s teacher, please contact them via Seesaw or telephone the school to arrange an appointment.

Year 6 Camp

The Year 6 students and staff had a wonderful time at camp. I had the pleasure of joining them on Thursday night. Ms Walker had organised a game that involved the students solving puzzles, searching for clues and participating in challenges. Camp is something they will remember and look back on as an adult as a positive memory.

The camp was well organised, active, safe and challenged the students too. The food was delicious and was plentiful. The students enjoyed the dorms and I’m sure the students (and especially the staff) slept well on Friday night. A big thank you and acknowledgement to Ms Walker, Mrs Donohue, Mrs Stenhouse , Mr Daly and Mr Stanton for giving up their time to make the camp an enjoyable experience for all students. Also, Miss Palioudakis, Mrs Plewright and our ECU Teaching Prac. Student Miss Lee for helping with the daytime activities.

I wish all of our Somerly families a safe and happy school holiday time. We look forward to seeing the students back on Tuesday 13 October.

New students

I would like to extend a warm welcome to Ayia, Rhune, Alexandra and Oliver who recently commenced at Somerly Primary School.

Felicity Dear AM
Principal

Stars

Behaviour Focus

Our behaviour focus for Week 10 is:-

WHOLE SCHOOL
RESPONSIBILITY

• We place our rubbish in the bin
• We follow staff instructions

Students Late to School

If your child arrives late to school, they are missing critical morning routines and learning activities. The school day begins at 8:40am and students will be considered late if they do not arrive by this time. If your child arrives after 9:00am you are required to enter through the front office and provide us with a reason for the lateness. A late slip will be printed for you to give to the class teacher.

Not Feeling Well?

If your child is not feeling well before school, please keep them home and notify the office by phoning 6206 4200, sending an SMS to 0437 480 486 or emailing somerly.ps@education.wa.edu.au.

Late Collection of Students

Somerly Primary School has a student finish time of 2.45pm each day. If your child has not been picked up before 3pm, you will be required to come to the front office to sign them out.

School Photos

A Message from Fotoworks

“You have our utmost thanks in allowing us to continue to photograph your school and would like to ask for a little extra patience whilst we handle the current backlog in our production area.

As you may be aware, the Covid crisis severely impacted our business and we came to a complete standstill back in March.

We were unable to photograph schools until July. We are full steam ahead now but starting to feel the impact of the lockdown in all departments. We are playing catch up with all the schools who postponed during that period.

We had two School Terms worth of schools to photograph in Term 3 (those who postponed in Term 1 & 2, plus all of our regular Term 3 schools).

In Term 3 we would normally photograph approximately 80 schools; we have photographed 156! Doubling our workload in limited weeks available.

The Fotoworks team is thrilled we have been able to accommodate all of our schools, however, it has been a challenging time with the added workload impacting our photographers, office administration and production team.

Our photo printing lab supplier is in a similar position, if not more so, as they print for schools all over Australia.

Our team is working to their fullest potential and are mindful of prioritising schools with Year 12 students who will be leaving school sooner than our primary schools.

We appreciate your understanding and patience during this critical period and hope you understand if there are some longer than usual delays in receiving the finished product this year.”

Swimming Lessons – Term 4

Please be aware that this year’s in-term swimming lessons for Pre-Primary to Year 6 students will be held in Week 7 and 8 of Term 4 at the HBF Arena.

The dates for this are Monday 23/11/2020 to Friday 4/12/2020. Please note, the swimming sessions will be scheduled between 9am and 11:20am. A schedule of class allocations will be presented in the weeks prior to the swimming lessons.

The cost for the lessons will be $55 per child. Swimming notes will be sent home at the start of Term 4.

If you would like to discuss a payment plan and/or start making payment instalments, please contact Mrs Susan Rose on 6206 4200.

Uniform Shop

The Uniform Concepts store in Clarkson will be closed from 5pm Friday 25th September 2020 and will reopen at 9am on Thursday 8th October 2020.

Learning Focus

Physical Education

Term 3 has been a busy one for Physical Education with the focus being on Athletics. We held our Faction Carnival on the 4th September where students participated in a variety of activities. After a fun and full day, the results were as follows:

Individual Medal Winners

The House totals were as follows:

1st Alkimos 1937
2nd Villalta 1762
3rd Gemini 1574
4th Centaur 1452

Interschool Athletics Carnival

On Wednesday the 9th September select students from years 3-6 competed in the Interschool Athletics Carnival hosted by Mindarie Primary School. Overall, Somerly Primary School placed 3rd out of 6 schools which was a great result! Well done to all our students for their efforts on the day. We were so proud of the way you upheld the school values of Respect, Responsibility and Safety throughout the carnival.

The individual standouts on the day were Heath who placed 3rd overall for Year 4 boys and Ethan who placed 2nd overall for the Year 5 boys.

TERM 3 MUSIC

As Term 3 is coming to a close, the music room is as busy as ever.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, most of our extra-curricular groups were unable to run during Semester 1. It has been a busy term with the music room once again becoming open to the creative and enthusiastic.

The Musical Theatre Enrichment Program - Drama Group have been busy preparing a short play for the 2020 Arts Assembly which is in Week 2 of next term. This has included extra practices, set painting and designing and video recording. The dedication and level of initiative shown by these students is incredible and it has been amazing watching their creativity and confidence grow over the space of the term.

DRUMMING GROUP

The drumming group are also preparing an item for the Arts Assembly which features Taiko Drumming (Japanese Drumming). The group have been working on their song since Harmony Day, but missed their chance to perform due to the ceremony being cancelled. Since then the piece has grown into a full song which features call and response, shouts and solos.

CHOIR

Choir has only recently started up again due to the rescheduling of the One Big Voice concert. Unfortunately, it was decided that the concert itself will not be going ahead this year so the choir has been looking at other opportunities for performances and having fun with singing. The choir features students from Year 1-6 and runs before school on Thursdays.

As well as our large groups, Miss Olsen has also been working with students to provide a student run JUST DANCE lunch time on Monday in the assembly area and opportunities for extra practice for the IMSS guitar program who have had a new teacher this year.

Extra-curricular groups are a fabulous opportunity for students to extend their music/performance skills, improve confidence, self-esteem and sense of belonging, create friendships and connections and create positive experiences with school and learning.

As always, Miss Olsen would love to thank all the students for their hard work this term and wishes you all a safe and happy holiday.

Term 3 - Year 2

What another busy term it has been in Year 2, we cannot believe that we only have one term left! Students have enjoyed participating in NAIDOC Week, Science Week and Book Week activities, and had a fun time during the Athletics Carnival.

English

This term in English we started off our Reading and Writing unit looking at procedures. Students looked at the vocabulary used in procedures and the importance of writing clear instructions for someone to follow to make something. The students had to write instructions on how to make a number of items and then made the items. We linked Design Technology with Writing where students had to plan, design and make a Vietnamese Rice Paper Roll and then write the procedure for this. We then focused on Persuasive Writing looking at the language and structure of a persuasive text, students had to form arguments to persuade us about a range of topics. We are finishing the term looking at poetry. In our Reading we have linked our writing genres and students have been looking at these genres during reading lessons. We have looked at the comprehension strategies of determining importance, authors purpose, point of view scanning and skimming, comparing and have also been looking closely at vocabulary.

Maths

This term in Maths we have looked at arrays, groups of, time in five-minute intervals, addition and subtraction, length, capacity and area of objects. Students have enjoyed using a range of strategies to work out word problems and we have been impressed to see students explaining how they worked out the problem.

Technology

This term we have been focusing on coding using the robots. Students have been using Bee-Bots to follow directions and create pictures, patterns and follow directions. We have also been working with dash, where students have used the App ‘Blockly’ to create a code to make the robot move. Students are thoroughly enjoying the robots and are creating excellent codes and using coding language.

We wish all our families a safe and relaxing holiday. We will see you in Term 4 for a fun-filled final term

Miss Hamand, Mrs Reyneke, Miss Mann

Chaplain’s Corner

Good day Parents and Caregivers

Can you believe that we are at the end of Term 3? And what a great and busy term it has been. I am sure that everyone is looking forward to the 2 week break that is just around the corner!

We have something great planned for the second week of the new term.

Mental Health Week is celebrated all around Australia, with each state and territory adopting its own theme and holding their own events each year.

This year, the Mental Health Week theme in WA is Strengthening Our Community – Live, Learn, Work, Play as we aim at increasing mental wellbeing in WA communities. During week 2 in Term 4 we will be celebrating Mental Health Week at Somerly Primary School. This will be done by doing various lunchtime activities each day during the week. Some of these activities will be focussing on

• being physically active in our school community
• being in touch with our feelings
• coping strategies to keep us calm when things get too much
• kindness towards each other
• caring for the community around us

Our bodies and minds are actually very closely linked, so things that we do to improve our physical wellbeing can help our mental wellbeing as well.

As parents and carers, you play a very important role in your child’s wellbeing. To be able to do that, you need to look after your own health and wellbeing too.

I have found a wonderful resource on the Mental Health week website. It is a calendar for the whole of October with suggestions of activities to do to ensure that you connect to others, have a bit of fun and look after your mental health.

Enjoy every second of the two week break!

As always stay safe, stay connected, and remember that I am always ready to help in any way I can. I will be at the school every Tuesday and Friday. If there’s any way I can support your child/children, or yourself – please feel free to give me a call on 6206 4200.

Have a great week!

Kind regards.
Marilize Basson (Chaplain)

P&C - FREE DRESS FRIDAY – 25th September 2020

Help support the Year 5’s in their journey to Senior year!

Leave your uniform at home and come dressed in your favourite outfit, team colours, fancy dress or even PJ’s!! (Teachers this includes you!)

All that is required is a gold coin donation which will go towards 2021 senior camp fees.

Let’s see those outfits Somerly!

Please join us at our next P&C meeting – 26th October – 9.30 am.

We welcome all parents to come and be a part of our team, supporting the Somerly Primary School students and community.