School Newsletter 1018, 25 July 2018

 Friday 27 July – Faction cross country carnival (details in Sport News below)  Wednesday 8 August – Assembly  Thursday 9 August – Interschool cross country (Yrs 3-6, by invitation)  Monday 20 August – Friday 24 August – Book Week

Speak with Confidence Awards

Congratulations to Jaegger and Maddy for representing Kensington PS at the Speak with Confidence awards. Thanks to the parents and Ms Millar and Mr Griffith for preparing the children for these awards. Jaegger spoke on body image and was then invited, along with a student from Manning PS, Meleina, to be interviewed for 720 ABC radio on this topic. Please check out the radio recording on the web address in the newsletter: http://www.abc.net.au/radio/perth/programs/focus/body-image/9935304

See below for more details in a report by Mr Griffiths.

Awards

We wish to recognise and congratulate Ava L in Year 6 for being highly commended in the Shaun Tan Award for Young Artists for her artwork entitled “Neil.” You can see all the winning and highly commended works on the link below.

https://www.subiaco.wa.gov.au/getdoc/f8642112-13cc-412b-8d1f-f81c0ab9151f/2018- exhibition

We also congratulate Matthew A in Year 6 for winning the Upper Primary category of the South Young Writers Award with his work entitled “The Souls”. A copy has been placed in the library.

Philosophy Day in Action

Six students from Room 10 and S2 represented Kensington Primary School in a ‘Philosophy Day in Action’ session held at Hale School on Monday 9th July. The session was part of The Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Associations (FAPSA) biannual conference.

Practitioner Expert Peter Worley CEO & Co-founder The Philosophy Foundation (UK) ran a ‘community of inquiry’ session with students from Kensington, Hale School and Geographe Primary School demonstrating best practice. The topic for discussion: Is it possible to think of nothing?

A huge congratulations to the students who gave up a day of their holidays to participate in the session. Our students were absolutely brilliant and we need to be extremely proud of each and every one of them. They spoke beyond their years and with clarity during the session. Feedback from Peter was very positive and other presenters and delegates praised Kensington students (we start teaching Philosophy in Year 4 and other students who participated in the same session have been exposed to philosophy since Pre-primary/Year 1!). It is no easy task having a philosophical discussion with people with whom you are not familiar, let alone having an audience full of teachers and philosophers.

Thank you to Mrs Filmer for leading the team and organising our involvement.

Reflections from the day:

“I thought the philosophy lesson was great but confusing. It really got my brain working”

“It was amazing, I really enjoyed it but it became confusing at times because of how many different opinions there were”

“The philosophy place was a great experience to learn and share ideas like is it possible to think of nothing?”

NAIDOC Week celebrations

On Friday Miss May and Mrs Jetta, along with their team of colleagues, organised a full day of events to celebrate NAIDOC week at the school. NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Week was actually celebrated during the first week of the school holidays so we delayed our celebrations until our return to school.

Hopefully some of you might have been involved in the state events during the actual week. Our students participated in activities such as art and craft, games and sport and also learnt about the aboriginal flag, art and stories.

We thank our special guests and volunteers for their work with our students: Noongar Sports, Urban Indigenous and Clontarf College. We also thank Miss May, Miss Lisa and Mrs Jetta, along with their team, for their efforts in developing such a great schedule of activities.

Assessment and Reporting Policy

The School Board recently reviewed the school’s new assessment and reporting policy. This can be found on the school’s website in the policy section of the Information page or by clicking here.

Attendance

As a strategy to meet our attendance targets, each term we will be rewarding students who have achieved at least 90% attendance with 10 minutes of extra play time. We will be working with families who are unable to meet this target to support them and, at least, to find out why their children were unable to meet this target. So, we encourage all families to aim to meet this minimum and to ensure when children are absent that the school is informed of the reason for the absence (this is a legal requirement) via the SmartLink app, email, note, in person or via the telephone. As was mentioned in a previous newsletter, the Telethon Institute has proved empirically that every day of school missed equates to a drop in standardised test scores such as NAPLAN. In other words, every day of school is important and contributes to student progress and achievement.

For your information, a half day absence is where a child cannot complete at least 2 hours of instruction time (break time isn’t counted). A half day is approximately 2.5 hours of instruction time so if your child is more than 30 minutes late in the morning, for example, then it will be recorded as a half day absence, not late.

If you are going on a holiday in school time, please let your child’s teacher AND the office know. Only the principal can authorise vacation leave.

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data for School Students with Disability

The Commonwealth Government wants to plan better for the needs of students with disability which include medical, social and emotional and physical conditions and/or leaning difficulties across Australia. To do this the government needs to collect information about the number of children who have a disability, what programs are currently being provided for them and what this will mean for resourcing in the future.

The first step for Kensington PS will be to collect information about the number of students in the our school with learning needs and the programs and resources we use to support them. This information is confidential and no-child’s name will be provided to the Commonwealth.

We think that it’s important for everyone to contribute to this project so it helps the government and the Department of Education to better provide for all students in .

We will include information about your child, or children, in the project. If you do not want us to include information about your child, please let Miss Lisa in the office know by 1 August 2018. Please be assured we will continue to support your child in our programs, even if we don’t use their information in the project. If you would like to learn more about the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data for School Students with Disability, please click here.

Bronwyn Jones PRINCIPAL

Foyer Display

We celebrated NAIDOC day on Friday 20 July and the students created the stunning artwork as shown below.

Patience

Patience means waiting. Patience is being calm and tolerant when difficult things happen. It means having self-control because you can’t control the way someone else is acting or when things don’t go as you’d like.

Congratulations to the following award winners from today’s assembly.

Faction Cross Country

The faction cross country carnival is on Friday July 27. Notes will be coming home next week for parent permission for students to run along the footpath from the kiss and wave gate to the oval gate as part of the cross country course. Runners from Year 3 to 6 will be selected from the carnival to represent the school in the interschool carnival in Week 4.

The program will be:-

9.15am – 11.00am

1. Year 6 girls 2. Year 6 boys 3. Year 5 girls 4. Year 5 boys 5. Year 4 girls 6. Year 4 boys 7. Year 3 girls 8. Year 3 boys

11.30am – 1.00pm

9. Year 2 girls 10. Year 2 boys 11. Year 1 girls 12. Year 1 boys 13. Pre-primary girls 14. Pre-primary boys

2.35pm Presentation assembly in the undercover area (whole school)

Runners from Years 3 – 6 will be selected from the faction carnival to represent Kensington in the Interschool Cross Country on August 9 at Harold Rossiter Park.

Running Club

Runners are welcome to join us on Tuesday and Friday mornings from 8.00am – 8.30am on the oval.

Running is fun and gives your brain a great boost to start the day.

Bollywood

Thanks to Bollywood Dance Studio for leading us in a fun Bollywood session for fitness on Tuesday morning. Please click here for information on their upcoming Open Day and free trial classes and click here for the 2018 class timetable.

Speak with Confidence Awards

On 25 June, the City of South Perth held the annual Speak with Confidence Awards, which showcases the best young public speakers across all the schools within South Perth. This year, Maddy (S4) and Jaegger (S3) made it through the tough audition rounds and were chosen to represent KPS. Both girls did a fantastic job of presenting their speeches with charisma and confidence and should be proud of their achievements. Well done, Maddy and Jaegger!

Mr Griffiths

Kindness Project

Sometimes our earth gives us small signs of kindness exactly when we need it. This is the idea behind the “Kindness Project”. Megan Murphy, the instigator of the kindness rocks, came back from a trip to India with the understanding that small acts of kindness could have a big impact on someone’s day.

One day, she headed out for her daily beach walk. As she walked, she took a marker out of her pocket and wrote encouraging messages on five rocks along a rock-filled stretch of beach. Since then, she has inspired many people, including our school, to participate in the “Kindness Project” and spread kindness by writing messages on rocks. A little kindness can go a long way.

High School Scholarships

We announced a number of scholarships at this morning’s assembly. Congratulations!

Lachlan – Music, Trinity College Matthew – Academic, Perth Modern School Lily – Music, Sashana – Music, John Curtin College of the Arts Sashana – Visual Arts, John Curtin College of the Arts Sashana – Music, Churchlands Senior High School Marc – Academic, Perth Modern School Willem – Academic, David – Academic, Perth Modern School Soham – Aviation, Kent Street Senior High School Soham – CORE, Kent Street Senior High School Benjamin – Specialist Marine Studies, Fremantle College Griffin – Aviation, Kent Street Senior High School Jimmy – Aviation, Kent Street Senior High School Jimmy – Academic, St George’s College Jimmy – Music, Como Secondary College Jimmy – Music, Rossmoyne Senior High School Elliot – Academic, Perth Modern School Nate – Music, Churchlands Senior High School Nate – Music, Como Secondary College Josie – Music, Como Secondary College Amelia – Tennis, Applecross Senior High School Sadie – Academic, St George’s College Sadie – GATE, Willetton Senior High School Flynn – Music, Como Secondary College Toby – Music, John Curtin College of the Arts Toby – Music, Wesley College

Uniform shop opening hours for Term 3

The uniform shop will be trialling opening every second Thursday morning in Term 3 rather than weekly. We will be open every odd week and the day before the faction carnival. The Term 3 opening days have been noted on the Term Planner, available on school app and website.

The times remain the same: 8:20-8:50 am.

Parents are encouraged to use the online ordering system if you require items before the next shop opening time and delivery of these items will continue to be relatively quick.

Many thanks for your understanding, please email [email protected] with any uniform related queries.

Lapathon Honour Roll

Meet our KPS board members

Secretary – Donatella Giasante

Commenced in 2017

I’m a mother of two girls, one who completed Year 6 at KPS in 2017 and one currently in Year 1.

I believe that having a strong and compliant public school is a great asset of our community and I’m happy to contribute, at this level of responsibility to do a little part of what is required to run Kensington Primary School as an Independent Public School and contribute to the performance growth of the institute.

Boards are a key part of the governance structures of every independent school and they have to be supported in their delicate function of shaping the performance criteria of our school in respect of the organisation of the public education system.

I have been working in Human Resources for the past 15 years and learned in the workplace how important the basic education we receive during primary school years is, for the development of individuals and their respectful collaboration in every aspect of our society.

A public service announcement from OSHClub:

The new Child Care Subsidy

On 2 July 2018, the Child Care Subsidy replaced the Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate. The Child Care Subsidy is paid directly to services to be passed onto families. There are also changes to the annual cap which will make child care more affordable for most families.

Three things determine a family’s level of Child Care Subsidy:

 A family’s annual adjusted taxable income determines the percentage of subsidy they are eligible for  An activity test determines how many hours of subsidised care families can access, up to a maximum of 100 per fortnight, and  The type of child care service determines the hourly rate cap.

Some basic requirements must be satisfied for an individual to be eligible to receive Child Care Subsidy for a child. These include:

 the age of the child (must be 13 or under and not attending secondary school)  the child meeting immunisation requirements  the individual, or their partner, meeting the residency requirements.

For more information please visit https://www.humanservices.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/child-care- subsidy

Or call 136 150

For OSHClub enrolment and bookings, please visit www.oshclub.com.au

With swimming pools and beaches a big part of the Western Australian lifestyle, ensuring your children can swim competently and safely is essential.

You can now enrol your children in VacSwim swimming lessons during the October and December/January school holidays. Click here to view the poster.

VacSwim is for all children – from beginners to more advanced swimmers and young people doing their Bronze Medallion. Your children can start as young as five years old.

Your children can join in the fun of learning to swim at pools and open water venues across the State.

Enrol your children in VacSwim now at education.wa.edu.au/swimming

Come and join us for exciting art and craft, for kids from 4 to 12 years of age! Click here for further details.

Beginner programs starting now – four weeks free! Please click here for more details.

KIDS LOVE DRAMA, PARENTS LOVE THE RESULTS!

Why drama? Drama helps develop so many important life skills for our children, such as social skills, confidence, self-esteem, verbal communication skills, self-expression and lots more!

Classes include speech, creative movement, improvisations, dance dramas, dressing up, dialogue development, stage skills and so much more!

ACT NOW and reserve a place today! Contact Justin Lowson, on 9402 5849, or [email protected]

Please click here to see the flyer.

The City of South Perth is running a “Paper Mache Mask Making Workshop” on Saturday 11 August at the Manning Community Centre. Please click here to see the flyer.

SDERA (School Drug Education Road Aware) is hosting a FREE “Talking Drugs” information session from 7-8pm on Tuesday 7 August at St Norbert College, 13 Treasure Road, Queens Park. Learn about the role you play in school drug education and how to speak with children of all ages about alcohol and other drugs. We encourage all parents to attend. Click here to view the flyer.

Maggie Dent – Taming the Stress Monster in Adolescence

Date & Time: Wednesday 12th Sept 2018 – 7.00pm Location: Melville Senior High school Ticket Pricing: Adult $25/Child (14+) $12.50

Maggie Dent will be speaking about this very important topic: Taming the Stress Monster in Adolescence (suitable for adolescents 14+ attending with their parents)

Today’s world is full of the immediacy of a busy life and it is impacting on our children and adolescents. This seminar for people who support adolescents explores the what, the why and most importantly the how of calming our children and especially our rapidly transforming adolescents. The bumpy ride to adulthood can be challenging at times. Maggie explores stress and ways for adolescents to understand and help each other to navigate big ugly feelings, “ANT” attacks (automatic negative thoughts), failure and disappointment. She also explores great ways to calm and relax that will help the adolescents you work or live with to study better, think better and take the high road rather than the low road on the journey to being an adult.

All profits will go to our 4 chosen charities: Parkerville Children’s Home, AsSeTTS (Trauma counselling for refugees), 100 Woman or St Patrick’s in Fremantle supporting the homeless. Please see attached for further information, or follow the below link to purchase tickets. https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/maggie-dent-taming-the-stress-monster-tickets- 46962484054?aff=eac2

Is your child 7-13 years? Are you worried about their weight? Click here for information about a fun, FREE 10 week program to help families to lead healthier and happier lives. Click here for the Cannington BOUNCE program and click here for the referral form.

Communicare are running a number of parenting classes. Click here to see the flyer for South East Metro Parenting Support Services Workshops for Parents & Carers, Term 3 2018 and click here to see the flyer for Postive Discipline in Everyday Parenting.

Allergy & Analphylaxis Australia, together with the National Allergy Strategy, will hold an information evening to provide guidance and support for those suffering with severe allergic disease, to be held on Tuesday 28 August 2018. Please click here for more information.

*The above community advertisements are for your information only and should not be taken as endorsement by Kensington Primary School.