Affirmation ∼ “Spread love everywhere you go.” – Mother Teresa

Dear Parents/Care Givers,

Public School Review

The Department of Education WA has carried out a Review of our school last Wednesday 10 May 2023. The Panel met with students, parents and staff of the school to respond to our written Report on the review of our operations. The Panel was glowing about the high standards, high achievement and high expectations of the school towards student learning and student personal growth. We should all feel extremely proud of our successes with our children. The staff and students of this school know that we

• Care and nurture our children with the best possible relationships we can offer
• Reflect an environment of trust and transparency in everything we do
• Do the best we can do for every child
• Have a zero tolerance towards bullying of any form
• Provide one of the best teaching and learning strategies in WA

We thank the School Board, P&C and all stakeholders in the school community for working with us to produce the best school we can for our children.

School of Excellence

Caladenia was inducted into the Centre for Excellence last Monday. As such, Caladenia is now able to assist intern schools by making improvements in their operations to become excellent schools themselves. We are very proud of this honour and accomplishment. We have worked hard for many years to be recognized for excellence. Thank you, Board, P&C, students, families and staff of Caladenia for your continued support of the school.

Traffic Flow and Parking

Today was Walk to School Day and it was truly wonderful to not have the traffic congestion we do each and every school day. You might consider having your children walk to school more often as the easing on traffic congestion was palpable. Thank you, everyone.

Our School

·       Thanks to the P&C of the Mothers’ Day Stalls and Mothers’ Day Picnic last week – these events were really enjoyed by families of the school. The Picnic numbers were incredible – it was so nice to see so many parents enjoying some time with their children while at school again. Thank you for all the families that participated as it brought us all together to talk and mix with one another – if you missed out, there will be another picnic for Fathers’ Day in September – make sure you don’t miss it.

·       The Student Executive did a wonderful job of representing our school in  the Local Community section of Channel 7 News last Wednesday. It was great to hear about the wonderful things our student body do for the Animal Shelter, schools overseas and local community agencies/aged care facilities over the years. We are proud of our students and their decision-making in the school which directly contribute towards making others’ lives better. Thank you, Student Executive and students throughout the school, as well as Ms Avery who works tirelessly with the Student Executive to enhance their meeting and organizational skills – thank you.

·       It was great to see so many parents turn up for the EALD Morning Tea on 9 May. It was good to talk with these parents about the work we do with children from non-English speaking backgrounds. Thanks to Ms Kong for her untiring work with the EALD students and parents. Great job.

·       Celebrate P&C Day today showcased our thanks from the students and staff of Caladenia to these wonderful parents for their time they give freely to our school. Thank you, Ms Asplin for the work in making the day an absolute delight.

·       Their Care (Out of School Care) has many places available for before and after school care on a regular basis. Please contact Their Care for enrolment.

·       We have a defibrillator registered to St John and Emergency 000 on the front wall of the school outside the Admin Office. It is there for emergency heart issues if required by anyone in the area. Follow the directions on the casing – it is self-explanatory and is easily followed in the case of a heart emergency.

·       St John First Aid Training will be ongoing next week at school for staff.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

THOUGHT:  “We are not our best intentions. We are what we do.” — Amy Dickinson

Ted Nastasi

Principal

School News

Kindy 2024

We are now taking bookings for Kindy 2024. If you have a child born between 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020, you can enrol now. Please call us on 6258 9350 to make an appointment.

Student Achievement

During the School holidays Victoria in Year 4 attended 2023 Livelighter Badminton WA State Open junior Championships and won the Under 11 Girls Single Winner.

Congratulations Victoria on your achievement.

At Caladenia, we love showcasing our students’ sporting achievements and events, as well as any other interests that they would like to share with our Caladenia Community.

If you have something your child would like to share, please email along with photos to the email address below:

Justine.arnold@education.wa.edu.au

EALD Morning Tea

After a hiatus of a year due to Covid, the EALD Parent morning tea was revived and this time, it was held on Tuesday, 9 May in the staffroom at the school. It was a great pleasure to resume welcoming parents to this event.

We started the morning with a round of introductions, and we were pleased to introduce Mrs Vijayta Sharma, our new EALD teacher who started teaching the program at the beginning of the year.

Important information about the program that was shared that morning included:

·         the process of identifying children for the program at this school

·         the process of language acquisition

·         the difference between BICS (basic interpersonal communication) and CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency) and its significance in children’s learning

·         an overview of the program content and teaching strategies

·         an explanation of the Progress Maps report

·         tips for parents to help their children progress in learning the English language

Staff from Faith Community Services also did a presentation of the variety of programs that they offer to migrant and EALD families, some of which include exercise classes, cooking classes, tutoring services and English classes for both children and adults.

*For more information about this, please check out https://www.faithcs.org.au/

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the parents who attended the morning tea and to say that your partnership in the education of your children has immense value and we greatly appreciate it.

Yu-Seong Kong – EALD Teacher

Harmony Week Celebrations!

 

In the last week of last term, we had a wonderful week of Harmony Celebrations! We would like to thank our school community for supporting the events and hope you enjoyed the events as much as we did. We would also like to extend our thanks to the P&C for their support in helping the events to be so successful.

To start the week off, our Art department – Mrs Ewing and Mr Frost, created an art installation, where all students were invited to draw a heart and add it to our installation. This was extended to parents and families through the other events held over the week.

Monday ∼ 3rd April

Our Harmony Week began with our Harmony Day Assembly. We had lots of students dress in their traditional dress. This truly highlighted the number of different cultures that our school community is made up from. It was a lovely assembly and special thanks to Mr Nikulinsky, Mrs Rivett, Mr Frost and Ms Sunkar for their support in bringing this event together, and for all their practise during Music lessons throughout the term, so that our children all sang as beautifully as they did.

Here is a picture from one of our Kindy classes, wearing traditional dress.

Tuesday ∼ 4th April

We then had a ‘Coffee and Tea’ morning, where a number of our parents were able to enjoy a cuppa and get to share a taste of food from different cultures. The parents were all invited to draw a ‘heart’ and add it to our HARMONY display.

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday ∼ 5th April 

Our ‘Living in Harmony’ Family Event was held from 3pm to 6pm, and numerous families were able to attend and enjoy the evening. It was lovely to see so many families enjoying the night-off from cooking dinner! and getting the time to talk and spend time with friends and families in the community. We would like to thank all our families for the support they gave to the event.

 

 

Thursday ∼ 6th April

On Thursday, our week of celebrations ended with students and staff invited to wear ‘orange’. Orange is the official colour for Harmony Day. We hope you all enjoyed the Harmony Week celebrations – it gave us all the opportunity to share, learn and appreciate Australian multiculturalism.

Class News

Year 2 Room 12 – Miss Manuel

This week in Room 12 we have been learning about synonyms! We created these beautiful ‘Synonym Suns’ during our grammar lesson. We know that learning about synonyms will help us to improve our writing because we are able to choose more precise or interesting language. This will help us to chop out some boring words!

Year 3 Room 9 – Miss Goncalves

We have been having an egg-cellent time in Room 9 because we are learning about the journey of eggs. We started off by investigating the life cycle of chickens and learning about the different ways farmers raise chickens. The class then did some research into the differences between cage, barn and free-range eggs, exploring their journey from a poultry farm to the grocery store. Did you know each egg is individually stamped with a trackable code and graded based on size? All this research helped us in designing our very own free range chicken pens in which we had so much fun constructing using recycled/reusable materials.

Year 5 Room 15 – Ms Avery

The scientists in Room 15 have been busy investigating the properties of solids, liquids and gases this term. So far, we have discovered that there are many different types of solids including powdered solids like icing sugar and laundry powder, and stretchy solids like balloons and jelly snakes. This week we turned our attention to the properties of gas. Ms Avery gave us a tub of water, a cup and a tissue. We had to predict what would happen to the tissue if we scrunched it up inside the cup then submerged the cup into the water. Most of us predicted that the tissue would get wet, but we were very surprised to find out that the tissue stayed dry! This is because air takes up space between the tissue and the water and it prevents the tissue from getting wet. Why don’t you try it for yourself at home?

Year 6 Room 33 – Mrs Ashby

The Good Boys and Girls of Room 33 started 2023 off by writing their own versions of Christopher Milne’s Naughty Stories … describing they day they sent their teacher MAD and including some artwork to boot (prompted by a certain Deputy)! This teacher thinks that some of the illustrations are slightly exaggerated in their characterisations … 😊

In collaboration with other Year 6 classes (including the MAC students) and capably led by Mr Smyth, we have also been researching and investigating further the topic of Wildlife Tourism. Students have researched animals specifically involved in the wildlife tourism industry, looking carefully at the Behind the Scenes facts in the build-up to writing persuasive text about whether or not they consider wildlife tourism to be a good or bad thing. Whilst plenty of discussions have occurred about students’ own tourist experiences from family holidays, as to whether or not they were actually ethical and in the best interests of the animal, it has also been wonderful to hear that so many of our students have these special family memories to share. It is also great to see our students in Year 6 stopping to reflect on their world and the future it will have, and this has also been highlighted in the way in which they have worked to carefully design futuristic animal sanctuaries for some of these animals impacted by the tourist industry.

School Board, P&C News and Community News

 

Please see the School Stream App for further information and parent consent form or pop into the office to collect a form.

Mother’s Day Stall

 

Telethon Driveway Sale

 

On Sunday 26 March, 2023 Nate, a Student Executive at Caladenia and an Ambassador for Telethon held a driveway sale to raise funds for Telethon. Nate sold pokemon cards, games, puzzles, lego, science sets, costumes, hats and lots more. In total he raised $166.10 to donate to Telethon later this year.  What a selfless gesture Nate.  Well done on such wonderful community spirit.