Hello Everyone,

Welcome to Term 2 at Wattle Park Primary School!

There are a variety of events coming up including the Year 5/6 Maths Olympiad, Year 3-6 House Cross Country on Thursday and the Year 5/6 Summer Sport Gala Day on Friday. 

The Year 5/6 Maths Olympiad is specifically designed to stimulate and challenge students at primary school level. It teaches major problem solving strategies and strengthens students’ mathematical intuition prior to starting high school. Students displaying evidence of achieving highly in Mathematics are selected by their classroom teachers to attend these weekly sessions. Congratulations to all students who have been selected.

Here is an example of the type of questions we investigate:

Emma writes a five digit number. Thousands and hundred digits are the same. The hundreds digit is twice the  tens digit. The digit in the ten-thousands place is the same as the digit in the one's place. The sum of all five digits is 19.

There are two possible values for Emma’s number. What is the sum of these two numbers?

Final Day of Term 1 Topsy Turvy Day Winners 

As an initiative from our Student Council, the last day of Term 1 was designated ‘Topsy Turvy Day’. This proved to be wildly successful with our students. Our winners for the day were:

Banksia St Signage

To avoid congestion where Banksia St Meets Warrigal Rd there has  been a new traffic sign installed. This is the sign:

This is where it is:

Ideally we will also have had a ‘NO U TURN’ sign also installed but we are working on that. In the meantime:

PLEASE DO NOT U TURN ON BANKSIA STREET DURING DROP OFF AND PICK UP TIMES - IT PUTS OUR STUDENTS AT RISK OF INJURY OR DEATH!

ANZAC Day Ceremony

On Tuesday last week we had our annual ANZAC Day ceremony onsite at WPPS honouring our Australian War veterans. People began arriving from 5.30am and were greeted by the fire Mr Abell had prepared the day prior. Thank you to Emily Beard who supplied not only ANZAC biscuits but also a coffee machine for everyone who stayed after the ceremony for a chin wag and to enjoy what turned out to be a beautiful morning. Thank you also to Annmaria Antonino and Emma Tan who prepared all the morning tea accoutrement. Some history regarding our ceremony was noted by Ms Antonino, who asked a former WPPS Principal, Nick Farley, about our service:

The service began in 2002. 

We began holding the service because parents and Cameron Close got together to ask us if we could hold a Dawn service as many young families and elderly local residents would like to attend a Dawn service but getting into the shrine was problematic for them . And thus the Dawn service came about. We needed to get the okay to hold it from the RSL. Which we did.

In about 2005 or 2006  the ANZAC memorial was built on behalf of the school by Con Loulatsis a parent at the school. He funded the whole project. So it is a 20 year tradition here at Wattle Park.

The reason why Con built the memorial is because his father built one at the school in the late 1960’s and it was demolished in mid 1996 during the building of the hall.

Keep well Annmaria see you soon

For the first time in 20 years I am not going to the Wattle Park service but am going to the one just at the end of my street. The Camberwell RSL.

Cheers Nick

Here we have some of our students, past and present, who braved the cold and dark to attend.

Class Websites

As part of our most recent Curriculum Day each year level revamped their website. This is done to ensure communication to each class and year level is consistent via a format that is constant and familiar across the school.  Each website contains: 

• Email addresses of the teacher in each class in that year level
• Links to pages on our school website:   
• Communication
• Calendar
• Canteen ordering
• COVID 19 guidelines - Department of education guidelines

• Relevant dates of events  for that specific year level

• Summary of what is being learned in various learning areas

• A timetable of the Specialist lessons for each class

Further resources including links to 

• Volunteers
• Student Code of Conduct
• Child Safe Standard 7 - PROTECT
• Child Safe Standard 7 - Feeling Safe: For Primary School Students
• Digital Learning Policy
• WPPS Values
• School Strategic Plan
• School Community Safety Orders

To view (and bookmark)  your child’s class site please click the following relevant link:

You can also access each site via our WPPS website.

Konnective Shutting Down on 15th May

Konnective is one of the four platforms we use to communicate with our school community. We use:

1. A) Compass
2. B) Our website; https://www.wattleparkps.vic.edu.au/
3. C) Class websites
4. D) Konnective

Konnective informed us last year that after 10 years of operation they are shutting down in September 2023. They have recently asked us to renew our subscription, which ends on the 15th of May this year. We will not be doing this.

Instead, we will wrap up our use of Konnective when our subscription concludes on the 15th May.

Please be aware your Konnective App, as connected to WPPS, will not work after this date.

All communication will be via Compass and/or our above platforms.

Chicken Duty!

Thank you to those families who have assisted throughout term one and during the term one holidays (Feb 4^th to Sun 23^rd April).

A sincere thank you to the following families; Bromwich, Shasavand, Hanson, Chua, Yang, Mack, Hul, Wong, Dong, Thomas, Beard, Liu, Scott, Evans, Adamson, Lambert and Rennie.

The family who has won a family experience is the Evans family.

Congratulations to Wilbur.

The good news is we will still run this competition in term two and during the term two holidays. All you have to do is sign up and assist with the chickens on the weekend/during the holidays. Each time you volunteer, you and your family receive an entry into the raffle.  If you win, you get to choose what ‘family experience’ you would like.  These experiences include;

• Ninja Parc
• Hoyts
• Rainbow World
• Inflatable World
• Bounce
• Flip Out

Please see this link for more information and to sign up.

A special thank you to the Parents and Friends Association for the donation of the prizes. 

School Houses

There was no award for our house points this week due to it being a short week. We will resume next week. 

The winning house gets to keep their house colours on our House Trophy for the week! Well done to everyone awarded House Points this week!

• There are 4 school houses
• Waratah, Lomandra, Blue Gum and Acacia
• Each student is designated a school house - your child’s house is on their Compass profile
• 1-3 points system is used school wide. Here are some examples

• 3 points

• Student of the Week Award
• Demonstrating academic excellence
• Representing WPPS at district swimming, completing PRC
• Demonstrating our WPPS School Values

• 2 points

•     Participation in extra-curricular school-based events (such as,              Running Club)
•     Nude food

• 1 point

•    Participating in school based events, cross country, good behaviour

18th November 2023  Wattle Park Primary - Twilight Fete

The WPPS 2023 Fete has a new planning committee led by Amy Murphy (Sadie Year 2, Audrey F) and is already supported by numerous incredible parents. We are working together to create a fete that supports the school by raising funds to provide equipment, resources and high-quality care for our students. We’ll do this by bringing the community together to enjoy an afternoon of exciting rides, eating delicious foods, watching spectacular fireworks and having a lot of fun in the process.

We are looking for a few more members to fill a couple of positions to complete the committee. These include (but are not limited to) the coordination of the Entertainment, Food and Beverage, Marketing, Sponsorships, Donations and the Logistics portions of the fete. Committee members are required to attend a monthly meeting (via Zoom) on Tuesdays 8pm around mid-month, with more frequent meetings close to the fete on November 18th.

No experience necessary; a willingness to help and a commitment to seeing the fete be successful is all that is required to join.

Please reach out to any of the committee members with any questions or contact Amy on 0408 488 329 or wppsfete@gmail.com

We would love to have you on board!

2023 Twilight Fete Committee Members – 

• Amy Murphy
• Emily Beard
• Danielle Boer
• Elki Breslin
• Sjaan Keen
• Hayley Evans
• Alicia Rennie
• Anthony Hall

Canteen: Ordering

Our canteen operates on Mondays and Fridays for lunch only.

Due to the timetable change outlined above, orders must be placed by 5pm the day before the order is required. This means:

Monday orders by 5pm Sunday

Friday orders by 5pm Thursday

Orders placed after these times cannot be processed.

This allows our Canteen Manager, Charlotte, enough time to get things organised.

To place an order, please download the free Flexischools App from the App Store or Google Play. Once you have downloaded the app you will be able to view and select your orders, and pay online. 

Canteen: Volunteering

Do you have some time to spare? An hour and a half on a Friday would be great!

Our canteen would not be able to run without the wonderful support of the volunteer Parents and Grandparents in our school. We would love to have you volunteer for us, whether you are an experienced hand or an eager learner. Please see below to sign up.

Here's how it works in 3 easy steps:

1. Click this link to go to our invitation page on SignUp.com: https://signup.com/login/entry/827030846186224028
2. Enter your email address: (You will NOT need to register an account on SignUp.com)
3. Sign up! Choose your spots - SignUp.com will send you an automated confirmation and reminders. Easy!

Kind regards and by the way -  the two numbers are: 26 632 and 72 217. The sum of the numbers is 98 849.

Steve Donohue

Principal

Wattle Park Primary School

5. Chess Tournament Results
6. Book Club
7. School Photos  
8. Second Hand Uniform Shop

1. Mother's & Special person's Day Stall

2. Put Away in May - Remember September
Hats are no longer required to be worn in the months of May to the end of August.

3. First Aid Room Volunteer
In order to keep our First Aid Room clean and tidy, we require volunteers to assist with this task. We need approximately 40 families on our roster to ensure that every family only needs to do this once per year. It is not time consuming and requires approximately 15 minutes of your time on a FRIDAY.
https://signup.com/go/MvZZbFq

4. PSW New Deliver Option
From 15th February, parents are able to order PSW school uniforms online and have the order delivered to the school office. Deliveries will be weekly for parent collection. This will save parents from actually having to go to the PSW shop if you  know what you want and sizes. 

Above is a screen shot of how the screen would look like. 

The parent needs to choose the “Click and Collect” Option, the drop down box will appear and they choose for their item to be delivered to Wattle Park Primary School.

5. Chess Tournament Results
Congraulations to Wattle Park Primary School came 8th out of 20 School. Herald Li had the best performance winning 4/7 games.


6. Book Club


7.  School Photos
Photos were delivered to classrooms yesterday.  If you have any questions/concerns regarding your order please contact Advanced Photography direct on info@advancedlifevic.com.au.  The school code for ordering is Q32WP2PAR.

8. Second Hand Uniform Shop
Monday, 8th May 8.30-9am
Monday, 5th June 8.30-9am