Forbes Street, Woolloomooloo 2011 Telephone: 9358 5335/6 | Fax: 93571831 plunketstr-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Plunkett Street News

Term 2 Week 9, 2018

Dear Families, As this will be the last newsletter before the end of the term, I wish you all a very happy and safe school holidays. Just so you know: Thursday 5th July is the last day of term 2 for our Preschool students. Friday 6th of July is the last day of term 2 for our K-6 students. All students return to school on Tuesday 23rd July. Please make sure that you notify the school office if your child will be absent from school after the 23rd July. Over the last few weeks, students have been learning about Aboriginal history and culture, and we invite you to join us on Wednesday 4th July at 2pm for our school NAIDOC assembly. Each class will be sharing their learning with the school community. During the school holidays, on Sunday 15th July, the Woolloomooloo community NAIDOC event will take place in Forbes St and in the school playground. The theme this year is: Because of her, we can! celebrating the essential role that women have played, and continue to play, as active and significant role models. The community event starts at 10:30am with a welcome and smoking ceremony. The students from Plunkett St will be dancing at 11am. If you are not going away in the holidays, please encourage your child to meet Miss Helen at 11am ready to dance in their NAIDOC t-shirts. Once again, have a happy and safe school holidays. Juliet Sonter

Dates for the Calendar Term 2, 2018

July 2nd Semester 1 Reports 3rd Uluru and Jenolan to State Library 4th NAIDOC Assembly 2-3 5th Last day of term 2 for Preschool 5th Drama Excursion Yrs 1-6 6th Assembly - Jenolan 6th Last day of 2 term K-6 15th Community NAIDOC Festival 24th Students return for term 3

Our school rules • Be Safe • Be Respectful • Be an Active Learner

Thank you to Peter Dawe – Youth Community Greening Coordinator from the Botanic Gardens and Centennial Parklands. Peter generously donated a mandarin tree for our preschool playground. The preschool kids had a lot of fun helping with the planting, and they promised Peter they would look after the tree, giving it food, water and love.

It has been a soggy couple of weeks, but we haven’t let it dampen our spirits in Kakadu! A big thank you to all those children who remembered to bring a moving toy into school. We have learnt lots about push and pull forces, along with battery powered toys. We have one week left at school so it’s not too late for the children who haven’t yet shared a toy with the class to do so. Last week was Books in Homes and all the children in Kakadu were gifted three books to share with their families. We all enjoyed finding a little hidey hole in the classroom to look through our books. I hope you have all enjoyed sharing them at home. This week in maths we have been learning about weight and the children have used their investigative skills to hunt out heavy and light objects. We have made comparisons, predictions and tested using a balance scale.

We cant believe how quick term 2 has gone, and we are nearly at the holidays. We had our last school drama lesson with Kaylee on Thursday. Uluru class have really appriecated being involved and participating in drama during the term. Kaylee has taught us some fun drama games and made exciting interactive lessons. In Sydney Story Factory, students have created some entertaining stories about a surprise birthday party. Every week the kids were asked to add more to their stories, adding characters, drama and leaving the reader in suspense. On our last lesson with Story Factory, we got into character ourselves to help us with our writing inspiration and we had our own little party! We were lucky enough to also sample some delicious sushi, made fresh at school by Harshaan and Alby. It was super tasty!

As we arrive at the end of term 2 the class has been very busy in a range of programs and activities. Week 10 also promises to be full of great learning experiences. In science and with Sydney Story Factory this term, the students have been learning about and designing their own inventions. This has required them to hone their persuasive language skills in order to justify and ‘sell’ their ideas to an audience. While all the inventions were unique and well thought through, the three most successful ideas came from William, Harry and Ruby. Well done! Yesterday we held our final School Drama session with our instructor Kaylee. With her guidance the class has dissected Anthony Brown’s book Voices in the Park. Through these activities, students have shown a significant improvement in their performance confidence, observational skills and descriptive language abilities.

Next week all Jenolan students will be asked to present their speech which they have been working on at home. Please ensure that this is prepared for Monday. On Tuesday, we will attend the State Library for the opening of our exhibition which we have been working towards for the last two terms. Families are warmly welcomed to this event. Then on Thursday is our excursion to the Seymour Centre to watch a performance of Hamlet. Please ensure you have returned your notes for each of these events.

Cooking The preschoolers have enjoyed all the international kitchen cooking experiences of this term. This week, Katie’s mum Marin came in to make banana and vegie fritters with us. Before we started, we sang our ‘hello song’ as a welcome to Marin and asked them to say ‘selamat pagi’ to her. Milla remembered that Katie and her mum come from Indonesia. During the cooking experience, we learned how to mix the flour with water to be able to fry it and to add flavours. All children had a turn of putting the banana slices and vegies into the flour mixture.

Literacy As the children are so interested in letters and words, which they demonstrate by writing their names, telling us that words start with certain letters and recognise and write other children’s letters, we have started using the Reading Eggs program again. On the computer, the children can explore their knowledge of letters and words individually and play around with them without the pressure of group expectations. They also learn some basic computer skills, such as finding their letters on the keyboard, using the mouse, and clicking with the left side of the mouse to make things happen on the screen. There is an instant reward: the characters on the screen cheer them on when they get it right.

Pyjama party As it has been quite cold and wet lately we have decided to celebrate our last day of the term with a pyjama party. We will drink hot chocolate and watch a movie in our pyjamas on Thursday the 5th of July. We ask all parents to bring their children in their pyjamas but still provide some warm clothes for outside play. We look forward to seeing everyone then!