Market Day

Year 6 Market Day was a huge success today! Exceptional leadership was demonstrated by our Year 6 cohort and all students showed safe, respectful and responsible behaviours! I was so impressed with the Year 6 student leaders for creating a carnival-like atmosphere and supporting the younger students to enjoy the various stalls. Congratulations to the Year 6 teachers, students and parents for their donations, stall creations and work on the day.

2024 Pupil Free Days - All ACT Public Schools

In 2024, there will be four student free days for ACT public schools. These student free days are for staff development, enabling teachers and schools to plan in a student-free environment and these will be on the first day of each term. These student-free days have been expanded from one to four days as part of our new Teaching Staff Enterprise Agreement.

Fabulous new resources

Thank you to the Board and P&C for supporting the school to purchase decodable readers and reading assessment kits. These have now arrived and will be ready to use at the start of next year. These are much needed resources and will make a significant difference to student learning. The tender process for the Greenhouse has been finalised and the construction is due to be completed over the Dec/Jan break (which has impacted our availability for vacation care due to the scope of the works being completed on site). This will be a great addition to our sustainability program and we look forward to sharing some photos with the community once completed.

Time to Slime

The students have achieved the target of 5000 tokens which does mean ….. it’s Slime Time!  Students will be voting on the brave staff nominees next week and it will be time to slime on Thursday Week 8 at 2:10pm on the netball court. Parents are more than welcome to come along and join in the fun (as a spectator). I have challenged the students to earn an additional 1000 bonus tokens before Thursday to receive a special surprise.  I would like to thank everyone in advance for accepting the challenge and for making our school a happy and fun place to be.

International Day of People with Disability (IDPD)

This year Kaleen Primary School will be celebrating IDPD on Wednesday 6 December and we are pleased to say this has evolved from our shared partnership with the P&C Inclusive Education representative, Michelle Tabbah, and Danielle O’Connor, Lead teacher of Wellbeing.  We have been working with the Everyone Everyday team in the Directorate and are planning a special assembly with a guest speaker who is visually impaired.  They will speak to the whole school about inclusion and teach the students some modified games which classes will have the opportunity to play after the assembly. 

Key messages from the day include:

• Everyone wants to feel included.

• People must focus on what people can do, not on what people cannot do.

• People must take action to include everyone every day.

• There are many ways to do things. Flexibility and creativity are required so that everyone can participate.

• We are all unique. We all have similarities and differences that make us interesting.

• We can all use our abilities to contribute to the community. Strong communities provide opportunities for everyone to contribute.

• Everyone benefits from living in an inclusive community.

• We all have responsibility for creating inclusive communities.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Bye for now,

Michelle

Check out all the wonderful Christmas songs our Japanese Choir have sung recently. 

As we are approaching the end of the year and are gearing up for stocktake and the re-organisation of the Library, we are asking that all students to return their library books no later than 1 December.

This week was our last official week of borrowing and next weeks Library sessions will consist of just returning and reading books. Students will not be able to take any more books home until we return in 2024.

If you think that you have lost a book we ask that you contact our Library coordinator on christina.mccombe@ed.act.edu.au and contribute fees to repurchase a copy of the missing book or alternatively you can replace the missing book with a copy you find elsewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jo1RLPoD6s  (if this works to add please include) if not, no worries.

Unfortunately, due to the low level of interest this year and lack of volunteers to run it, we will not be offering Gingerbread sales/workshop in December. We hope to try again next year. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

Hint: We have spotted some cool, reasonably affordable ones at Aldi which may be worth checking out. 😊

Parent Portal is now available. It is a secure online platform used to share student information between you and your child’s teachers.

Some reminders about Parent Portal:

·         If you already have a Parent Portal account, use this Parent Portal access link to start using the great features.

·         You can’t access Parent Portal directly through the ACT Digital Account website, you need to use the link above.

·         When you are logged into Parent Portal, we recommend saving the browser as a favourite or to the homepage on your mobile phone for quick access in the future.

·         The website can only be viewed using a web browser on your computer, mobile phone or tablet. An app is not available at this time.

·         If you still need to register, you will need an access key and a Parent Portal registration link via email to link your existing account to your child’s records. If you haven’t received this, please contact the school’s front office team for assistance.

If you would like to have your child's achievement acknowledged here, please email a short blurb to KaleenPSAdmin@ed.act.edu.au 

Mindfulness

Schools continue to be very busy places! Although our busyness can often be positive with lots of learning, we may also become tired, worried and overwhelmed at times. It can be helpful to pause for a moment and take a deep breath. Research suggests even just one deep mindful breath can send a message of calm to the brain. In simple terms, mindfulness can be defined as being ‘here’, bringing our attention back from thinking about the past or the future to pay attention to what is here in the present moment. 

At Kaleen, staff have been exploring one mindfulness technique a week as a strategy to help with teaching and learning. The practice of mindfulness can help calm our bodies, restore positive attitudes and help us get back ‘on track’ with learning. We are practising breathing strategies such as Five Finger or Starfish breathing; walking while using our senses to see 5 objects, listen for 4 sounds, smell 3 scents, touch 2 objects and recognise 1 taste in our mouths. 

We have also been trying Smiling Mind, a free App which offers short, guided meditations for adults and children to ‘put a smile on your mind’. Maybe you’d like to try some of these mindfulness techniques at home too. See them below. 

Fiona Manton

Kindergarten Teacher 

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