THE UPSIDE

14th of June 2023 -ISSUE 9

News and updates from

This week, Kindergarten students have transitioned to walking to their classrooms on their own each morning and as a result, we have made some organisational changes for all studnts.

From Tuesday - Friday, all students will be asked to sit and wait for further instructions when the morning music begins. The teacher on duty will invite a stage/grade to move to their classroom so that we can decrease the number of students walking down the staircase at any one time and decrease the likelihood of someone falling and being injured.

We are still fine tuning this process and will communicate any changes to the students at the Monday morning assembly.

I would encourage all families to acknowledge Social Media Day on Friday 30th June and to have some very important conversations with their children.

As the use of TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram increases, so does the number of reports of online abuse. Often, our students don't have the knowledge or skills to navigate negativity that they experience online and they are unsure of who they can turn to for help.  Having regular conversations with your child and reading through resources online with them should provide them with the tools needed to keep them safe. 

• eSafety Commissioner’s Be an eSafe kid, online safety messages for young children.
• eSafety Commissioner’s eSafety, to help young people stay safe online.
• eSafety Commissioner’s Consent for sharing photos and videos, tips and support for young people.
• eSafety Commissioner’s Use social media and online chat and Report online harm.

One of our very talented students Francesca Y in Year 5 is a member on the 2023 NSW Primary State Dance Ensemble.

The ensemble will be performing at the Sydney North Dance Festival at the Glen Street Theatre on Thursday 29th June 2023 and we wish her the best of the luck or the performance.

This Friday the 16th June, our very talented recorder group will be performing at the Mimosa Concert: Festival of Instrumental Music being held at the Opera House

The Festival of Instrumental Music features musically diverse performances from more than 1000 public school students in Combined Recorders and String Ensembles, supported by individual items from talented vocalists, instrumental soloists and ensembles.  

I am excited for all of our performers and of course Ms Chang who has been rehearsing with our students since the beginning of the year. Good luck and enjoy the experience!

Please remember to stay home when COVID symptoms occur and to undertake a rapid antigen test.

If your family requires additional tests, please reach out to the admin team who can provide your family with additional supplies.

Please remember to inform the admin team if your child receives a positive COVID test result as we will continue to track if there are any patterns across the school.

Ms Barbagallo

Welcome to Week 8! This is an exciting time in the Library as we prepare for many events in the Library for Term 3.

CBCA Book Week 2023: Term 3

This year’s Book week theme is Read, Grow, Inspire. This showcases and honours the Australian authors and illustrators who provide our children with quality literature and who promote and foster a lifetime love of reading. Our Book Week Parade will occur in Term 3 as well as the Scholastic Book Fair. Students will dress up as their favourite book character. This can be a simple handmade costume or something you have at home. We also have a well renowned Australian author visiting next term, who made the CBCA Notables list for 2023. Stay tuned for more details in upcoming newsletters.

Library Open at Lunchtime:

Please remind your child that the Library is open every lunchtime for the first half of lunch. This is a place where students can find a quiet space to draw, play games or come in and find a great book to read. Lego Club also runs every lunchtime in the Library should your child be a Lego enthusiast. All are welcome!

Reminders:

A reminder that if your child forgets their Library bag on their allocated Library day, they can bring in their Library bag and visit me in the Library during the first half of lunch from Tuesday to Friday. This ensures that every child has a book they can read at home from our Library. You can purchase Ultimo Public School Library bags via Flexischools or you can also bring in a canvas bag to borrow books.

Scholastic Book Club

Issue 4 orders due today

A friendly reminder that Scholastic book orders are due today, Wednesday 14^th June. Students can purchase books at a discounted rate through scholastic book club. The best part is 15% of your order value is given back to our school. It is easy to order. Just go to scholastic.com.au/loop or by using the LOOP app which you can download from the App Store or Google Play. Once you select your books, use the drop-down menu to find your class and the books will be delivered to your child’s classroom. Please note the school does not take cash for Book Club orders.

“You can find magic wherever you look.  Sit back and relax all you need is a book!” – Dr. Seuss

l Leaders Report

By Claire, Jeehwan, Yash, Zaria 

This week, we are having our Wellbeing Week for Term 2! As you all know, Monday was a public holiday, so we all got to miss a day of school ! On Tuesday, it was a multicultural picnic day! Since our school is a multicultural society, all students have a different background, culture or beliefs, and food is the main key to share and represent our culture, therefore we are having this event. Today was bring your own book to school day, where you bring any book you love from home to school ! Coming up on Thursday, each class will have a sports brain break, where each class will choose an activity (e.g yoga) to do in their class, whether it is to calm your mind, or get your blood pumping! On Friday, We will have a Crazy Hair Day! This is when you’ll make your hair look as crazy as possible! Don’t forget to bring a gold coin as it will be donated to the Starlight Foundation. The Starlight Children's Foundation is an organisation that helps sick children or children in need. We hope you enjoy this week’s Wellbeing Week !

Last week Stage 3 had a Ranger Jamie science incursion. We started off with a lesson about liquid nitrogen. Did you know it is -195°C? After that we split into two groups, one would be working on solar ovens the other on wind turbines. In the turbine group we got plastic poles and an icy pole stick and a battery, some wires and electrical tape. After 10 minutes most of the groups had managed to construct a wind turbine. By then it was time to switch groups, so we went to the solar ovens. There we got some foil, tape, a cardboard box and some black duct tape. We had 20 minutes to build our oven and then five to let it heat up. The highest temperature was 29.7°C. After an hour of fun it was time to pack up and say goodbye. 

We hope you have a wonderful week at Ultimo!

On Tuesday 13 May, Stage 2 students enjoyed an exciting incursion from the Ranger Jamie team.

Students participated in fun activities and experiments relating to forces, heat energy and electricity. There were giant balloons, explosions and even go-kart racing! Some of the Year 3 and 4 students described the day as, 'the best fun ever!'

On Tuesday, we had our multicultural picnic day for wellbeing week. We learnt about food from our friends’ different cultures and backgrounds. We all were very interested in the food everyone brought and it was fun talking about the food from our culture and background. This picnic is important because it celebrates everyone’s differences and brings people closer together. The picnic is not only for our wellbeing, but also for letting people be proud about their culture and background. 

On Wednesday, it was reading for pleasure day, it was cool to see the different books our friends like to read, we also had the chance to show our favorite books to our classmates and some of us were able to share our stories with our class.

We’re looking forward to all the other exciting things we get to do for student wellbeing week this week, such as sport brain breaks on Thursday and Crazy hair day on Friday. We’re also excited about our gold coin donation day because we get to do something positive for our community by raising money for the Starlight foundation who help children when they are in hospital. We had fun planning Student Wellbeing Week for Term 3.

Starlight Video

Big thank you to the families that helped weed some of the school garden beds last working bee! Garden volunteers are needed again for Sat 1st July (school holidays). Drop in when you can anytime between 11am & 4pm to help out with weeding, pruning, soil health & preparing for more plants. BYO gloves & tools if you can (some available at the school). Kids welcome too if supervised by parents. To join and for more details contact Michelle 0424 305 101

There has been a large number of winter uniform on back order , all uniform will be early distributed next week.

Please be reminded to finalize your statement of account for Term 2.

Please use your Sentral parents portal app to lodge absence or respond to SMS message to notify us about your child's absence.  If you have any technical issues please contact the admin team.

June

Fri 16th- Crazy Hair Day 

Fri 16th- Recorder Group Rehearsal Concert

Fri 16th- 1 Romania Assembly 1pm 

Mon 26th- Koomuri Incursion Performance 

Fri 30th- 1 Djibouti Assembly 1pm

Fri 30th- Last Day of Term 2