THE WARWICK WHISPER A publication of WARWICK FARM PUBLIC SCHOOL

'At Warwick Farm we respect everyone, we work together,

we inspire greatness, and we grow as leaders.' School Website: http://www.warwickfar-p.schools.nsw.edu.au

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14th December 2018

PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE

Dear Families,

PRINCIPAL'S 2018 PRESENTATION DAY SPEECH

Special guests, staff, parents, family and friends, and most importantly our wonderful students. Good

morning and welcome. Can I begin by thanking Mrs Kotevski and Miss Mulder and their Presentation Day

coordination team for their incredible organisation of today’s event. I would as like to thank Mr Chris Hayes

for your attendance here today. We are greatly honoured for your participation at today’s event.

We end 2018 being able to reflect on a year where the successes exceeded even my most ambitious

objectives.

NEW UNIFORM

2018 has been the first year of our new school uniform! Our students all look so smart! Thank you to our

families who have supported this change so quickly. I believe the new modern uniform has contributed to

the happiness within our school. Our kids look great and feel great!

QUALITY TEACHING and EXCELLENCE in LEADERSHIP

We are endowed with a highly skilled and talented staff who are dedicated to adopting best practice. This

means having a commitment to school wide professional learning that utilises the very best in current

research. To put it simply, we have taken what works best for student achievement and delivered it in the

classroom. In particular, our teachers have completed L3, Educhangemakers, Atlassian, Growth Coaching

and The Expert and Lead Teacher Colloquium. We had our first Instructional Rounds, where teachers from 9

other schools came to 8 of our 10 classes to look and listen for signs of a quality environment. Feedback

from those teachers was incredibly positive and our teachers were left with so many things to celebrate.

READ, READ, READ!

This year we trialled a different focus on Homework. Rather than weekly homework sheets, all students were

required to READ, READ, READ. Teachers have reported a decrease in students’ stress levels, increased

vocabulary, and improved focus and concentration on real tasks. We will continue this path in 2019,

monitoring the program with a greater focus on school wide regular reading.

WARWICK FARM, THE PLACE TO BE - A CESE RECOGNISED SCHOOL

This year we received recognition that our students report they feel particularly happy at our school. Our

kids like coming to school and like being in their classrooms. Early next year a report will be published

focussing on 5 schools across the state to teach other schools how to make their kids feel happy.

What an incredibly proud Principal I am.

STUDENTS SUCCESSES

In 2018, our students had many successes! Some of these highlights include:

4 students were successful for selective high school in 2019

3 teams made the PSSA semi finals

45 students performed in the Liverpool Arts and Film festival

4 students recognised in Operation Art, with one student having her work displayed in Westmead

Children’s Hospital

4 students in Regional Final of Spelling bee

Our Debating Team won the Zone Competition

Over 25 students represented our school in Zone sport activities

1 represented our school at Regional Level

75 students completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge

4 students competed in the Ultimo Directorate Public Speaking Competition

Our school was recognised for our outstanding contribution to Sydney South West Sport

..... Not bad for a small school of 238 students!

SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIPS

We have partnered with the very best to become the very best.

We have a highly impressive list of partners that is unmatched from any other local school.

The Neighbourhood Centre, South West Connect, Street University and @CoSLead. This year saw the

beginning of a new group of teachers, the Warwick Farm Vision Team who provide itinerant support for

students with vision impairment across the region.

OUR HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDS

2018 has been another successful year in fortifying relationships with our local high schools. Our

Communication Partners program has 7 Year 11 students from Liverpool Boys HS coming here every week to

teach expressive and receptive language skills to our kids!

CREATIVE & PERFORMING ARTS

We will look back on 2018 as another wonderful year for our Performing arts students. Our Percussion group,

Dance Group and Choir all performed brilliantly at Liverpool Catholic Club for our LAaFF, a combined

festival with 7 schools. Congratulations to all involved, including their teachers Miss Colley, Mrs Youkhana,

Miss Sammak, Mr Cameron and Mrs McCabe. These students and teachers then had the opportunity to be

in the audience of the 2018 Schools Spectacular!

THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT

All of our students K-6 have been involved in our Social Innovations Program to design our Dream

Classroom! Thank you Mrs Smalley for leading this project! Thank you to the P&C for applying for and then

successfully receiving a community grant of $20,000! This money has meant we have ordered the first stage

of our Outdoor Classroom project! I can’t wait for you to all see it, hopefully it will be ready for us when we

come back to school in the New Year!

Next year will see the beginning of the Mainsbridge build, starting with the construction of a brand new

toilet block for us! What an exciting time for us all!

FAREWELL & THANK YOU

Sadly, we must farewell a much loved staff member this year. Congratulations to Mrs Karen Hewitt who was

successful in gaining a permanent teaching position at Villawood North PS from 2019! Mrs Hewitt has been a

valued member of our staff for a long time and has made many contributions to our school. In 2016, Mrs

Hewitt reintroduced PSSA to our school and then maintained a commitment to providing high quality

sporting opportunities for our students with our students attending our first combined swimming carnival this

year. Humble, hardworking, always professional and dedicated, we wish you the very best of luck in your

new school Mrs Hewitt. You will be dearly missed.

THANK YOU STAFF

I want to publicly acknowledge and thank our entire staff.

We have been blessed with exceptional Executive Team – Mrs Gauci in the office, Mrs Kotevski as

Instructional Leader, our Assistant Principals, Miss Mulder and Mrs Byrne, who is on leave and two relieving

Assistant Principals, Mrs Smalley and Mrs Haeren. I am so excited to be working with these capable leaders

during the next stage of the Warwick Farm journey.

I also wish to thank our supportive, fun, hardworking and motivated staff, highly talented and dedicated

teachers and the best administration staff on the planet. Great schools run on a lot of goodwill from staff,

and this staff deliver this in spades.

Thank you also to our fantastic parents and community who are our greatest advocates. Our partnerships

are what makes our school so strong!

A FINAL MESSAGE TO OUR STUDENTS

All that we do here is for you. Every day we strive to provide you with an outstanding learning environment.

There is something very special about Warwick Farm, a unique quality that only those who step inside our

gates can understand.

It is a privilege and an honour to be your principal. I hope you regard being a student of Warwick Farm with

a similar reverence.

We have had a fantastic 2018 but I am already focused on the exciting opportunities and successes that

await us for 2019.

You all know I love a good Dr Seuss quote…..

“The more that you read

The more things you will know

The more that you learn

The more places you’ll go!”

Congratulations to all of today’s award winners. We are so proud of you. Enjoy today’s ceremony and have

a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Thank you.

School resumes Years 1-6 Wednesday 30th January 2019. We look forward to our students returning happy

and healthy!

Quote of the fortnight:

“The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree

is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.”- Burton Hills.

Melanie Macmillan

Principal

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This Week’s PBL Focus….

CONNECTING CULTURES Our fabulous students, community and staff

weren’t going to let the rain stop the smiles and

dampen our celebration. The day began with a

visit from Lawrence Hargrave School and Aunty

Carol, a local Aboriginal Elder. They spoke about

the Nawi canoe project that our students were

connected with a few years ago. I was impressed

by the interesting questions our students asked and

I believe this convinced Aunty Carol to come back

next year to help us create an Aboriginal garden

around our Acknowledgement to Country sign. In her words, WFPS students are smart, kind and deadly.

(Aboriginal for awesome)

POP (PARENT ONLINE PAYMENT)

Open

www.warwickfar-p.schools.nsw.edu.au

Click on $ Make a Payment

Please note minimum payment through

this system is $10.00.

Thank you.

SHOW PRIDE

WARWICK FARM PUBLIC SCHOOL WEBSITE

We have a school website which is regularly

updated with information about the school and

class work. It can be viewed at

www.warwickfar-p.schools.nsw.edu.au .

From early Term 4 our students, supported by a group of dedicated teachers, have been combining skill

and practice to be able to present such quality performances at the Connecting Cultures Concert. Talk

about gifted and talented! The leadership that I saw in Grace, Rose and Lawrence put our motto Stars

Leading the Way into action. No wonder Mrs Macmillan is so proud to be Principal of this wonderful school.

Warwick Farm Public School community have raised the bar on how we celebrate the multicultural diversity

of our school. I can’t wait to see what ideas they will have in 2019, as Connecting Cultures belongs to them.

Our community owned it with the name change and then ‘walked the talk’ with their spectacular Cultural

Fusion dance- where they shone like superstars. No wonder our students are so awesome and DEADLY!

Mrs Cranney

KINDERGARTEN ENROLMENTS 2019

The school continues to accept applications for Kindergarten in 2019.

Children who turn 5 years of age before 31 July 2019, are able to begin

school.

Please enquire at the School Office for an application package.

Code Club! We have had an awesome year in Code Club. Every Tuesday at lunch Stage Three students and Mrs

Williams have met in the Think Tank. Using code.org (https://studio.code.org/home) students were

introduced to using block codes. After learning to program characters using functions, loops, if/then

statements and other code we moved onto Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/). Scratch is a 'sandbox' site

where students can use their coding skills to create whatever they wish. Using Scratch we were able to

complete projects from Code Club Australia, such as https://scratch.mit.edu/ or we have found interesting

games and looked inside at the code to see how it could be remixed and improved. In July six Code Club

members and I were invited to join Code Club Australia at EduTech. It was an awesome day at the

International Convention Centre and a great opportunity for us to Code with some experts and have fun

exploring different tech. The Code Club has given students a chance to develop their problem solving

strategies and team work and I hope they've had as much I have! I'm looking forward to continuing Code

Club next year and the release of Scratch 3.0 in January!

-Mrs Williams

What a year! Our community has grown so much in the last 4 terms. We have a fantastic P & C, our fundraisers

are very effective, C4K has been visited by many parents and carers and communication across our school

has been very effective. It has been a great pleasure for me to assist and engage our wonderful school

community.

PARENTS & CITIZENS (P & C) Our new P & C has been growing in strength and organisation. The Executive – lead by Mrs Leolahi (President)

- is well-organised and their leadership has been amazing – effective meetings and great community

conscience.

Many thanks to Mrs Macmillan, Mrs Kotevski and Mr Ward for their valuable assistance in setting up and

supporting the growth of our P & C and to all staff for supporting our parents’ endeavours. The first meeting in

2019 will be in Week 2 - date to be advised in Week 1.

PERCUSSION COURSE FOR YEAR 3 AND 4 STUDENTS Our end-of-year party on Wednesday 12/12/18 was lots of fun. The students worked so well in 2018, learning

to read music, working as a team, being creative and following their STARS throughout our lessons. Thank

you to Mrs McCabe for assisting in our course – your positivity was really appreciated by me and the

students.

I am very proud of all the boys and girls and hope that they retain their love of percussion and music

generally. I will offer percussion to Year 3 and 4 students again next year. Here are some pictures from our

party and thanks to Melissa and Haylee (centre below) for helping me set-up C4K for the party!

BREAKFAST CLUB Many thanks to parents/carers, community volunteers and all staff who have donated their time to this

wonderful program. Students have benefited so much from a healthy breakfast each day, through

increased concentration, energy and engagement in their learning.

Huge thanks to "Gift of Bread" at Marrickville for donating bread to our program. We are also incredibly

grateful for the huge amount of food and milk supplied to us by Foodbank. Our partnership with these

suppliers will continue in 2019 and some new food-related programs will be announced in early Term 1 next

year. So watch our newsletter!

COMMUNITY PARTNERS Our school community has benefitted from effective and sustainable partnerships with local community

and Government agencies, the corporate world, volunteers and individual people. Thank you Coles,

Woolworths, Liverpool Migrant Resource Centre, Liverpool City Council, Health NSW, Red Cross, Salvation

Army, Liverpool Neighbourhood Centre, Foodbank, Gift of Bread, Liverpool Volunteer Centre and all of our

generous volunteers.

Thank you so much for your interest and involvement in our school and the wellbeing of our school

community. We look forward to a continued partnership in 2019.

PARENTS AS TEACHERS AND CLASSROOM HELPERS (PaTCH) Mrs Kotevski (assisted by Mr Cameron) ran this hugely

successful program in 2018 and participating

parents/carers loved the experience.

Thank you to all parents/carers who assisted teachers

and students in K – 2 classes with reading/literacy,

numeracy, STEM and in other key learning areas. Your

participation in the program provided you with many

skills and contributed so much to the learning of our

students. Thank you from Warwick Farm Public School!

ART, CRAFT AND OTHER ACTIVITIES WITH MR CAMERON Across 2018 I have had the pleasure of offering students art and craft activities and games in the C4K room.

Students have been very engaged, enthusiastic and creative and I look forward to offering these activities

in 2019.

Remember that C4K is a place where everyone is welcome, equal

and safe. During 2019 our school will be offering parent/carer

workshops, activities, P&C meetings, beautiful events such Harmony

Day, Connecting Cultures, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and much

more.

English Courses and the PaTCH program will run each Term in 2019 and

we hope to involve parents/carers in all aspects of their children’s

learning.

All members of our school community will have numerous opportunities

to contribute to our school and develop useful personal and job skills in

2019.

Watch our newsletter and website, read our fliers and electronic board messages, engage with Class Dojo

and our Facebook page, attend our workshops/activities and please offer your suggestions, to help

improve all aspects of our school and its community.

I will be at school on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the C4K room in 2019 and I am here to answer your

questions, hear your feedback and help your family. Please drop in to say hello and have a chat. I wish you

a great Christmas, happy holidays and a happy and healthy New Year.

Cameron Cameron Outterside | Community Liaison Officer (CLO)

DATES TO REMEMBER

Term 4 Event

Monday

17th December

School Reports go home

Wednesday

19th December

Last Day of School for

students

Tuesday

29th January

School Development Day

Wednesday

30th January

Years 1 to 6 commence

Thursday

31st January

Kindergarten 2019

commence