Head of Preparatory School - Edition 9 - 2022

Staffing Shuffle

As we get ever closer to the end of this term, preparations are well underway for the second half of the school year. As is often the case, there will be some changes that the observant members of the School community may notice.

At very short notice Mrs Barr has had to jet off to Scotland with her family. Not in search of warmer weather which we would totally understand, but to support her elderly father who had a health scare. Fortunately, at Westminster we have a great depth of quality educators and we have been able to enact short term cover arrangements. Ms Rowlands has stepped into the role of Deputy for three days per week, a role similar to one that she has held in a previous school. When Ms Rowlands is doing Deputy duties, her class is being very well looked after by Mrs Warren. While she has been on leave this year, Mrs Warren has taught many of the children in 3R previously so there will not be any ‘lag time’ in their learning.

Mr Jury will be taking some well-earned long service leave for the first five weeks of Term 3. He will be using the time away from Westminster to catch up with family in the UK. In another example of the depth and consistency of experienced staff that we enjoy, Mr Wayne will step in to guide 4J during the first half of next term.

IPSHA Poetry Recital

This year the Year 4, 5 and 6 students were given the opportunity to participate in the Independent Primary School Heads Association (IPSHA) Poetry Recital Competition.

The students had to memorise a set poem; Year 4 students performed “Grandma Was Eaten By A Shark” by Andrea Shavick, Year 5 students performed “Picture Puzzle Piece” by Shel Silverstein and Year 6 students performed “I Shall Protect the Forest” by Lenore Hetrick. Each student rehearsed and presented their poem to the cohort. Following auditions, Charlotte Wolf (Year 4 Wyvern), Alex Heneker (Year 5 Charter) and Charlotte Norman (Year 6 Mace) were selected to represent Westminster School at the interschool competition conducted at Walford Anglican School for Girls.

As well as the set poem, students in the final were required to choose a poem of interest to perform. Charlotte W presented “The Great Barrier Reef" by A H Shacknofsky, Alex presented “When Frankenstein Was Just A Kid" by Kenn Nesbitt and Charlotte N delivered "Puppy and I" by AA Milne.

All students went above and beyond to push the boundaries and learn two poems, receiving awards for their efforts. The students displayed the character strengths of bravery, perseverance and a love of learning and represented our School with pride. We congratulate all students on their fantastic achievements.

Alex Bachmatiuk, Ceri Slinger and Jess Sullivan
Preparatory School Teachers

A Timely Move

Visitors to the school in recent months would have noticed the magnificent new Forder Centre that is proving to be an incredibly effective, enticing and exciting location for Music, Drama, the Senior School Library, a coffee stop for all, as well as a home for dining for Senior School students. An unexpected bonus of this new space coming online has been the freeing up of the Old Dining Room. Never one to miss an opportunity, Mr Page has worked with our wonderful Property Services Team to re-purpose this space into an all-weather eating space for our Transition and Reception students. With rain most days recently, the timing of this transformation could not have been better.

We are so appreciative that the School has enabled us to turn the previous Boarder’s Dining Room into an ideal place for our youngest students to share a meal.

Over the coming year, we hope to expand the use of this space to include collaborative learning activities for whole cohorts.

Transition Days

We have had an exciting time over the past fortnight with two visits by our soon-to-be Transition classes. It was a chance to make some new friends and get a little taste of life in the ‘Big School.’ There are 30 children who will be starting full-time school in Term 3. Most of them have come from our Early Learning Centre but a few are beginning their Westminster journey in Transition. Ms Morisset and Ms Whitcombe have spent a great deal of time preparing the classrooms and all is ready for the start of this exciting new journey.

Challenging our Academics

Congratulations to Chelsea Ireland (Year 6 Crown), Penny He (Year 6 Wesley), Lakshay Madankumar (Year 6 Wyvern), Piotrek Kowalcyzk (Year 5 Crown), Anya Rose (Year 5 Crown), Katherine Ma (Year 5 Mace), Tina Tian (Year 5 Mace) and Georgia Davison (Year 5 Wesley) who achieved third place in the da Vinci Decathlon held recently at St Peter’s Girls.

The da Vinci Decathlon is named after one of the world’s greatest thinkers and scholars. It is an academic competition designed to challenge and stimulate the minds of the students, placing emphasis on higher-order thinking skills, problem-solving, teamwork and creativity. The students competed in 10 different subjects, engineering, mathematics, code-breaking, art and poetry, science, English, ideation, creative producers, cartography and legacy.

As well as achieving third place overall in the competition, the team also achieved first in Mathematics and English, second in Engineering and third in Cartography.

Overall, the students loved the experience to compete in this unique competition and to meet students from different schools.

Your generosity was appreciated

Recently Rev Hoffmann coordinated a collection of donations to support the Indigenous communities in northern Australia.

“Packing Day” is an activity of the Uniting Church across South Australia in which donated clothing is sorted and packed for distribution to remote northern Aboriginal communities in Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, Broome and in the island and coastal communities east of Darwin – Maningrida, Minjilang, Galiwin’ku and Yirrkala.

Many of these communities run their own Op Shops and are always glad to receive supplies; the Indigenous communities use their Op Shops as a way of contributing funds towards various community development activities.

For the past three years, students of the Westminster Boarding House have participated in Uniting Church ‘Packing Day’ at nearby Marion Uniting Church. This year Westminster extended that involvement by becoming one of the collection sites for donated goods, a valuable contribution as many Uniting Church congregations no longer have younger families to donate goods of this age cohort.

The response was overwhelming. Rev Phil had 20 labelled cartons along the wall of the Chapel and they were over-flowing. There were almost as many donations on the opposite wall!

Thank you to every family who did a sort out and bought in their donations of good quality clothes, shoes and books. One School family who runs two Pharmacies asked what we could use and donated seven cartons of brand-new thongs! It is wonderful to be able to help out the children that are the same ages as our students.

As the Bible says, ‘give and it will be given to you. In full measure’.

Vacation Care is Looming

We have a very fun, very exciting Vacation Care program planned for July at Westminster OSHC! We have three fun-packed weeks full of excursions, incursions and themed days which will be sure to keep your children happy, busy and entertained. We will be going to lots of exciting venues including Bounce, Funtopia and AFL Max, and having some amazing incursions such as pottery, cooking, race cars and more!

If you would like to enrol your child/ren for Vacation Care and beyond, please contact me via Email for more information.

We can’t wait for another awesome Vacation Care.

Tayla Maurici
OSHC Director

Code Camp - Monday 18 to Wednesday 20 July

As the school holidays approach, students wanting to attend Code Camp at Westminster should look to book a place early to benefit from the Early Bird offer valid until the end of June. See below.

Diary Dates

• SAPSASA Soccer - Tuesday 28 June
• End of Term 2 - Friday 1 July at 12.40 pm
• Code Camp - Monday 18 to Wednesday 20 July
• Start of Term 3 - Tuesday 26 July
• Prep School Photographs - Tuesday 2 to Wednesday 3 August
• Book Week Dress Up Day - Friday 19 August
• Author Visit Year 3 – 6 - Friday 19 August
• Year 6 Camp - Monday 22 to Monday 29 August
• Book Week - Monday 22 to Friday 26 August
• Football (Soccer) Boys and Girls State SAPSASA Carnival - Monday 22 to Wednesday 24 August
• South West SAPSASA Athletics - Thursday 25 to Friday 26 August
• Senior School Music Night - Thursday 25 August
• Father’s Day Breakfast - Thursday 1 and Friday 2 September
• Pupil Free Day - Monday 5 September
• Year 4 Camp - Wednesday 14 to Friday 16 September
• ELC and Catch up Photographs - Thursday 15 September
• Metro State Day Div 1 Track and Field Carnival - Thursday 22 September
• Grandparents' Day - Friday 23 September
• ELC and Catch-up Photographs - Monday 26 September
• End of Term 3 - Friday 30 September at 12.40 pm

Grant Bock
Head of Preparatory School