A Message from Mr Holden

Reports

Semester 1 reports will be available on Friday 26 June from 4:00pm. As our reporting schedule coincides with the unique times of COVID-19, in which students completed learning from home for some weeks, we have only reported on assessments and progress observed at the times when students attended school and received face to face teaching and learning. As such, I am sure that you will understand that for some subjects, the range and number of outcomes reported on may not be as comprehensive as normal. There will be an early opportunity for you to discuss you son’s report with Wyvern teachers next term (arrangements set out below).

Parent Teacher Interviews

Wyvern K-6 Parent Teacher Interviews will be held on Thursday, 23 July and Tuesday, 28 July 2020. Due to current circumstances the interviews will be conducted remotely, with parents having the opportunity to have a face-to-face conversation with their son’s class teacher (10 mins) and specialist teachers (5 mins) via the Zoom teleconferencing platform from 3:30pm with the last appointment concluding at 6:40pm.

Parents are invited to book their own interview times through the College’s Community Admin Portal. The link can be found here. Parents will need to log in via Spaces using their credentials. A guide with instructions on how to book appointments with your son’s teachers can be found here. 

We request that when scheduling times, parents do not select adjacent time slots. We ask that interviews are made with at least 5 mins between appointment times. Please be aware that your schedule may change and will not be confirmed until you receive notification at the beginning of Term 3.

Winter Sport Term 3

In line with the latest NSW advice for community sport, we plan to recommence Saturday fixtures for our Year 3-6 winter sports teams in Term 3. We will take into account all safety and health recommendations from various sporting governing bodies and the Independent Primary School Heads of Australia (IPSHA) and will update you early next term about any implications this may have for parents and spectators. The plan at this stage is for our winter teams to play 5 rounds of matches across the first 6 weeks of the term. Note, due to the Newington Long Weekend there will be no sport fixtures on Saturday 15 August. Mr Wilson will provide an updated fixture list and further details via the Wyvern Sport Space.

Winter sport training will recommence on the first day back in Term 3 for Years 3 and 5. As in Term 2, we will continue training in separate groups for the duration of winter sport:

Monday – Years 3 & 5
Wednesday – Years 4 & 6

All training will be held at Newington senior school campus. Boys are reminded to have the appropriate gear to enjoy their sport (boots and safety equipment for football codes).

The Newington Preparatory Schools’ Inter-House Athletics carnival will be held in the first week of Term 3 on Wednesday 22 July. More details will be made available on the Wyvern Sport Space.

End of Term

Finally, as we approach the end of a very different semester, I would like to thank parents, staff and boys for their outstanding efforts in navigating the many challenges and changes to normal routines with such resilience and optimism. We continue to think about those families in our community who face hardship and uncertainty. I wish you all a restorative winter break and look forward to seeing the boys back at school on Monday 20 July for the start of Term 3.

Ian Holden
Head of Wyvern House

Achievement Awards

 The following achievement award was awarded at Assembly:

Artist of the Week

3 – 6 Artist of the Week

The Artist of the Week comes from Years 4 and 5 this week.

Year 4 made some exciting 3D Art Cars, that also put the ‘A’ in STEAM! This meant including batteries and lights to enhance their fantasy cars.

Well done to Beau Lilley and Sam Cameron for their innovative and well thought-out cars.

Year 5 have been studying ‘Spacemen’, as part of their integrated unit on SPACE. They experimented with different types of charcoal and worked to create different effects using pressure.

Congratulations to Alex Nicholias, Leonidas Spiropoulos, and William Iliopoulos for their excellent efforts creating this artwork.

Meredith Buining
3-6 Visual Art Teacher

A Taste of Shakespeare

From Week 5 this term, the K-6 classes had a taste of Shakespeare and several of his plays during their Library lessons. Kindy boys became immersed in the story of ‘Twelfth Night’, a comedy about a brother and sister pair that are shipwrecked off the coast of Illyria and become separated. Years 1 & 2 experienced the spirit of enchantment on an island with no name, along with Prospero, Ariel and Miranda in the play ‘The Tempest’. Another of Shakespeare’s comedies, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, with its multiple subplots, had the Year 3 & 4 boys eagerly anticipating the outcome of the powerful spells of Oberon and Puck on the play’s characters in the enchanted woods. The themes of power, ambition and betrayal in ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ intrigued the Year 5 & 6 boys as they could relate these ideas to events in the world of today. Hopefully through these experiences, the Wyvern boys have become part of a large group of people who still find the works of Shakespeare enjoyable and entertaining, more than four hundred years after they were written.

Joanne Barnes
Librarian

CommunityOsh

Dear Parents,

Wyvern’s Before and After School Care Program is run by CommunityOSH.

To make a booking you must enrol here first. Once your enrolment is completed you can then book the dates you require on the monthly calendar. Please feel free to contact us if you require any assistance completing your enrolment or placing your bookings on 03 9977 3000.

Key information about CommunityOSH can be found here

Click here for latest Newsletter

K-6 Annual Poetry Performance Competition

Over the next few weeks boys will be preparing to take part in the Poetry Performance Competition, now firmly established as one of Wyvern’s major events.  The competition presents an excellent opportunity for all students in the school to refine and demonstrate their communication skills when presenting to an audience.  All boys will enter the competition and are expected to select a poem, learn it off by heart and then perform it in front of the class.  Finalists will be selected from each class.  Year level finals will then be held to decide the top 3 places in each year group.

Boys are to select the poem they wish to perform. They may seek guidance from their class teacher or from Mrs. Barnes in the library who will have the school’s poetry collection on hand to assist in this process. Note, although the primary focus is on the performance of the poem, we do want boys to access poetry that is age appropriate and of high quality. Alternatively, with this in mind, boys may choose to write their own poem to perform adhering to the guidelines below. Each boy is expected to retain a copy of his poem, as well as give 2 copies to his class teacher for approval by the end of week 3.

The poem or excerpt of a poem should be of approximately the following lengths:

Class heats will be held in week 7 of Term 3 with 4 boys from each class being selected to go through to the year level finals to be held in week 8. Depending on the COVID-19 situation at this time and government guidelines, we aim to hold the Poetry Competition Award Assembly on Friday 18 September at 9.00am. Arrangements will be confirmed closer to the date. We thank the P&F for their kind donation of prizes which will be awarded for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places.

The following guidelines will be used when judging the boys:

Sandra Gray
Head of Early Years
Deputy Head K-2

International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) 2020

Dear Parents

Each year Educational Assessment Australia, a non-profit organisation operating out of the University of NSW, conducts a range of competitions in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the Pacific in the areas of Digital Technologies, English, Mathematics and Science called the International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS). Competitions are open to students in Years 3 – 6.

Participation in these competitions is voluntary. ICAS provides an opportunity for students in Years 3 – 6 to gain a measure of their own achievement in an external testing situation. In deciding whether you wish your son to enter, you may like to consider the following:

• these are competitions (not tests) that are designed to highlight students with particular talents; ICAS is designed to target students’ higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills, and therefore are set at a high level, with certain questions being above the capacity of many students at a particular year level;
• the competitions are NOT normed to the Australian population;

In 2020 Wyvern students in Years 3 – 6 can participate in the following subjects:

• ICAS Science on Tuesday, 18 August
• ICAS English on Monday, 24 August
• ICAS Mathematics on Monday, 31 August

*ICAS Writing (all year levels) will not be offered in 2020

If you would like your son/s to participate in any of the subjects listed above, please visit the online parent payment System before Friday 7 August. The cost is $15.95 inc GST per test.

**Educational Assessment Australia recommend Google Chrome**

The web link is: https://shop.unswglobal.com.au/pages/pps

Our school’s unique access code is: HRF852

IMPORTANT: Please enter your child’s name accurately into the system as it will appear on their ICAS certificate.

Please do not hesitate to contact the front office on 9568 9444 if you have any questions.

Kind regards

Richard Baker
Deputy Head Wyvern House 3-6

Next Two Weeks

Plastic Free July

Term Dates 2020