Nerae Preece Acting Principal

From the Principal’s Seat

Christian Clark (School Council President) and I have been informed by the Department of Education, that Scott Crawford, our principal for the last 5 years has been offered a further year in his current position as SEIL for the Dandenong Ranges. We are so happy for Scott, as this is the area that he has grown up and currently lives. He is so grateful for the impact he can have on education for his community. He said to me, that for him it was bittersweet, as Badger Creek was his first school as a principal, and I know that he is very sad to not be able to see many of the special people that he got to know in our community. He will definitely be popping in to visit, we will let you know when that happens.

Knowing that leadership security for our school was paramount, Mary Azer (Senior Education Improvement Leader) felt it was important to secure a Principal immediately, so on the same day I was offered the role of Acting Principal at Badger Creek PS for a further year. I accepted the position for another year. We were able to notify school council on Wednesday night, yesterday I informed staff. Today families and students will be notified.

Moving forward, it is paramount that we keep striving for our motto to be a “Sanctuary for Learning”. Over the next term I will be keeping you up to date with how we are progressing with this. Our goals will remain the same for the year, how we achieve them may be modified, but I know our School Council, School Improvement Team and our Admin team will always have our students and their learning at the core of every decision we make.

I thank you all for your support and encouragement over the past six months. I look forward to having your continued support for the next year as we work together to make Badger Creek Primary School a better and happier place to learn, for our kids.

Early finish

Next Friday the 26th of June will be the last day of term. I am sure you agree with me that it has been one of the strangest terms we have ever been through. As per our usual routine, we will be dismissing students from 2:30pm, we ask that you ensure that your child can be collected at this time. CIRE will still be able to offer places afterschool, make sure you get in touch with Sara if you need to make a booking.

Cleaners

Next Thursday is the last day for our current cleaning contractors who have decided to pursue their commercial cleaning business. We thank Judy and Paul for their hard work in keeping our school clean for the past number of years. We wish them all the best.

Tradeflex will be taking over our cleaning contract, which means that rather than the cleaning money being paid by the school, the Department of Education organise that for us (That means a few dollars more can go towards our students learning, and a better contract for us in terms of the spaces that will be cleaned). We have been so happy with our current day cleaner Ashley, that we asked Tradflex if he could take over the cleaning afterschool too. They agreed to this. So we congratulate Ashley and look forward to working with him as he makes our school sparkly clean.

OHS Week

Next week is OHS week. It’s the week where we put the lens on safety for our “Sanctuary for Learning”. Alison from the department will be coming to help us out on Thursday next week as we teach some of our grade 6 leaders how to do a safety inspection with us. It is important for our students to help us keep an eye on these things with us, they can be very perceptive. We also hope to make sure that a few of our processes are really clear. Brogan has been in contact with many of you in regards to asthma and allergy plans. We thank you all for your support with this.

That’s about it for this week, but first a big thank you to all of you for your ongoing support over the past 6 months, I can’t wait to see what the next 12 months has in store for us!

Have a great weekend.

Nerae Preece

Principal

From the School Council President

Hello everyone,

On Wednesday School Council was told that Scott Crawford had accepted a further 12 months in his current role and would not be returning as Principal for Term 3 and that  Nerae had accepted an extension of her role as Principal for another 12 months.

When we faced appointing a new Principal at the start of the year we took it very seriously and as best we could we set the school up for success. This meant finding a Principal who had the relationships, expertise and experience to continue to build on the strengths of our school. In Nerae we have this and over the last 6 months she has faced a baptism of fire and proved herself more than capable – empathic, motivating, and dedicated to our kids and their learning. 

During the selection process we went through in Term 1 we also wanted to make sure the disruption caused was as small as possible and that we wouldn’t have to go through the process all over again in 6 months. The department rules are on our side, and because Nerae was selected on merit through a proper process we have been able to extend her position without having to re-advertise, interview etc.

The current restrictions limiting groups of parents coming on the school has made it hard for us to get together but hopefully as things continue to change into Term 3 we can start to plan some events for the school community as a whole.

If you have any questions about School Council or would like to raise something please just get in touch through the office.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR DROP OFF AND PICK UP

MUSIC NEWS

It has been wonderful to be back in the classroom with all of our students this week. We have launched straight into playing music together on the instruments and have been having a wonderful time.

The grade 1/2 students have been singing and playing Yananhi on the xylophones and pianos. The grade 3/4 students are learning about the song Dance Monkey by Australian artist Tones and I. To play this song you need to be able to keep a very steady rhythm and divide the beat in half evenly…tricky! Our grade 5/6 students are learning to play Zebra by John Butler and our preps are singing and playing many different songs.

Our school band are learning Shotgun by Goerge Ezra, which is a blast!

Each week I will be recording performances to play in our assembly and to include in the newsletter. This week we have John playing Here Comes the Sun, by the Beatles. Great work John. Please make sure we have permission to publish your child in the newsletter if that is your wish.

Around the Year Levels 

IN PREP THIS WEEK

This week the Prep’s enjoyed learning how to summarise a story. 

We used the big book ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and the strategy ‘Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then’. Fairy tales are a great medium for exploring this strategy.

NEXT WEEK IN THE PREP AREA:

Next week the Prep’s are looking forward to working with ‘teen’ numbers and beyond in Numeracy. Discovering what numbers are made up of; how many towers of tens and ones. We will continue to develop our understandings of summarising in Literacy.  We are reading and writing lots of our High Frequency words. Also, by the end of this week we will have explored the entire alphabet – all of our letters and sounds! Please click on the link to reinforce these letters and sounds  https://youtu.be/JzrpSUsBe04  (5minutes: 23 seconds).

IN GRADE 1 / 2 THIS WEEK

This week students in Grade one and two have been enthusiastically exploring earth sciences, including rocks, gems and minerals , the moon and the sun and how these effect life on Earth. We have had some very interesting discussions, loads of wonderings and are now beginning to find answers to questions we had. We even tuned into the ISS to catch a live stream of astronauts working on the outside of the space station. WOW!

NEXT WEEK IN THE GRADE 1 / 2 AREA

We are looking forward to next week when we get to make posters about all the wonderful new knowledge we have acquired about earth science. We think we may have a few budding geologists, micro biologists and astrophysicists in the making.

IN GRADE 3 / 4 THIS WEEK

This week in 3/4, we have integrated Space Science into Literacy. We have focused on Author’s Purpose and creating Information Reports on Space. We have also started a new unit in Mathematics around Shape. Next week, we will be continue our work on Shape in Mathematics, Information Reports in Literacy/Inquiry, and Spelling will cover the ‘j’ sound (as in jelly), including alternative spellings such as ‘g’ (like gent), ‘ge’ (like change) and ‘dge’ (like hedge).

IN GRADE 5 / 6 THIS WEEK

Students in 5/6 have been working hard to create a picture story book for a very special target audience: their prep buddies! The children have been busy writing a story that will help their buddy learn some strategies around resilience and overcoming negative emotions. Writing for such a young audience is proving to be a challenge, as our students have had to choose their words carefully to deliver their intended message to this audience. Next week in literacy, 5/6 students will be publishing their picture story books, compiling their comics from remote learning and synthesising. In maths they will exploring data representation and interpretation, whilst it will be the final week of the space inquiry unit.

ART NEWS

We are so excited to have the Senior School back in the art room. They have returned energised and focused, creating some of their best work.

Grade 5/6 are making animal collages with a focus on creating realistic eyes and noses. They are learning how to use a combination of ink to create outlines and blending oil pastel to create realistic features.

Grade 3/4 have shown a growth mindset this week, challenging themselves while learning one-point perspective drawing. They have finished their drawings of a perspective city and will now focus on value, exploring tints and shades when colouring their final piece.

Our Junior School have had a productive couple of weeks in the art room. Prep A and B have been looking at artist Paul Klee and his painting Castle and Sun. They have created their own cityscapes in response to his painting using a range of geometric shapes. They have combined oil pastel, wax crayon and water-colour paint to bring their work to life.

Grade 1/2 have finished their chalk pastel drawings of fish and have begun an exploration of artist Laurel Burch. They have been inspired by her colourful paintings of cats and have drawn and painted their own. Next week they will focus on line, shape and repetition to add patterns to their cats using wax crayons, colour pencil and markers.

Edie F Art Work

Eden F Art Work

THE CREATIVE CORNER

Here at Badger Creek all of our students are so creative. We wanted to share with everyone the amazing efforts of Jett R who has been very busy during his remote learning time and making this costume on his own. Jett has even added in led-lighting for the eyes, and included a drawing of the creation he has brought to life. Well Done Jett, amazing work. We can’t wait to see more creations.

COMMUNITY NEWS

UPDATING OF INFORMATION:

Badger Creek Families, please be aware with children starting to return to school forms will be sent home in regards to updating/changing of any details.

We want to ensure our records are true.

If you do have any queries please do not hesitate to contact the office via phone or email.

P: 59 624 019  E: badger.creek.ps@education.vic.gov.au

JOKE OF THE WEEK:

Q: Why did the giraffe get bad grades?

A:  He had his head in the clouds.

**If you would like to submit a joke to be included in the newsletter please hand in at the office or email to badger.creek.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au 🙂