Nerae Preece Principal
From the Principal
I bet that it was easier to work from home this week! I have had a few quick chats to people and it looked like many parents were not carrying so many plates (that they were trying to keep spinning!)
So do you remember last week I mentioned at assembly that our focus was on bringing our good manners. I must say that we have done pretty well with our manners this week. With so many things that have to be shared and socialising to deal with, the kids have done so well! Our prep to grade 2 students have handled playing in the south yard really well. They have been used to playing anywhere across the school, but are showing acceptance and I am really proud of them for playing so beautifully in that space.
Our goal for next week is keeping ourselves and others safe, by respecting peoples space bubbles or personal space.
Drop off and pick up
I wanted to take the opportunity to say that the morning pickups have been pretty smooth. Thank you all so much for following the guidance that we have offered. We are so proud of our Badger kids who have come back to school with smiles on their faces and being so independent!
Our afternoon pickups need a bit of work. We understand that finding a car park is quite challenging. So we would like to remind you that you can use the Sanctuary spill over car park (where the buses park). If you drop your child off there in the morning, they can walk to Cathy at the crossing. If your kids know that you are picking them up from there, they can cross the road with Cathy in the afternoon and meet you back at the spill over car park. Hopefully this will help if you haven’t been able to get a car park!
Please remember to discourage play (we will be doing that too) and head straight home as soon as the kids come to the car.
Book week
Next week is Book Week. Mrs Miller has a copy of all of the Finalists and we are dressing up next Thursday the 22nd as our favourite character. The theme is Curious Creatures and Wild Minds… I have just googled some ideas. I am thinking that this weekend I am going to get my costume together!
During the week we will be exploring lots of amazing books and enjoying our reading to self and others and also by listening to others read. Make sure you spend some time enjoying books together as a family!
Public Holiday
Next Friday the 23rd of October is the AFL Grand Final Public Holiday. Just a reminder that there will be no school that day. I hope you enjoy this extra time with your child without having to teach them too! Hopefully the weather is lovely and we get to enjoy our beautiful town and the walking tracks around it.
2021 requests
Over the next couple of weeks we will be starting to put plans into place for our 2021 classes. If you have any suggestions or concerns for where your child is placed in 2021 please email or write us a letter to let us know. These will be treated confidentially. We ask that you have these to us by Friday the 6th of November.
Prep transition session Number 1
Our first prep transition session will be on WebEx next week. All families that have a prep starting in 2021 should come up to the school to collect their learning pack for the session. An email will be sent out this week to get you prepared for the session. We would be so grateful if you could please pass this onto new families to the school to remind them too.
Well that’s about it for this week… Have a lovely weekend and we will see you all for Book Week next week!
Take care,
Nerae Preece
BOOK WEEK
THIS WEEK IN ART
Hello Badger Creek Community,
Welcome back! It has been such a lovely week having all our students back at school. We have dived straight back into the art program with some wonderful creating and making activities. A lot of our art making was interrupted as we went into lockdown, so we had some projects we wanted to finish.
Our Preps have worked hard this week to finish their Paul Klee inspired cityscapes. They explored shapes, pattern and colour to produce some dynamic work.
The grade 1/2 classes have been working on their Laurel Burch inspired cat paintings. They looked at analogous colours and patterns, while learning how to draw cats.
Our 3/4 classes have been exploring the work of Australian painter and printmaker Margaret Preston. They have used the technique of a scratch back to create artwork inspired by her style. We will see the results next week.
Grade 5/6 have been excited to finally work on their mixed media collage animals that we started a long time ago! This week they focused on making their own textured paper by using ink, paint and different mark making tools.
Well done everyone
Vanessa Imberger
Art Teacher
In P.E this week
Hi Badger Creek community!
It’s been fantastic to see all our wonderful students back at school this week!
All our students have brought an energetic and positive attitude in getting active in PE. It has been so pleasing to see the smiling faces of all our classes whilst they are learning outside.
Our juniors recapped on their running technique and their catching skills
Our senior students have just started getting involved in a net/wall sports activities unit. We will continue to develop our knowledge on the different strategies and tactics to utilise in different net/wall sports.
Mr Pitts 🙂
Music News
Greetings to our wonderful Badger Creek Community,
How wonderful it has been to welcome our students back to the music room this week. We have been playing together and moving together and creating together and it has been brilliant!
All of our students have been playing the drums and percussion instruments this week, including some very interesting and fun new instruments I was able to purchase during lock down. We have new castanets, woodblocks, djembe drums and 2 new keyboards. We are all ready to go.
Our preps are learning to play drums together and to echo rhythms. We are also completing our listening and moving to The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Seans. We had a great time being dinosaurs this week.
Grade 1/2 students are also working on rhythm and playing percussion together. As well as this we are beginning our unit of work based around Prokofiev’s famous music, Peter and the Wolf.
Grade 3/4 and 5/6 have been focusing on understanding and recognising the use of repeated patterns in music and spent some time creating their own repeating patterns this week. Check our grade 5/6 students Olive, Lexie and Layla and their 3 part repeating pattern composition.
Our School Band will be resuming and will be recording some of the music we learnt before lockdown. We look forward to sharing that with you in assembly and in the newsletter.
Unfortunately our school choir and instrumental music lessons are unable to resume as yet but we look forward to beginning as soon as we are able.
Have a great week and breathe a sigh of relief…we are on our way!
Jenny Legg
Music Teacher
Olive, Lexie and Layla playing their repeating pattern quick composition
Max Singing Come Let Us Adore Him Reprise
Badger Creek Women’s Choir
Many women in our school community, including parents, teachers, nanas aunties and sisters have been a part of the Badger Creek Women’s choir over our 7 years of being. We are unable to meet at the moment due to restrictions but we will still be singing together this term!
I am running an online recording project with the choir where we will be recording a Christmas song online and releasing the video to our community as a Christmas greeting.
If you would like to be part of this recording project, perhaps you are an ex-choir member or an aspiring one, please email me, Jennifer.legg@education.vic.gov.au or contact me via the school.
Around the Year Levels
IN PREP THIS WEEK
The Preps have thoroughly enjoyed our first week back onsite for Term 4!
We had great fun exploring living things around our school yard, as we began our Term 4 inquiry ‘Wonderings on Wurundjeri’.
We listened to the story ‘My Country’ by Ezekiel Kwaymullina and ‘Welcome to Country’ by Aunty Joy Murphy and Lisa Kennedy, then created amazing images and wrote about these.
NAIDOC week is coming up during November from the 8th to the 15th
We have also been collecting data in Maths and learning how to tally people responses.
Being able to play with our friends and enjoy the sunshine has been a highlight.
Rest up over the weekend and we look forward to more learning next week!
IN GRADE 1 / 2 THIS WEEK
It was fantastic to welcome our students back to school this week and to see the many, many smiles on faces. We have supported all our students wellbeing through calm starts, small group, hands on activities allowing them to reconnect with their teachers and friends. We are so very proud of each and every one of them.
Our focus this week has been on student wellbeing and we have been talking about Zones of Regulation to help students identify more easily the way they are feeling and what they can do to alleviate it. This may include, Stretching, taking a short break, having a big drink of water or focussing on breathing for a minute. This could be a useful tool at home as well. Here is a link to read more information about Zones of Regulation.
https://www.zonesofregulation.com/index.html
Curriculum wise this week, in literacy we have re-established our Readers Workshop centres where students can develop their skills through fun and engaging hands on activities. The students have really enjoyed low stakes writing this week and have been eager to show us how they have improved. Our focus has been on using punctuation and correct word spacing in sentences.
In Maths, we have been working on developing number skills. Reading and writing numbers, modelling and making collections as well as skip counting by two’s, five’s, ten’s and even three’s. Students have been encouraged to notice the patterns they see using a hundreds chart.
Please note, Specialist classes are on Wednesdays for Grade 1 and 2. Also, remember to pack hats and drink bottles every day and if you need anything do not hesitate to ask your classroom teachers.
Level 2 Team
IN GRADE 3 / 4 THIS WEEK
What an exciting week we’ve had in 3/4! Welcome back to all our community – we are delighted to be back at school and working alongside our children once again! This week we have spent time building upon relationships both formed and new, and remembering what it was like to be at school. The children showed compassion, honesty, bravery, and supported each other to get quickly back into the swing of things.
It was lovely watching them collaborate, find new friends in the yard, and commit to their learning. We thank you for the tremendous support you have given your children during remote learning – they have returned, eager and ready to learn.
This week, we have been focused on revisiting our Writer’s and Reader’s Workshops, and operations in Maths. We have also embarked on an exciting unit on Biological Science. We spent some time examining and inquiring about specimens – how wonderful! We can’t wait until Week 3!
IN GRADE 5 / 6 THIS WEEK
To say that we’re glad to be back with the 5/6 students would be an understatement. The truth is we can’t contain our elation! We’ve jumped straight back into things with a deep-dive into speech writing as students prepare for the speech contest that begins on Monday. With all students selecting from the ten topics provided, our focus has been on finding a unique approach to the chosen topic of each student. As if the students hadn’t had enough of WebEx, we jumped back online for a meeting with a medical scientist on Wednesday. Students had prepared questions to pose during the session, and we were blown away by their curiosity – we certainly have a few prospective scientists in our ranks. It’s so good to be learning with you all in the classroom again, 5/6!
Sean’s garden philosophies
Sowing Seeds of Curiosity
Day one back at school. It’s almost time for the nine o’clock bell to sound. I’m working in the junior school vegie garden when a curious preppy wanders over to see what I’m up to. Quick as a flash, she fires a question at me. A question that stops me in my tracks. “Sean, how do plants grow?”. “Wow, great question” I say, whilst wishing I’d been asked about something with a far less complex answer, like “what are you planting?”, or “do earthworms have teeth?”. It’s a tough question to be hit with before the first bell, but educating students about the wonderful world of gardening is one of the best parts of my job. I take a deep breath and wonder how best to come up with an answer that does the question justice whilst not losing the attention of my inquisitive one-preppy audience in an instant. Do I delve into the deep recesses of my mind and dredge up the the lessons on plant biology from my uni days? I could wax lyrical about plant hormones like gibberellins, auxins, cytokinins, ethylene and abscisic acid. Or I could explain how phototropism and geotropism work. I’m sure she would find the process of photosynthesis fascinating, and I could talk about cation-exchange capacity and other amazing soil science facts. I’m excitedly formulating my detailed response when I sense my audience is losing interest. I don’t have long before I lose her entirely, so I decide to start at the start. I reach into my pocket for a packet of sunflower seeds and shake a few of them onto the palm of her hand. I resist the temptation to use words like embryo, endosperm and zygote (even though I love the word zygote), as I want my response to her question to foster this fascination with plants and not leave her feeling befuddled. I get as far as saying “Seeds are amazing things” when I’m interrupted by the bell. She races off to class then realises that she still has the seeds in her hand. “Keep them”, I say, “They’re yours”. “Take them home and sow them in your garden. About half a centimetre deep”. “Thanks”, she says with a beaming smile, and with that, the school day begins. It’s great to be back.
The engine room
SCHOOL NEWS
At Badger Creek we are planning to still go ahead with the book fair this year.
Due to the current climate the process will look a little different this year.
Just letting you know issue 7 of the scholastic book club is now available.
Closing date will be 30/10/20
Please see link below for all details:
https://www.scholastic.com.au/media/5667/bc-620.pdf
School uniform orders:
Please find below the link for the school uniform orders.
http://www.aplusschoolwear.com.au/SearchResult.aspx?Labels=BADGER%20CREEK
All orders are to be completed through the website
WE WANT OUR PARENTS TO TELL US WHAT THEY THINK!
Our school is conducting a survey to find out what parents think of our school. The Parent Opinion Survey is an annual survey offered by the Department of Education and Training that is conducted amongst all parents. It is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of parents’ perceptions of school climate, student behaviour, student engagement and experiences of remote and flexible learning. Our school will use the survey results to help inform and direct future school planning and improvement strategies.
All parents will be invited to participate in this year’s survey. All responses to the survey are anonymous. This year, the Parent Opinion Survey will be conducted from Monday 12th October to Friday 13th November.
The survey will be conducted online, only takes 20 minutes to complete, and can be accessed at any convenient time within the fieldwork period on desktop computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones. The online survey will be available in a range of languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Chin (Hakha), Hindi, Japanese, Somali, Turkish, Punjabi and Greek.
Please speak to your child’s teacher if you would like more information.
Around the Grounds
JOKE OF THE WEEK
Q. What do elves learn in school?
A. The elf-abet.
