Nerae Preece Principal
From the Principal
We are well and truly into our learning now. I am really enjoying the opportunities to walk into classrooms to see the interesting things that are going on. This week I have learnt a lot about simple, complex, and compound sentences from the 3/4 students. The 5/6 students have been sharing their ideas in planning for Cane’s Arcade. Our 1/2’s have started to help me understand my emotions by sharing the zones of regulation, as well as sharing their friends of 10. Our preps have been busily working on being authors. I have been so very proud of all our learners for being so enthusiastic! I have particularly enjoyed book week this week. There have been lots of stories explored and our costume parade was truly magnificent (Credit to the hard-working families that managed to organise costumes)! Now let me share some other news with you…
School Photo’s
We have fiercely guarded our school photo’s day. We were even asked the other day if we wanted to cancel. We didn’t! Lucky for us our school photos can go ahead on Monday the 16th of November. More details will be coming up soon in relation to the process. We will keep you posted, but for now pop the date into your diaries.
CAT for English
This week all classes completed a Common Assessment Task for Reading. Classes read a fiction text and then explored and shared different reading strategies for their teachers. The teachers will now use this information to help with reporting. Students will receive their feedback directly from their teacher, and you will find out how they went through their report provided to you at the end of the year. Well done to our students for trying so hard to complete this task and for showing their teacher what they know about summarising and questioning.
Prep Transition
This week we had our first prep transition session for our 2021 preps. We are hoping that it is the only one we have to have on WebEx, but these future preps were fantastic at listening to the teacher and making their first craft for school. I even got to go to their gallery walk where we looked at everyone’s work. A big thank you to our future 2021 prep parents for helping their child join us. We hope our next session might look a little bit different. We are just waiting for Sunday’s announcement from the government, this will help us work out where and how we can have our next session. Of course, we will keep our families posted via email.
Grade 6 Celebrations
As many of you will know, our grade 6 students are going to have the chance to think a little more creatively this year for our end of Primary School celebrations. A few ideas have been floated around. We will finalise what it looks like over the next two weeks. For the team at Badger we really want to hear how the kids want to celebrate, then we negotiate the number of community service tasks that would need to be completed to enjoy the “Big Day Out”. We will also discuss the legacy projects that grade 6 students do to help leave a lasting memory of their contributions to the school. In years gone by this has been some of the most rewarding parts of being in grade 6. Our students have loved that they have worked hard to achieve their goal. We have had some wonderful legacies left in the past. One group fundraised to resurface the school’s cricket pitch, another created a friendship chair, one group raised money to build wells for a school in Cambodia. I wonder what our lovely grade 6 students will do this year.
Fees
As we mentioned last term, if you haven’t had the opportunity to pay your school fees this year and feel that this is a way you can contribute to our school, we welcome you to contact the office, and Mel will help you with this.
Mel and I are now working with our Consultative Committee and School Council to finalise our information for 2021 fees. We hope to have these letters to you in November so you can start planning for 2021. We know that at this stage we will not be increasing our fees price for 2021, and all items will be itemised, so you know what you are purchasing for your child. Once again, we will communicate this with you as the time draws closer.
2021 class requests
As I mentioned last week, we are accepting classroom requests for 2021. If you feel that your child would benefit from being with a particular student etc we would like to know. These letters/emails will be treated with the strictest confidence and we will do our best to accommodate these requests where appropriate. We ask that all requests are submitted by the 6th of November.
School Council
Next Wednesday the 28th of October is our next school council meeting. Our School Council meet monthly during the school year and discuss things that help the governance of the school. In 2021 we will have several positions available to join the council, we usually communicate this early in the year by calling for nominations. We have currently 1 vacant position. If you are interested in joining the council, send the school an email and we will get in contact with you. If you have any ideas or questions for the council, you can also email the school and we can table the questions in the meeting coming up on Wednesday.
I think that’s about it for this week. All except, that we hope you have a lovely 3-day break. Make sure you relax and enjoy some time together as a family.Take care,
Nerae Preece
Principal
THIS WEEK IN ART
Hello Badger Creek Community,
It’s been another fun week in the art room at BCPS. Our art captains Bonnie and Ava organised our first lunchtime art club for the year. The club is run by students and all year levels are welcome. This week they set-up a still life composition for students to draw as Bonnie shared her knowledge of observational drawing. Well done!
Our Juniors celebrated book week by drawing imaginative artworks inspired by some wonderful picture story books, while our Grade 5/6 class continued to work diligently on their mixed media collages. The Grade 3/4 class completed their Margaret Preston inspired scratch-back artwork this week and although their hands were aching from all that repetitive scratching, the results look amazing.
It’s such a joy to have our students back in the art room. The bustle and excitement of students busily creating brings the space to life.
Enjoy your week
Vanessa Imberger
Art Teacher
Around the Year Levels
IN PREP THIS WEEK
The Preps are enjoying their Inquiry unit ‘Wonderings on Wurundjeri’ about living things.
We have so many questions and are thoroughly enjoying differentiating between living and non-living things.
We are lucky enough to have silk worms in our classrooms.
However, they are very hungry creatures. Anyone who has access to Mulberry leaves please let us know and bring some in.
Also, if anyone is interested in being weekend babysitters for our precious worms, please email your teacher.
Thank you!
IN GRADE 3 / 4 THIS WEEK
Mrs Riley, Ms Kean and Mr Clingin are impressed with the work the students are doing in lessons this week. It has been lovely seeing students work in pairs and small groups to focus on their peer-peer learning and re-establish relationships forged in Term 1.
This week in 3/4 we have been focusing on what a Reader’s, Writer’s and Math’s workshop looks like and how do we organise ourselves to make learning the best. Our days have started with a heavy focus on wellbeing and adding the word YET onto our vocabulary, “I can’t do this….. Yet”. Hopefully you are noticing this language creep into home life, and we actively encourage using “Yet” at home.
We are continuing our Mathematics journey into learning more about partitioning. In Reading we are working on what a reader’s workshop looks like and moving into inferring. In Writing we are looking at sentence fluency and what a simple, compound and complex sentences.
Happy book week! You all looked amazing in your outfits.
IN GRADE 5 / 6 THIS WEEK
The grade 5/6 public speaking contest ran this week across three days, with students delivering a 3-minute speech to their classmates on such topics as Coping with a Pandemic, My World in 2040 and Some inventions that would make life better. Throughout the process of preparing their speeches, students learnt about ways to engage their audience quickly and leave them with a lasting impression, whilst paying careful attention to maintaining a consistent tone to their writing. They also incorporated quotes from experts, statistics, rhetorical questions, anecdotes and modal language into their speeches. After what was a very close competition we are pleased to announce that the winners of this year’s competition are Olive (5/6B) and Robert (5/6A). Both students will be competing in the Yarra Valley primary schools competition run by the Healesville Rotary Club. Well done Olive and Robert, and all of those students who participated.
Happenings in the Garden
Where Magic Happens
It’s a jungle out there. For the first few weeks of Spring, the vegie garden seemed content to cruise along at a fairly leisurely pace. There was the occasional surge, but the rate of growth was pretty much what you would expect for that time of year. Towards the end of September, the pace stepped up a notch. It was looking like your typical sigmoid growth curve. We were through the lag phase and into the exponential phase. Growth was more vigorous, but measured and predictable. Then something happened. There was a sudden explosion of growth, and that curve steepened dramatically. Something quite extraordinary seemed to be going on in the garden, in the forest, and in the lawn for that matter. There were plenty of theories bandied around as to why this was occurring, including the most plausible and logical explanation of longer days, higher temperatures and above average rainfall (the latter due to the effects of La Nina). Conspiracy theorists piped up, linking the event to the 5G network (everyone is entitled to their opinion I guess). Some suggested the visitation of celestial beings was the cause (I’ll keep an open mind on that one). Others attributed the sudden surge in growth to the phases of the moon and fortuitous planetary alignments (I’ve had wonderful results when I’ve gardened using the phases of the moon as a guide, so I’m supportive of that theory). Then, of course, there was the elephant in the room – climate change (where to begin on that overwhelming and incredibly complex topic?).
Whatever the reason, one thing’s for sure ¬ it’s been a magical, rewarding and extremely busy time in the garden. The junior school students have been happily sowing seeds and planting seedlings into the newly prepared garden beds, and recently we had a load of soil for the senior school kitchen garden delivered. With the expansion of the vegie garden in full swing, a plentiful supply of vigorous seedlings to go into the ground, and summer on the horizon, it’s an exciting time in the school gardens. It’s been joyful to watch the students’ interest, curiosity and sense of wonder grow as I work with them in the garden, and every session serves to strengthen my belief in the benefits of the garden as a powerful learning environment. I believe it’s where magic happens.
Happy gardening!
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.
JOKE OF THE WEEK
Person 1: Knock-knock.
Person 2: Who’s there?
Person 1: Atch.
Person 2: Atch who?
Person 1: Bless you!
