Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal

I remember when I was 10, back in 1988, I started dreaming of becoming an architect. Designing my dream home with the rooms and swimming pools and toy rooms. I grew out of that after a while, then I think I wanted to become the manager of ski lodge and a professional singer. I didn’t quite get there for any of those things… until 2021!

No I haven’t been signed up with Mrs Riley’s record label, nor has climate change been helping with our ski seasons, but… Our school did get a Capital Works project grant.

As you know at the end of last year we got a brilliant surprise that our school was going to be modernised and upgraded. There was lots to do over the summer holidays, I had to create a report to explain what we needed at the school after consulting with community, this was called AMP1 and was submitted in early February. Then I met my Project Control Group, this includes Hans Caspersz (our person that keeps the project on track from the Victorian School Building Authority VSBA) and Ange Creighton from region (the voice of reason and advice). We set off to find a team of architects who were going to understand our school setting, and be good listeners. That team is Daniel Yusko and Chris LePage from Musk Architects. With the help of our Mel Hammond (the holder of the key of maintenance schedules at BCPS) and Mark Morris (the community voice) we have banded together to give Badger Creek Primary School the modernisation it truly deserves.

Now, I didn’t realise that architecture isn’t all fun designing. Daniel goes to great lengths to collect heaps of information about the services that we have, like water flow, electrical load, blocked sewerage, soil profiles, inflated costings, my goodness he is part architect, part engineer, part accountant! I think working in education was the right move for me.

So here is a little update of where we are at in the project…

We have worked through the masterplan stage- so our school has a range of projects to pursue in the future.

We then worked through schematic design phase to see if our project is on budget. Of course Hans is really good at helping with this, he’s kept us right on the money.

Now we are up to the design stage. We have reached out to our friends at the Wurundjeri Land Council, who are helping us through the creative design stage, where we hope to really bring the strong sense of connection to Coranderrk, and the dreamtime stories for our school’s location on, Wurundjeri Country.

This design stage is all about talking to different people about what they need in the school. So for example, Ness has been sharing her Art room needs, Janet has talked about the library, Joe our tech has shared what our ICT needs will be, and our classroom teachers are sharing how many power points they need! Where different learning spaces will be.

The project is due to start in April next year, with early works starting in the summer holidays. I will share those details with you next term, when we explain where everyone all the grades will be located in 2022.

I must say I am constantly pinching myself to see if it is real, that I am part of a team that gets to design their dream school. So I guess a little bit of my childhood dream is coming true.

Before I sign off today, I want to mention a farewell to Sarah Hartshorn, Sarah needs to head back to her base school at Launching Place. Sarah came to us at the beginning of the year to help us with our tutor program. She brought a smiley face and gave a lot of time and energy to help our kids catch up this year. A BIG thank you to you Sarah for helping us at Badger Creek, take care and good luck!

That’s about it for now, have a safe holiday.

Nerae

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

End of Term 3: Friday 17/9 2.30pm

TarraWarra Museum of Art – TBC

Grade 3/4 swimming program – TBC

Grade 1/2 swimming program – TBC

Grade 5/6 Ski trip – TBC

Prep swimming program – TBC

Grade 5/6 Aussie sports expo – TBC

Colour Fun Run!!

A huge congratulations and thank you to Noah who raised the most amazing for our school during the Colour Fun Run!

Thank you so much to Noah and all who donated, this is a huge effort and we cannot thank you enough for all your generosity!

AROUND THE GROUNDS

This week in Specialist…

Dear Badger Creek Community.

Thank you to all our students that got involved in the Footy Day and Scavenger hunt day activities. It was great to hear the feedback that you enjoyed participating in the various PE, Art and Music activities.

Some of our onsite students were lucky enough to be involved in the footy day activities as well! Have a look at some of the photos that students sent in!

As we head into the last day of term, we wish all our students, parents, and families a safe and relaxing Term 3 break. Thank you for being involved in the Specialist remote learning activities this term, and we look forward to seeing you in Term 4!

Take care

The Specialist Team

This week in Prep…

Preps, what wonderful learners you are!

This week we have loved the interest you have shown in researching your chosen animal for your Information Reports. It has been great to see you share what you have discovered about Australian animals. This project connected beautifully with our special Sanctuary session ‘Play the Wurundjeri Way’, where we looked at different animals, their features and the habitats that they live in.

You have become experts at collecting data in maths too, using tally marks to collect information and then graphing these results.

As term 3 draws to a close, we once again thank you for all of your hard work, both our Preps and their families!

We have seen you try your best and have loved seeing your smiling faces every morning.

We think the poems below sums it up,

See you after the break,

The Prep Team

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

Wow! What a term we’ve had!

This week in Year 1/2, we celebrated the ‘Australian Reading Hour’ by sharing our Picture Story Book creations. We joined together to hear our students read their stories aloud online, and they did a fantastic job! We are so proud of the work you have put into your Picture Story Books. A shout out to Eloise for this idea! We encourage all students to bring their stories to school upon our return, where we will create a student bookcase, full of our book creations. We might even read our stories to The Preps!

This week, we’ve also celebrated ‘The Victorian Nature Festival’ and used this to inspire both our Reading and Writing. We were inspired by the forest around us, The Leadbeater’s Possum, The Western District Lakes and The Eastern Barred Bandicoot! We also spent time looking at ‘window views’ around the world. A big shout out to Katrina for this amazing Writing prompt!

In Maths, we’ve been busy problem solving! We hit the streets to conduct a shape hunt, designed creations using 3D shapes, and even used the AFL Preliminary Final results to inspire our learning in Maths! Thanks for the idea Jessie!

The highlight of our week on the blog has been our Inquiry lessons, ‘Be Kind’, ‘Be Unique’ and ‘Be Grateful’. We are always blown away by what our young people have to say about kindness, their own unique talents and gifts, and what they are grateful for. These lessons helped to ‘fill our buckets!’

We want to take this opportunity to thank all of our wonderful parents and carers for their support throughout our remote learning journey. We can’t do it without you!! We look forward to what Term 4 brings our way. No matter what, we’re in this together and look forward to the time when we can be face-to-face once more.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!! Love The Year 1/2 Team 🙂

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

The 3/4 students have been amazing this term! We are so proud of their accomplishments, and the work they are doing whilst at home.

In our last week we celebrated the fantastic news reports written and filmed by our students. Talking dogs, missing parcels and parents not playing with their children were all covered by our budding reporters who were able to turn mundane events at home into an informative and imaginative news story.

In reading this week we have been looking at our favourite authors and questioning why we like particular books. Students had the opportunity to research a favourite author, and learn about their life, before rewriting a chapter, inserting themselves into the story.

In numeracy, we have challenged the students in their final week by asking them to complete worded problems. Students are learning to use C.U.B.E.S. to help find the solution to these problems and understanding the different ways we use maths in everyday life.

3/4 B is very sad to see Sarah leave, but we want to wish her all the best with her new school and say a huge THANK YOU for all her help.

We want to wish all the students a wonderful, restful holiday. We cannot wait to see you back in the classroom next term.

This week in Grade 5 / 6…

It has been another busy week for our Grade Five and Six students this week as they’ve looked at integrating different areas of their learning into their passion projects. Thank you to all our amazing families on your efforts to help support these passion projects!

For Reading, students have been juggling both the demands of researching information for their research projects with working on different comprehension skills and activities with their own selected reading texts. Our conversations during WebEx sessions each day have shown us the deeper levels of comprehension students having been challenging themselves to explore.

In writing, students have been working diligently on creating various forms of poetry and publishing these in their own self-created anthologies. We have been incredibly impressed with the creativity, flair and effort all of the students have displayed in their anthologies, and will be looking for ways to celebrate these next term.

For mathematics, students have been utilising their knowledge of various mathematical concepts to explore and create their passion projects, as they link different areas of understanding together to create new and innovative ideas. Students have really worked on cementing their own understanding during these sessions, and have taken a great level of control in building up their knowledge of maths in the world outside the classroom.

Finally, we have seen so much exceptional creativity and dedication from our students in their efforts for their passion projects, and have been blown away by so many amazing examples of thinking outside the box and creative solutions to practical problems that students have integrated into their work. We can not wait to celebrate these with our students when we return to the classroom.

We hope you are all well and enjoy a safe and well-earned holiday break.

The Grade 5/6 Teaching Team