Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal

There is a lot to get through this week, so we might just get cracking…

Curriculum Day

On Monday the 1^st of November we have our final curriculum day for the school year. These Curriculum Days are approved by School Council the year prior.

All teachers will be working on Monday to do a Triangulation Day. A triangulation day is where teachers collect work samples, assessments and the curriculum and check off to see where children are working at. This helps us with writing reports for you at the end of year.

This year our unrelenting focus has been around trusting our teacher judgement. This is where we focus around keeping observation notes and collecting work samples from students, even if it is online! They were collecting information every step of the way during live learning sessions.

So Monday is about making time for our teachers and their teams to stop and reflect on where each learner is at, and to work out what curriculum areas need to be covered as we move back into face to face teaching.

We hope that in some way each of you can enjoy the long weekend ahead.

Return to onsite

Are you in a muddle? Have you lost track of what day it is? Have you lost track of which day your kids are supposed to be coming to school? Never fear, From Wednesday the 3^rd of November all students are back onsite. It has been a long time coming and we are so glad to have all of our students back to learn and play.

The staggered start has been a great way to introduce our students back to classroom learning, and our teachers have really appreciated the opportunity to see how much learning progress your children have made.

The blog has gone live for the last time last night, and it seems fitting to acknowledge the work that the blog has done to help keep home and school connected. The home/school relationship that we have built for our students is something that we do not want to lose. So please always feel comfortable to continue to reach out to your teacher about learning for your child.

COVID Safe Reminder

All parents must check in when they enter any building at school.
Please do not walk within the school grounds, use the pathway outside the school grounds to get to the other side of the school.
Please notify us immediately if you or your child have received a positive COVID-19 test result.
Please do not send your child to school if they are sick, or they are showing COVID symptoms.

Hats

As a SunSmart School we ask that you dig around the house to find school hats this weekend. It is term 4, where the sun is getting much warmer, and to protect our little people we ask that they have a SunSmart hat by Wednesday the 3^rd of November.

If you can’t find a hat, we have a few available to purchase at the office.

Rollerama

On Tuesday the 26^th of October our ¾’s returned to school for the first time. They were our last cohort to return from remote learning. We were so glad to have them back. To reward the wait we offered them the opportunity to be our group to test Rollerama. We have seen so many kids enjoy their small wheeled movement makers at the Don Road Complex and at the Skate Park that we decided that it might be fun to offer time in our 2 30 minute breaks for our students to get their scooters, skateboards and skates out and use the bottom basketball courts to get some energy out. It worked! It was a great session. We were able to talk about helmet safety (It’s your ticket to Rollerama), and support children to be aware of their surroundings. ¾ A were great at offering some feedback to change the rules around Rollerama and we are going to let the ¾’s have another go next Friday the 5^th of November. If next Friday works well for the ¾’s we will look to open it up for other students grades in the school. Stay tuned!

Instrumental Music is back!

We are so glad to share that our music teachers are vaxxed up and ready to come and work with your children from Thursday the 4^th of November. They will be ensuring that they abide to our Covid safe expectations by wearing a mask and thoroughly cleaning our communal instruments after each use. They will be wearing a mask, and they will support and encourage your child to wear a mask too.

This also means that allied health workers are back too. So our Speechies and OT’s are back to support our students that need that extra little hand with their learning.

That’s about it for this week…

Stay Curious,

Nerae Preece

Principal

Volunteers and Visitors Policy

CSEF APPLICATION 2022

Please find information below in regards to CSEF application.

If required there will be hard copies available from the office.

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

Curriculum day – Monday 1st November

Public holiday – Tuesday 2nd November

Wednesday 3rd November – All students return to onsite learning

End of term 4 – Friday 17th December – 1.30pm finish

AROUND THE GROUNDS

This week in Art…

Hello Badger Creek community,

This week in art students got into the Halloween spirit by creating artworks inspired by monsters, ghouls and anything spooky!

Our junior students used the style of street artist Phetus as inspiration for their Halloween monster faces. With a focus on both warm and cool colours, students divided up their page and used a range of lines and patterns to create the background of their monster face. They then used cut paper and pastel to create the monster’s features, including oversized eyes, crazy sharp teeth and any other spooky or creepy feature they could imagine.

The senior cohort created their own spooky house wax resist artworks this week. They designed their houses and coloured them with black oil pastel. They then added yellow pastel for the windows and doors to create a night-time scene. Using watercolour paint, students created the background, allowing two analogous colours to bleed into one another to achieve the feeling of a textured night sky.

If you and your family are celebrating Halloween this weekend, enjoy your trick-or-treating.

Vanessa Imberger

Art teacher

Music News

Keep On Moving Dance Instructions

Greetings to our wonderful school community,

The big news in music this year is that instrumental lessons will be recommencing it Badger Creek as of Tuesday 4^th November. We will be delighted to welcome our fully vaccinated staff back on site and get back to the business of learning more music!

Your child’s teacher will contact you as to the specific date of their return. Unfortunately our violin teacher, Sally, will not be returning to school until next year. All other lessons are happening. There is currently a bit of a waiting list for piano lessons, we are working on this.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement for music education at Badger Creek. Many things musical have suffered during the pandemic and we are so delighted to be able to begin rebuilding this important element of our community.

Have a great week.

Jenny Legg

Music Teacher

This week in Prep…

The Preps have been busy this week!

We are looking at the structure of narratives and using the Three Billy Goats Gruff as our mentor text. Ask your child about the words we use to remind us of the structure of a narrative; Ooh, Aaah, Uhoh, Phew! We also learnt about adjectives.

We have been working on developing our sentences, including punctuation, high frequency words and stretching out our sounds.

In Smart spelling, we have explored the digraph ‘ck’ in duck. We also made our own ducks and wrote about a rainbow duck.

We are so proud of our Preps, the effort they are putting into their learning and the stamina they are building.

Keep up the great effort. See you Wednesday!

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

It has been wonderful having our students back in the classroom. Students have been settling into school routines and working on collaborating with their peers. In reading we have been focusing on our individual reading goals. In writing we have been working on our sentence development. In maths, we have been focusing on place value and addition. Students have enjoyed the opportunities to work with their peers and to work outside in the lovely sunshine.

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

WELCOME BACK 3/4s!

We have been so impressed with your resilience in getting back into the classroom smoothly. Not only did you show amazing respect for the expectations in the classroom, but you have shown kindness, friendliness and love to one another throughout your play and collaborative teaching.

In our classrooms these two days you will have seen students working hard on their learning goals, refreshing the expectations, discussing what good readers’ and writer’s look like, beginning our new unit in Reading Stamina, beginning automaticity in Maths and starting a new writing piece! Can you believe we did all that in 2 days?!

With the return to the classroom next Wednesday full-time we look forward to exploring what you have learnt throughout remote learning and investigate what it means to be moving on to your next year level in 5 weeks!

Stay amazing 3/4s!

This week in Grade 5 / 6…

Hello to all our amazing families, what a wonderful experience we had welcoming the students back to school last Friday (there may have been more than one or two tears shed by teachers finally seeing their students in person)!

We’ve had a busy week amongst the Grade Five and Six students as we all adjust to the challenges of moving between remote and on-site learning, however we’ve seen all our school leaders continue exhibiting their exceptional resilience and strength of character throughout all the challenges they have faced. We are so proud of you all!

In Reading, we have been continuing to focus on our comprehension skills as we delve deeper into the meaning of various texts, and why authors make the choices they do in regards to trying to impact their readers. Our students are working on slowly peeling back the texts they’re reading like layers of an onion, and learning more about not simply Authors Craft but themselves as readers in the process.

In addition to this, students have worked to complete their Information Reports in Writing by presenting their research and utilising the Writing Process to draft, edit, revise and publish their pieces. We have been particularly impressed by the skill and dedication shown by students in creating detailed bibliographies which highlight and credit their sources of research and information.

In Numeracy, we have been exploring a variety of mathematical strategies to apply to and solve different worded maths problems. Students have challenged themselves to think outside the box and trial different approaches to expand their thinking and challenge themselves to improve their understanding and problem solving abilities.

We hope you are well, and are extremely excited to have our students re-join us in the classroom in a fuller capacity from next week.

Warmest Regards

The Grade Five & Six Teaching Team