Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal

My mantra at the moment is “Stay Curious”. I picked this because, at times, I am very quick to jump to conclusions or make judgments on situations. It doesn’t always help, especially when you work with children.

Since I have started to be more curious, things have changed for me. Rather than looking for things to blame in situations, I have started to wonder why it may have happened. Here is how it works…

Let’s say a child makes a mistake, maybe they might break something. Often I might have reacted in blame and anger. Now I am working on pausing for a moment to think before I speak. In that moment I am checking that my emotions are stable, and I get my curiousness on. I might ask first of all… “Are you okay?” then read the response. Then I might proceed with “Tell me what happened”. Finally putting the responsibility back to the child I might ask “How can we fix this problem?”

Now the cool part about this, because I have been curious myself, it helps the child reflect and become more curious too, and by removing shame (that’s what the yelling creates), you empower instead. The child has time and space to think about fixing the problem.

It works in so many other areas of life too. If someone is rude to me, I might change my thinking from “What a horrible person!” to “Maybe they’re having a bad day? I hope things get better for them”. I stop carrying other people’s problems. Makes like so much easier to get away from the drama.

Like all things, this is a work in progress. I still have a long way to go, but when you see me signing off with a “Stay curious” at the end of my communications, you know what I am trying to practice.

Dismissal returns to 3:30 for all students

Due to the challenges that some families are having with parking at the end of the day, we will return to a 3:30 dismissal for everyone. Please feel free to use the spill over car park at the Sanctuary to keep social distancing.

Ice cream for everyone!

A huge thank you to the family that provided the Ice cream Van today. It was such a great surprise! What a way to end the first week back at school.

Curriculum Day Success

Thank you to all of you for allowing us to commit to our Curriculum Day on Monday. The day was a HUGE success. Teams had time and head space to reflect on all of the work samples and notes that they have collected from our students and then created an indicative progression point, they were also able to look at the areas that needed more learning tasks set, and it is great to see so many fun ways that teachers are finding out how your child is tracking with their understanding. There are no more curriculum days for the remainder of 2021. We hope that makes things a lot easier for families after the challenging year we have had.

Calm Start/ Positivity

Finally I wanted to share 2 of the things we have been working on this week as a learning community. Firstly, our calm starts which provide a transition between home and school, (to create mindfulness and to get our student ready for learning) have started well. It really ensures that learning can start at 9am.

We have also been working on getting our green chronicles up on Compass. These are now available for you to view. A green chronicle is an acknowledgement of something that your child has done to make Badger Creek a better and happier place. It could be something to do with their learning or even something kind that they have done for someone else.

That’s about it for this week. Have a great weekend.

Stay curious,

Nerae

Principal

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

Monday 8^th Nov – Friday 12^th Nov – Book Fair in the library

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

Book Fair

After the year we have had I decided that we should have a Book Fair. In among all the chaos of covid-19 with its lock downs and remote learning Badger Creek Primary School need something exciting and what better way to get the school involved than a Book Fair.

The Fair will be open from Monday 8^th Nov to Friday 12^th Nov. in the school library.

Children will be able to look at the fair and write out a ‘wish list’ beforehand.

Parents who are vaccinated and happy to use the QR Code and sanitizer can visit the library after school between those dates.

People who feel uncomfortable about the thought of crowds, don’t worry you will not miss out, can pay on line.

Look forward to see you there.

Thanks

Janet Miller

AROUND THE GROUNDS

This week in Prep…

Hello Prep Families,

It has been a fabulous week of learning. We have focused on being calm, kind and showing pride in our achievements.

The Preps have been learning to count backwards from any number between 0 and 20, getting back into the reading routines of ‘Read to Self’ and ‘Read to Someone’ and writing their very own version of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. We have been doing lots of handwriting practice using dotted thirds and the word of the week is ‘beach’.

There was a buzz on Thursday afternoon when our new Preps for 2022 had their first experience at school. We saw lots of proud brothers and sisters.

Reminders:

Students need to be Sun Smart and wear their school hats when they are outside. Check in at the office to make an order.
Please ask your child to change their take home reading books.
The Book Fair is starting next week.

Thank you for such a great week,

The Prep Team

Please don’t hesitate to contact the us with any questions or concerns.

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

We are so excited to have our students back full time! It has been a busy few weeks in the 1/2 area. We have working on building our stamina in both Reading and Writing. In Maths, we have been practicing our Place Value skills and Multiplication using arrays.

Here is a writing prompt grid your child might like to use at home 😊

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

It’s been a busy week in 3/4 despite only having three days in the classroom. The children have slotted back into their learning routines with ease and are enjoying each other’s company immensely. Walking through the classrooms, you wouldn’t know that we’ve only just back to a normal school schedule – it’s a credit to their hard work.

The highlight of the week has undoubtedly been our maths sessions exploring angles. The children have been captivated by drawing angles of classroom objects and body parts, in addition to classifying these as acute, obtuse or right angles. Many students have also undertaken the extended challenge of measuring angles with protractors, which has been pleasing to see. The hands-on activities exploring angles will continue next week, so feel free to ask your child to identify some angles around the house over the weekend.

In reading sessions students have revisited text responses, where they write a few sentences in response to a comprehension question designed to get them thinking deeply about their text. For instance, the children had to use their prior knowledge and clues from the text to help them infer how a character might have felt at a moment in their book. When writing a response, they share their thinking and support their claims with evidence from what they have read in their book.

This week’s writing sessions have seen students reacquainting themselves with the conventions of writing, in particular maintaining neat handwriting and punctuation. We’ve also begun learning more about using paragraphs to organise our writing, which ties in perfectly with conventions as both exist to make our writing easier for our audience to digest. As the children will tell you, a good writer always has their audience at the forefront of their mind!

Thursday afternoon also brought plenty of excitement to the 3/4s as we were able to kickstart our inquiry unit in person with some experiments exploring momentum. Students had to apply differing degrees of force to a cylinder (such as a drink bottle, can or glue stick) and record their findings. I wonder what force we will be applying next week?

Well done 3/4s – you’ve been amazing. We’re so happy to have you back in the classroom with us. Rest up! We have five fun-filled days of learning ready for you next week! Have a lovely weekend.