Nerae Preece Principal

From the principal 

A big welcome back to a new school year. I’m not sure about you, but that break was just what the doctor ordered. An opportunity to catch up with family, eat lots of yummy food and read. Perfect! In fact I used the time to get well started on my 20 book reading challenge for the year. I enjoyed Dave Grohl’s autobiography, James Clear’s Atomic Habits, Klara and the Sun and at the moment I have borrowed a book from a friend called Fully Human by Steven Biddulph. I have also started to try some paint by number artwork. It’s so relaxing.

A very warm welcome to all of our lovely new families. We are so glad to have you join us on the learning journey. I must say, our preps have settled in beautifully and are constantly blowing Sarah and Steph’s socks off with what they already understand. We look forward to a great year ahead of learning with our preps.

I feel like a sports coach at the end of the year. You see, I get to build a team of teachers and support staff that make education great, popping all of the people in the right place with the right combinations. It takes so much thought and consideration and often lots of consulting with people, and of course interviews! So I am pretty happy with the team of educators that we have created this year. Everyone plays an incredibly important role to the way our school runs. Next week we are going to have a special run down of our team for 2022. Make sure you have a look at next week’s newsletter!

A big thank you to Uncle Perry Wandin for joining us on our first assembly to help us start the year with a Smoking Ceremony and a Welcome to Country. We learnt so much about our schools history from Uncle Perry. We feel so lucky to be able to start our year with such a wonderful experience.

A big thank you to all of the families who are completing the rapid antigen tests. I was listening to the Coronacast with Dr Norman Swann the other day and he mentioned how important it is to keep using the RAT’s to help you track the virus. Apparently the research shows that the RAT’s are good at showing when the virus is in the contagious period. Just a little reminder to test Monday and Wednesday’s and report when you have a positive result, you can find all the links on the main page of our schools website.

School council is a space where parents can join to be a part of the governance of our school. This is really important as it helps us create the kind of school community that we want to be a part of. This year we have a few positions available for parents who may be interested in joining us. Details will be sent via Compass (see Brogan if you aren’t on Compass yet!) of how the nomination process works. If you would like to find out more, come and chat to me or visit me at the office so we can talk some more.

One of our focus areas this year is on learning how to do response to intervention (RTI). At different times throughout the year, your child may be included in groups that focus on catching up on a particular skill across their cohort (that’s the name that we give to all of the grades in an area eg the 3 5/6 classes are a cohort). These groups are carefully planned to ensure that the right skills and students are grouped together to make great learning growth. We are very excited that we can deepen our knowledge in this area in 2022 to help our students make great learning progress.

At Badger Creek Primary School we have three expectations (our school rules), be safe, be respectful and be responsible. We use these as a guide to making our school a great learning space. You can use them at home too. It is a really helpful trick to use. If your child is climbing all over something that you don’t want them to, rather than saying “stop it” you can try “Are you being safe?” they will pause and think for a minute, and usually they pop down. Maybe your child is being sassy, you can say “Are you being respectful?” often it pays to walk away so you don’t enter an argument, and in most cases kids will stop what they were doing. This is often the language we use in the classroom and in the yard to help kids think about their behaviour.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Nerae Preece

Principal

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

18/2 – Grade 3-6 District Swimming

21/2 – 3 Way Interviews (Information to be available soon)

AROUND THE GROUNDS

MUSIC NEWS

Greetings to our wonderful school community,

I would like to welcome you all back and wish you a positive and healthy 2022. It has been wonderful to get reacquainted with the students this week, I have seen many smiling happy faces and have had lots of questions about choir, band and music lessons!

So…here are the answers to the FAQs.

  • Choir will be resuming next week and will be held on Monday afternoons at 2.30pm. What a great way to start the week. All students from grade 1-6 are welcome to come along to choir and give it a try.
  • School band will begin practicing on Thursdays at 2.30pm. I am currently undergoing the selection process for the band in consultation with Ms. Preece and classroom teachers. The band is an extension program that aims to support those students who have a particular musical ability or for whom band would be of special benefit. As there are limited places available, priority is given to those students in grades 5 and 6 and those who have reached a level of competency on their chosen instrument. There are also times when some musical instruments are given priority, for example, I can accommodate many woodwind players, but only so many drummers or piano players.
  • Instrumental Music lessons will begin in week three, that is the week beginning 14th Please contact me via the office if you would like your child to learn the guitar, ukulele, piano, flute, clarinet, saxophone, drums or violin. All teachers will be triple vaccinated.

A Sad Goodbye and a Happy Hello

I am sorry to say that one of our piano teachers, Jared Becker is leaving Badger Creek to take up a position closer to home and concentrate on his performance work. Jared has been teaching piano and woodwind at Badger Creek for around 5 years now and has had such a positive contribution to the music at Badger Creek. We wish him all the very best.

The happy news is that an old friend and long-time piano teacher here at Badger Creek, Rita Van-Ooi will be returning to teach Jared’s piano students. Rita is a very experienced music teacher. She has had a distinguished performance career as an oboist and piano accompanist. She loves teaching piano to children. Welcome back Rita.

Music Performances

Music performances will be taking place as part of regular school assemblies in 2022. Whole school assemblies will take place 3 times per term, outside. Each class and the school band and choir will we performing throughout the year. We will give you fair notice of when your child’s class will be playing.

We plan to hold the first whole school assembly in week 5 on Thursday 3rd March in the morning. Time TBA. The school choir will perform.

That’s all from me this week. I encourage you to contact me if you have any questions.

Have a great week,

Jenny Legg

Music Teacher

Badger Creek School Band 2022

Oye Como Va by Santana

This week in Prep…

What a wonderful start our preps have had to the year! Building friendships, establishing routines and familiarising ourselves with the school environment has been our main focus this week.

During our orientations, we introduced the ‘Zones of Regulation’ to the children. This week, we have continued to use this terminology within the classroom, building on the children’s social and emotional wellbeing. These conversations have allowed us to normalise those sometimes-big emotions as we navigate the feelings that come with starting school.

Pevan & Sarah have been a popular inclusion into our morning and evening routine as we start and finish our day together, as a team. Another part of our morning routine, is our Acknowledgement of Country. Collaboratively, the preps created their own Acknowledgment of Country to embed as part of our morning routine, paying respect to the traditional owners of the land, both past and present.

In spelling, we started to explore short and long sounds. The children listened to animal noises as well as tuning into what they could hear within their environment, identifying if they were either short or long.

We have been so lucky to have the support of Miss V this week. Miss V will be with us for the next 3 weeks as she completes her Teaching degree at Deakin University.

We are sure that there will be lots of tired preps this weekend. We are looking forward to another wonderful week full of learning and fun!

Love Mrs. C, Miss H. and Miss V.

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

WOW! What a wonderful week we have had in grade 1/2. The students have settled into their new classes so quickly and have been keen to challenge themselves in their learning. This week, we learnt about choosing good fit books, we wrote about our school holiday break and practiced counting in maths. Next week we will be beginning home readers, so please remember to pack a small bag to keep your child books organised in their school bag. Keep up the great work fabulous 1/2’s!

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

DRINK BOTTLES

Please ensure drink bottles are being brought to school each day.

There are facilities to refill drink bottles when required.

Community News

JOKE OF THE WEEK

What do librarians take with them when they go fishing?

Bookworms