Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal

Change can be a scary thing. Over the past 2 years there has been a lot of it. Some of it we have adapted to, and some changes have been really hard to accept. Change is inevitable and I always think about the way I model my acceptance of change to my children that determines their resilience and ability to adapt to change.

There are some great tips in helping adapt through a big change…

Make sure you talk about the change, give them plenty of time to think about it.
Listen to their questions and how they are feeling. Asking questions is their way of processing situations.
Keep the routines going, for example preparing for school, dinner and bedtime routines.
Let them talk about what they miss and understand that they will need to grieve through the change too.
Be prepared for adjustment. There may be changes in behaviour (meltdowns or tears) as many children won’t adapt immediately. It takes time and reassurance from you through routines, a chance to talk and where you can preparation.

So as you can see, change doesn’t come easily for anyone, and remember that it is particularly hard for our little people when they haven’t learnt to use their words to express how they feel. That is where you, as the adult need to help them with their language as they work through the big feelings of change.

As you would be aware, next term we are offering resilience and impulse control small group work with our chaplain Edwina Whiteside and our visiting counsellor Gwen Shand. This is where 5-8 students are selected per group to learn and work on strategies to help with resilience. The response has been terrific, with many of you returning forms. If you think your child would benefit from these groups, please reach out to Edwina or Brogan for more information.

Move to the Balit space

Speaking of change. As you would be aware, the balit space is ready (our gym conversion), it’s the first step of our capital works project. Our teachers have been preparing our grade ½ students for this change for weeks now, and on Tuesday was our first day in the new space. The ½ team have carefully considered the best way to set up the space for learning, and as it turns out with all of the preparation given to students, the move has been quite successful. Families of students in grade 1/2 will have an opportunity to have a look at balit space next Thursday when the students have their inquiry celebration and BBQ. Invitations have been sent home, and we look forward to seeing our ½ families there.

Assembly

Next Friday is our last day of term. A reminder that dismissal time is at 2:30. We will have our end of term assembly from 1:45-2:30. This will be an event with performances and academic awards. We hope you can make it.

Special lunch day

Also on Friday the 8^thof April is our very first special lunch day organised by our PFA. The meal is pasta. We ask that students bring their own bowl and cutlery, to reduce land fill waste. You can go onto Compass for more details and to pay for the meal.

School photos

Tuesday the 5^th of April are our school photos. Please ensure that your child is dressed in full school uniform on this day. We have a new company working with us this year, we would love feedback to let us know if we should continue with them. There are forms at the office if you have not received one yet.

Campfire Conversations

Tuesday night is our Campfire Conversation with our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. This is a really special night where we will come together to talk about self-determination in education. A big thank you goes out to Rohan Anderson our First Nations Advocate for arranging the event, and Angela Swindle our Koori Education Support Officer, for guiding us. We look forward to joining our invited families to listen to what they think education needs to look like to help with self-determination and reconciliation.

Athletics Day

Mr Pitts has popped the athletics day carnival up on Compass for our students in grades 3-6. This day is a great day for students to join their peers at other schools to enjoy athletics. We promote “having a go”, and encourage students to try all the activities. Please make sure you have signed the permission forms on Compass and ensured that payment is organised.

Well that’s about it for this week. I hope to be out of isolation (household contact) towards the end of next week so we can enjoy the end of term and all of the amazing achievements that we have collected along the way.

Have a lovely weekend. Nerae Preece

Principal

School Photos

School Photo Day

School photo forms have now gone home with all students for Tuesday 5th April.

If you have not received please let your teacher know.

There are sibling photo forms available from the office for collection.

A friendly reminder for all students to be neatly presented wearing a Badger Creek logo top

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember

1/4 – Hot Cross Bun orders to be returned by

5/4 – School Photo Day

6/4 – Hot Cross Buns available for collection

8/4 – 1.30pm – Assembly

8/4 – Last day of term 1 – School concludes at 2.30pm – School bus will be running one hour earlier

AROUND THE GROUNDS

MUSIC

Greetings Badger Creek Community,

As we wrap up term one, I am reflecting on the fun we have had in music this term. It is so wonderful to have our students preforming in assembly once again. Let’s hope the weather holds out and that we can have many more this year.

Check out the pics and videos from assemblies so far this year.

Have a great break,

Jenny Legg

Music Teacher

Nina: Fur de Elise

School Band

National Anthem

Choir: Cover Me In Sunshine

This week in Prep…

Are we really at the end of week 9!? It feels like just yesterday the Preps made their way nervously, but also excitedly, into the classroom on day 1.

Monday was a learning day for us teachers! We were so lucky to have Michelle Hutchison, from SMART Spelling, join us at Badger Creek to support us on our SMART Spelling journey. After Michelle’s visit, we were feeling inspired and eager to get back into the classroom to implement new strategies and techniques when teaching sounds and letters through the word and sentences of the week. This week’s sentence was, ‘This bit of my leg is bent.’ which saw us practicing our handwriting skills, a brainstorm of the sounds in leg, correctly ordering the sentence, a dictation of the sentence as well as participating in a 3-legged race. The Prep’s have shown us that they are beginning to understand that letters make different sounds in words, which is fabulous! It has been wonderful to hear the children share stories of how they have been educating family members on digraphs and split digraphs.

This week, we have had some fun in Phonics! We created pictures of queens, we had a blind taste testing of cheesy chips, we explored sharks as well as making a keep’s sake box for the tooth fairy to find our fallen teeth.

In Reading, we have had a focus on rhyme! We have explored the texts, ‘Rhyme Cordial’, ‘The Wonky Donkey’, and ‘Noni the Pony’, which have provided us with lots of belly laughs! Rhyming helps children learn about word families, phonological awareness, and the ability to notice and work with the sounds in language. Our writing allowed us to use our new knowledge in practice, using a base word and creating a sentence that rhymes! This week, we have used the whiteboards when writing our sentences, providing the children with greater opportunity to take risks in their learning.

Our attention has been on number lines in Maths, this week. We discussed the purpose of number lines and collaboratively explored number lines, counting by 1’s and 2’s. We even used our bodies to create our own prep number line, which required us to work as a team!

Across Inquiry this week, we continued our conversations surrounding Australian History. These conversations covered past and present events, the story of Coranderrk and first nations’ culture. We also read the dream time story, ‘How the Bird’s got their colours’, followed by our own interpretations through art of how the bird’s got their colours.

Reminders for next week, our final week of Term 1!!

-Photo day is on Tuesday 5^th April.

-Healesville Sanctuary excursion is on Thursday 7^th April. Please provide your child with a packed lunch, drink bottle and hat for the day.

–Friday 8^th April is a 2:30pm finish for the last day of Term 1.

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

WOW! What a week the grade 1/2s have had. It has been a delight moving into our beautiful balit space. The students have loved exploring the new space and utilising new furniture… like shelves with whiteboards on the back! Thank you for supporting this transition so positively AND for adding to our ‘tree of life’ with all of your plant donations, hopefully we can keep them all alive and thriving.

Despite adjusting to a new space we have forged on with some great learning this week. All the grade 1/2 teachers have been full of enthusiasm for spelling this week as we completed a professional development on Monday in SMART spelling.

In reading we have been learning about ‘author’s purpose’ and figuring out if books have been written to persuade, inform or entertain us. This has linked nicely with our writing as students completed their narratives trying their best to come up with interesting problems and solutions to entertain the reader.

Our numeracy measurement focus continued and we investigated the length of different objects using rulers!

We have been busily preparing our inquiry work around family history and celebrations in anticipation for our open afternoon next Thursday. A reminder that families are welcome to join us from 3pm next Thursday to celebrate our inquiry learning, which will then be followed by an afternoon of food as we connect as a community from 3:30-4:30.

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

If you are reading this at the time of publishing, we are on CAMP.

Our days have been filled with fun team building activities including, damper cooking, hut building, archery, canoeing, plenty of food and fun times!

Our camp started with “the walk in” where the kids hiked into camp, ending the hike with a (not really) gruelling ascent into camp! Our camp continued to show the best of Badger Creek kids, with so much kindness helping others, safety in following instructions and responsibility in all of the choices they made on camp.

The most important thing that they discovered was “teamwork makes the dream work!”

Thank you all for allowing your kids to join us on a magical week of adventure at Sunnystones camp!

This week in Grade 5 / 6…

We have come to the end of another wonderful week of learning in the 5/6 unit! We have been pushing through to the end of term with our very best efforts where 5/6A had their Free Dress Day reward last week and 5/6B getting their reward this Friday. Well done to all in your hard earned accomplishments!

We have been working very hard to finish our Australian Identity Timeline project in both Writing and Inquiry where we are seeing some fantastic efforts.

Our Reading this week focused on how authors organise their books to engage readers through identifying text structures and linking to our Inquiry project.

Maths saw us recognising, locating and displaying fractions and decimals on a number line and building our timeline using scale and appropriate intervals.

We have been finishing off our Emotional Literacy unit for Respectful Relationships and the Grade 5s enjoyed a session in the yard with their Prep Buddies.

We are looking forward to our Athletics Day on Wednesday where we can put all of our practice into place and represent BCPS with pride!

Well done an another great achievement 5/6!