Dear parents, carers and guardians

I am writing to let you know about changes to the provision of Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) in our school for the remainder of Term 2.

RATs will continue to be distributed to you as they have been throughout this school year for the remainder of this term.

However, from Monday 23 May 2022, students will no longer be recommended to undertake either twice weekly RATs in mainstream schools or 5 days a week in specialist schools.

RATs however will continue to be required by students who are household contacts to attend school (5 negative tests over a 7 day period) or who have symptoms.

The ongoing supply of RATs to families in our school will ensure that parents and carers will have them should they need them if their child is a household contact or has symptoms.

Families must continue to notify the Department of Health and the school if their child returns a positive RAT result. Additionally, you should inform us if any of your children are household contacts.

Thank you also to all families who has got their child vaccinated. Vaccination continues to remain the best way to protect students and staff in our school.

Getting vaccinated is easy and bookings can be done via the coronavirus website. If you have any questions about the vaccines, I encourage you to speak to your GP or a health practitioner.

Thank you again for your ongoing cooperation and support during this time.

Dear parents and carers

With borders opening and the arrival of colder weather, cases of influenza (the flu) are increasing throughout Victoria. Our community is at risk of higher rates of students and staff affected by the flu or COVID-19 this season.

What to do if your child gets sick

To help keep your child and our school community safe, please take the following steps if your child has any cold or flu-like symptoms:

• take a COVID-19 test and follow the current Department of Health isolation requirements if a positive result is shown
• keep your child at home until their symptoms pass
• common flu-like symptoms include a high fever, cough, runny nose, loss of appetite, body aches and feeling extremely weak and tired
• diagnosis of the flu can only be confirmed by a doctor after a nose or throat swab
• encourage your child to wash their hands regularly and ask them to cover their nose and mouth when sneezing and coughing.

COVID-19 vaccination

COVID-19 vaccines are available free of charge to everyone aged 5 years and over in Australia.

It is important that children and young people have the best possible protection against the flu and COVID-19 by getting vaccinated.

Ensuring your children are protected against serious illness helps to protect everyone in our community, including older family members who may be at higher risk, along with younger children who can’t receive vaccinations yet.

You can book COVID-19 vaccinations through the COVID-19 hotline on 1800 675 398 or at a participating GP, pharmacy, or community health service.

Some local schools are also holding walk-in COVID-19 vaccination clinics on school grounds. Vaccination settings can be found at the Vaccine Clinic Finder.

Flu vaccination

Flu vaccination is recommended for everyone aged 6 months and over.

Some people are more at risk of complications from the flu and are eligible for free vaccination under the National Immunisation Program including:

• anyone aged 65 years and older
• pregnant women (at any stage of pregnancy)
• all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged from 6 months and over
• people 6 months or older with:
  • heart disease
  • chronic lung disease (including people with severe asthma who require frequent hospital visits)
  • chronic neurological conditions
  • impaired immunity
  • haemoglobinopathies (blood disorders caused by genetic changes)
  • diabetes
  • kidney disease
• children on long-term aspirin therapy from 6 months to 10 years
• children aged from 6 months to under 5 years.

Flu vaccinations can be booked through GPs and pharmacies, many of which can also provide COVID-19 vaccinations. If you would like more information about the flu vaccination, visit the Better Health Channel.

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

25/5 – School open afternoon – 3.30-6.30pm

27/5 – Pants for Plants and Special Lunch

3/6 – Student Free Day (Triangulation/moderation day)

6/6 – 10/6 – Grade 1 / 2 Swimming

What a busy, but wonderful, week we have had in Prep this week!

This week, we sadly said goodbye to Miss V. Miss V will be back with us in Term 3, which we are already so excited for! To celebrate Miss V’s last day with us for this term, we set up a ‘have a hot chocolate with Miss V’ station along with our jam biscuits, which was great timing as our word of the week in SMART Spelling was ‘jam’.

In Writing, we have continued with our new writing structure to ensure predictability to further support student outcomes. Through this, we have been able to see the children take greater risks in their learning and achieve success! We are so proud of the hard work, commitment and determination shown by the Preps, demonstrating pride in their writing!

Sequencing the days of the week was our focus in Maths. We read the book, ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and then had a go at matching the food that the caterpillar ate to the correct day, creating our ‘caterpillar calendars’, that the children were so excited to take home and share!

In Inquiry, we are learning about Earth Science and understanding how different weather events can impact our local environment. We discussed the different seasons, and how the weather can change our mood. We then made prior connections with a Behind the News clip, sharing stories of times we remember it raining, causing flooding, “I have been to Queens Park before when it has been flooded, and we couldn’t play there.” From here, we became scientists! We performed an experiment to highlight how and what causes it to rain. Prior to the experiment, the Preps hypothesised their theories, “I think the dark clouds get so heavy they can’t hold the rain anymore and then it comes out of the clouds like rain”.

That wraps up another busy week in Prep land!

Have a wonderful and relaxing weekend,

Love Mrs. C and Miss H.

Reminders:  

• Don’t forget that our classroom will be open for our Badger Creek Open Night on Wednesday 25^th May. The preps are so proud and eager to showcase their learning in our workspace!

What an adventurous week we’ve had in Year 1/2! With last Friday’s visit to Maroondah Reservoir, learning about the wurundjeri’s understanding of the seasons and letting our imaginations run wild while visualising to interesting texts. Even though it was a gloomy day, the Grade 1/2s had a wonderful day displaying teamwork, collaboration and having fun! They enjoyed working among their peers during different games and challenges.

Madeleine 1/2D – It was very muddy but it was fun and we got to play lots of games like Tug of War.

Archie 1/2D – I was happy because I got to play lots of games with my friends like Memory.

In Reading, we learnt to watch the movie in our mind and create detailed visualisations while listening to a text.

In Writing, we continued to develop our individual voices through creative word choices and planning a personal version the fairy tale, Red Riding Hood.

In Maths, the 1/2’s have been learning about the months of the year and reading calendars. We have also learnt about the language of chance. What is the chance of something occurring. Is it impossible, unlikely, even chance, likely or certain?

For Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships we have learnt this week about feeling stressed and getting a bit Wibbly. Becoming Wibbly is a normal part of life. When you get Wibbly there is lots of things you can do to help yourself out, including, pat a pet, cuddle a teddy, exercise, talk to someone, take big ‘balloon’ or even make a joke.

In Inquiry, learnt about the wurundjeri recognise 7 seasons throughout the year.

A big shout out to the parents who have volunteered to assist with Reading To Read. The students have enjoyed reading to someone and developing their reading skills.

Don’t forget we have open night next Wednesday after school. The students have been enjoying getting our learning space ready for your visit.

Have a wonderful weekend and we look forward to a fantastic week 5!

The 3/4s teachers want to congratulate the entire cohort on getting to TRUE LEADER in Physical education yesterday an outstanding effort. This shows the commitment to your learning and your ultimate focus and dedication.

This week we have continued our Inferring unit and have shown some great skills in inferring. The teachers bought a random box of things from the Unclaimed goods auction and we had to guess who might have bought this.

In writing we are beginning our PROUD piece to showcase for our open night and we look forward to showcasing our drafts for you to see on Wednesday!

In Maths we have been enjoying our amazing measurement and capacity unit, the students have learnt how to measure lines, capacity of containers and we look forward to continuing an incredible learning!

Over the week, the 5/6 team have been working hard to refocus after the changes from NAPLAN and have produced some amazing efforts in their learning.

In Literacy, we have been building our skills to analyse and identify the Author’s Purpose during Reading, where students have explored familiar and new texts to build these skills and apply their critical thinking to justify their findings. In Writing, we have continued to build our Fractured Fairy-Tale while working on our Revise and Editing skills to create a published piece that we can be proud of.

We have continued our Geometric City for Numeracy which has created a keen interest for students to see what our city will contain when we combine all the districts together which will be on display during our Open Night for all to see.

In other curriculum areas, we have been working on Personal Strengths for RRRR, creating a tectonic plate poster using Oreos and exploring the ‘f’ and ‘fe’ plural spelling rule.

We are incredibly proud of this group and the amazing efforts they produce every day where we hope to put it on display at the Open Night on Wednesday 25^th May. Have a fantatsic weekend.

Alyssa, Erin and Matt

Prep, grade 1 and 2 students have worked together to create a stunning garden for our local fairies. This was a random collaborative project during snack and lunch breaks. We are so proud of the amazing teamwork!

We know the local fairies will love the garden as much as we do.