Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal

We’ve had another week of solid learning from the learning community this week. It has been great to see Smart Spelling continue on. Have you noticed an improvement in your child’s spelling strategies? I know I certainly have. It has also been great to read some of our students writing samples. There is some great author voice going on when our students are writing. I am very proud of how our students are focussing hard on being the best learners they can be.

Welcome Mr Lachy Brown

Some of you may have been aware of the departure of Miss Lacey deManuele from 1/2B over the holidays. Over the past few weeks we have been looking for a teacher to work with 1/2 B, and we have been so lucky to find Mr Lachy Brown. Lachy comes with primary and secondary experience, having worked at Emerald Primary School and the Timbertop School in Mansfield. Lachy starts next week, and I know everyone will make him feel welcome.

Help with sculptures

Before we left for the holidays I received a wonderful phone call from one of our parents Jon Wickenden. He shared the story that he had applied to the council for logs that had fallen over in the storms in 2021. He was successful in gaining 2 logs to create sculptures for our new gardens in the school with the rebuild. The logs have arrived at his house, and Jon has started designing the sculptures. Jon is passionate about Australian dinosaurs and megafauna and these are forming the inspiration behind the sculptures. Because Jon is donating his time to complete these sculptures I asked if we could help with the tools and equipment he might need to get the artworks completed. Jon sent me this shopping list…

Gasless Mig Welder, and flux/core wire
square piping ( for framing and supports)
angle grinders – spare cutting and grinding discs
chainsaws- spare chains, bar oil, sharpening tools
ladder, scaffolding, log holder/supports
oil linseed/olive or decking oil- for treating timber
acrylic paints – exterior
any cash donations – to help with sculpture material costs oils, resins, fuel, chisels, sand paper (multiple grain sizes), file, carving bits etc replacements.
tiedowns/straps

If you are able to donate any of these items please let Brogan or myself know or drop them off at the office so we can organise for Jon to receive them. We thank you in advance.

NAPLAN

NAPLAN begins next week for our students in grades 3 and 5. Our students have had a chance to practice over the past few weeks and they are ready to go.

If you are a parent of a grade 3 or grade 5 student you can help your child have the best chance in NAPLAN by making sure that they have good lunches, water to drink and early nights. We also like to remind you all that NAPLAN is a snapshot of one day on our students. Our teachers collect many pieces of data over many weeks, which allows them to make more accurate assessments over time. NAPLAN can help us understand how we can become better teachers, by looking at the data for all of the students in our learning communities. We think this is a good thing.

Open night 25^th of May

On Wednesday the 25^th of May from 3:30-6:30 we will be hosting an Open Night for Education Week. Please look out for our advertising, we invite you to ask friends and families who are interested in taking a tour of Badger Creek Primary School to come along and see how we do things “a little differently”.

Most importantly though we would love it if you could make it. We have been waiting so long to come together as a community and we hope that this will be a great opportunity for you to come and see all the wonderful things your child has been up to in their learning.

That’s about it for this week. I hope you have a lovely weekend with your family.

Stay curious,

Nerae Preece

Principal

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

6/5 – Student Free Day (Berry Street Training)

12/5 – School assembly

13/5 – Prep – Grade 2 Photo trail / Expo Tabloid Sports

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

PFA

This week in Art…

The art room has been buzzing over the last two weeks as students make, paint and wrap their wonderful Mother’s Day gifts. I won’t give too much away but our students are very excited to show their appreciation for their mums or their loved ones this Sunday. Hopefully there will be some breakfasts in bed and cups of tea along with some beautiful handmade gifts. Enjoy the wonderful day with you children.

Vanessa Imberger

Art teacher

This week in P.E…

AFL girls Footy Gala Day.

A great opportunity for our grade 5.6 girls to participate in the girls AFL gala Day at Kimberly Reserve in Kilsyth.

Our girls linked up with Yarra Glen and Christmas Hills Primary School to form a team and play against other local schools. They were able to win 2 of the 5 matches and showed great spirit and determination all day.

Thank you to Renee, one our parents for transporting, supervising and coaching the girls.
Congratulations to the following students that participated.

Holly, Grace, Kitana, Gabby, Savannah

This week in Prep…

This week we reached 50 days of Prep, halfway to our 100-day celebration… which some of the Preps have been excited for since day 1, at least we are a little closer now!

Did you know that Venus is about 450 ̊C? and that it is the hottest planet even though it is not the closest planet to the sun. This is just some of the interesting facts that we discovered about Space when using our prior knowledge to connect with texts, in Reading this week. We definitely have some Astronomers in the classroom!

To support our love of Space, in Writing, we started our planning, draft, revise and edit, and publishing structure. This involved the children brainstorming keywords from a Space themed picture prompt, creating a sentence using their key words and then adding another element to their sentences. Our next stage will be publishing our revised writing pieces.

This week, we had a revision week in Smart Spelling. What smart and capable spellers we have in Prep, they absolutely blew us away with their ‘can do’ attitude and commitment. Together, we created an anchor chart of the common words that we know and practiced writing our Phase 2 sentences. For next week, our key word is ‘dog’. We invite the children to bring in a photo of their dog to use as part of our display.

Friends of 10 has been our focus in Maths this week. Pevan and Sarah helped us once more with a catchy tune to remember friends that go together to equal 10. The Friends of 10 strategy supports our understanding of place value and the relationships between numbers. Mrs C brought in her cookie jar that only had 10 biscuits left, some were chocolate biscuits, and the others were pink. The Preps predicted the possible outcomes of biscuits in the jar, using their knowledge of friends of 10, “6 and 4 are friends, and if we flip it, 4 and 6, they are still friends.”

Have a wonderful weekend! We hope all the Mum’s, Grandma’s and other Special people in our lives have a relaxing and enjoyable Mother’s Day.

Love the Prep Team😊

Reminders:

Friday 13^th May is the Prep 1/2 Photo Trail excursion at Maroondah Dam. Details for this excursion can be found on compass.

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

What a fabulous week we’ve had in Year 1/2! Although a short week (due to our Curriculum Day this Friday) we’ve managed to pack a lot of things in!

In Reading, we’ve been working hard on inferring, with a focus on digital texts. Inferring is an important reading skill as authors don’t tell us everything they want us to know. Have you ever read a book and assumed what the author was saying or meaning, without having read it in the text? This is called inferring, or ‘making an inference’. We make inferences using our prior knowledge, clues from the text, and illustrations. To better comprehend what we’ve read, we learn to look for clues in the text. Teachers use words such as, ‘we’re being detectives’ to encourage students to infer. We’ve attached a picture we used with our students in class, that you may like to reference while reading at home.

In Writing, we’ve been working on using effective word choice such as vivid verbs or amazing adjectives. We can use these words to describe settings or character traits with more clarity, and to better engage the reader. We’ve brainstormed effective words to replace ‘common words’. For example, instead of said, we might use ‘shouted’ or ‘interrupted’. For sad, we might use ‘gloomy’ or ‘dismal’. We’ve included two story prompts that our children worked on this week, for you to discuss with them at home.

In Maths, we have been working hard to use mental strategies to solve problems. A wonderful way to practise this at home is to find a pack of playing cards, and turn over 2. The first person to take the smaller number away from the larger number, wins!

In Inquiry, we’ve discussed changes in our local environment. Children reflected on these questions/sentence stems, sharing with thoughts with their classmates:

An interesting weather event that I have been apart of…
How did this effect me?
Does the weather influence how I feel?
When I look out my bedroom window on a hot/wet/freezing cold day, I can see…

Next week, we’re continuing to work on inferring in Reading, with a focus on inferring character feelings or actions. In Writing, we are working on using effective ‘voice’. This is the tone of our writing. Tone should match our writing purpose, text type and mood. It should capture each writer’s individual voice, or flavour. In Maths, we are building upon our subtraction knowledge by identifying the relationship between addition and subtraction. In Inquiry, we will be busy observing changes to our local environment. Autumn is a great time to do this as our environment changes so quickly!

A big shout out to our students for their efforts in Specialist classes this week. We are proud of you!

Have a wonderful weekend and we look forward to a fabulous Week 3! 🙂

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

In the first part of Term 2 we have launched straight into Subtraction, Literary Elements and continuing our amazing Writers workshop lessons. We are soon to begin our Heat unit in Science and about to begin our Mass lessons in Maths. If anyone has a spare set of DIGITAL SCALES can you please send them in!

This Term will also see us look into why night and day happen, if you happen to be gazing at the stars together, try and ask your kids about what they think happens to turn day to night.

We also want to wish our Grade 3s every success in NAPLAN beginning next week! We want you to know that if you try your best, that’s all that matters. If anyone has questions about NAPLAN participation please get in touch with your classroom teacher or the office.

We miss Mrs Douglas across the 34 Team! but she will be starting back on Monday, although we are sure she would rather still be on holiday.