IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

6/6 – 10/6 – Grade 1 / 2 Swimming

9/6 – School Assembly

16/6 – Special lunch

16/6 – Men’s Mental Health – Gold coin donation and wear a black t-shirt/jumper to school

24/6 – Last day of term

Campfire Conversation

The Department of Education and Training, in partnership with the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association Incorporated, is bringing Koorie communities,
young people and schools together to listen, share and connect about self-determination for Koorie people in education.
The purpose of this conversation is to receive input and feedback from interested Koorie families, communities, schools and stakeholders in the design and
implementation of reforms that strengthen Aboriginal self-determination in education.
You are invited to respond to questions on the Engage Victoria platform, or to provide a submission via email to marrung@education.vic.gov.au

Submissions can be made until the 24th of June 2022.
This engagement seeks to:
• provide Koorie communities opportunities to define self-determination in
education
• explore possibilities for how self-determination could and should look in
education
• build and strengthen partnerships between Koorie communities and schools
• highlight the benefits of self-determination for whole school communities
• improve attendance, engagement, and achievement for Koorie learners
• develop a range of changes to improve agency and success for Koorie people
in schools.

A new opportunity to volunteer 

In term 3 our 5/6’s will be having two teams enter Tournament of the Mind.

We are asking for a volunteer to support the teams 1 hour a week at a negotiable time to practise and then come to the event on August 20 and 21^st at Deakin University.

Edwina Whiteside will oversee the event. Please contact Edwina if you are able to support us in this way.

edwina.whiteside@education.vic.gov.au

Music News

Dear Families,

It has been a wonderful and productive term in music at Badger Creek. There students have been so enthusiastic and switched on and we have achieved a great deal. All of our grade 3/4 classes have learnt and recorded a fairly difficult percussion piece, our grade 1/2 classes have been playing the xylophones and we have had such fun and the preps are singing and playing with real gusto. What a delight!

The grade 5/6 students have all been playing Seven Nation Army and listening to a variety of music that feature strong and recognisable riffs. In the final week of this unit we experimented with recording a multi-tracked video using the free app, Acapella. It is quite a difficult and skilled process and the students did very well working in small groups. Not only did they have to begin learning the processes of multi-track recording, they had to do a lot of co-operating and problem solving in their groups. I look forward to doing more work with them on this.

For your interest, the Acapella app is free and can be downloaded on all i-devices. I hope you enjoy the examples of class work and recording work that I have included in this week’s news.

This is my last week of teaching for the term as I will be taking long service leave and will return next term. The students will be in the very capable hands of everybody’s favourite, Jules R.

Have a great few weeks.

Jenny Legg

Music Teacher

Hello Badger Creek Families.

This week in art students have been completing a range of projects, from painting in both acrylic and watercolour to drawings in soft pastel.

The grade 5/6 students have completed their Margot Bagnall inspired ink drawing with watercolour. They drew native plants in vases or as blooms and applied the linework using black ink. Then they focused on the art principle of value using watercolour paint to create a more realistic form.

Our 3/4 cohort have been working on their painting in the negative artworks inspired by Sarah Robey. After creating a stencilled background, they drew their image of choice as a silhouette and transferred it onto their background. They then painted the negative space of their image in white or black.

The 1/2 classes have finished their Sandra Silberzweig inspired drawings in soft pastel. They drew 3 fish on black paper and outlined them using black paint mixed with PVA. When the glue dried they used soft pastel in warm colours on their fish and soft pastel in cool colours for their backgrounds.

Our prep students have finished their oil pastel drawing inspired by Paul Klee’s painting Castle and Sun. They are currently working on their painted, textured papers which they will collage to make an artwork inspired by Illustrator Eric Carle.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Please enjoy the student’s artwork in the attached gallery.

Vanessa Imberger

Art Teacher

What a wonderful week in prep it has been!

In reading this week, we have been looking for the clues by the author to make inferences. Through exploring the text, ‘Wendy’ we were able to infer that Wendy was a thrill seeking, cheeky and adventurous chicken. “Wendy looks like she is not scared of anything”, “Wendy likes to have fun, a lot of fun!”

In writing, the preps have become pleasingly confident with our new writing structure! Brainstorming key words and then working on forming sentences over the remainder of the week. This week’s picture prompt was, The Great Barrier Reef, which evoked great conversations and vocabulary choices. We are so proud of the level of pride the preps have been taking in forming their sentences. Our published pieces are displayed on our writing wall on Fridays, be sure to check them out! We suspect that they will ‘blow your socks off’, just like they did to us.

“This is my favourite game!” Who said learning cannot be fun? In word knowledge, we continued with our strategy of ‘stepping out the sounds’. In small groups, we stepped out the sounds of various words while our team were encouraged to write the blended words onto whiteboards. We have seen such success in this space!

Across maths this week, we have been learning about place value, working within the ones and tens column. Place value is a fundamental step in understanding number. We have been working in small groups placing numbers 0-99 in the correct columns using MAB blocks. We were so excited to then use our new knowledge in a place value race where we had to place the tens and ones in the correct columns to make numbers. Place value can be a tricky concept to grasp, but we are feeling incredibly proud of the effort and commitment the preps are showing towards their learning.

We feel very fortunate to have received our own class set of iPads. We are so excited to use the iPads to further support the children’s learning, accessing our decodable readers, Mathletics, sunshine online, the possibilities are endless! This week, we have slowly introduced the iPads to the preps, exploring various features to help support the children in becoming confident users of technology.

Have an amazing weekend, stay warm!

Love the prep team, Mrs C and Ms H 😊

What a fun W8! This week, we got to go swimming! We did such a great job at packing everything we needed. A special shout out to every parent, grandparent, carer, or friend that helped our students be successful and prepared for swimming. Students arrived on Monday, raring to hit the pool! Check out our photos to see us in action!! A big shout out to the staff at the pool, and to the wonderful parent helpers who came to assist. We can’t wait to go swimming again next year! 🙂

This week in Reading we’ve been learning all about ‘comparing and contrasting’. This is where we identify things that are the same, similar and different between texts. A special mention to Madeleine from 1/2D who had us in stiches of laughter when she said, ‘Well obviously something that’s the same is that they are both books!’ Spot on Madeleine! hahaha

In Writing, we’ve been retelling our adventures to the pool! We call this type of Writing, a recount. Writing about things are meaningful is a purposeful way to engage our students in writing. Many used ‘line scaffolding’ to get started. Please enquire with your teachers if your child has mentioned this technique at home. We’d be happy to share it with you.

In Maths, we’ve begun a unit of work on multiplication. We’ve used efficient strategies such as skip counting, arrays and drawing visual representations of problems, to help us problem solve.

Next week, we look forward to a rest after our big efforts at swimming… but the learning must go on! In Reading, we are beginning a unit of work on Author studies. We will have the opportunity to use some of the Author’s tips and tricks, to create our own texts. We will use the Writing cycle to complete a piece of work (plan, draft, revising, edit and publish). In Maths, we are venturing into mapping and direction, and are also beginning a unit of work on Physical Science where we’ll explore light and sound.

We look forward to another great week in W8. Don’t forget the Queen’s birthday THIS Monday. Can you believe there is only 2 weeks to go? Time flies when you’re having fun!! 🙂

We have some exciting news for you! You are invited to an Open afternoon in the ¾ area! On Thursday the 23^th June our doors will be flung open and we will be showcasing our exploration into NON FICTION information reports.

This week the students begun choosing their non-fiction focus points and we will be teaching all of those skills that they need in the coming weeks to have an incredibly prepared and exciting afternoon! Come along at 230pm to see what it’s all about.

In Reading this week we are learning what makes a good information text and analysing how best we can create our own, for it’s only through exploring great texts that we can learn how to write our own.

In Numeracy this week we are moving from Number Patterns into data collection and analysis which may mean you’ll see some interesting results out of a survey of grade 5/6 students in a newsletter coming shortly.

In our lead up to the end of term we aim to provide some exciting and engaging learning for our 3/4s! Keep showing us your best!