Nerae Preece Principal

From the principal

A big welcome back to all of you as we start our 10 week term 3. I was so excited to catch up with so many students this week who were able to share so many lovely stories from their break. As we mentioned last term, we are working on inclusive and organised learning environments this term. I can see that educators and learners are trying really hard to ensure that their rooms are organised. We would be open to hearing your feedback on what you notice and wonder.

School photos

You will receive your school photo’s this week. They are such an important part of tracking your child’s journey through school, and of course there are many varying opinions on what makes a great school photo.

We tried a new company this year, due to the service we were provided by our previous photographers. We wanted to give all of our families an opportunity to share their thoughts and concerns in a safe and respectful space. You can use this survey link to let us know what you think of the style of photos this year. Please read the survey carefully so we can get the best out of the information you provide.

This information will be collated and presented to School Council, who will then make some recommendations on who we should use as a photographer moving forward. I will also give you an update in an upcoming newsletter.

RAT’s

This week, as per the government’s announcement, we have sent home 2 packets of Rapid Antigen Tests. We hope this provides your family with every opportunity to ensure that testing for COVID is never prevented because you are unable to access the tests. If you were not provided with the tests, please email badger.creek.ps@education.vic.gov.au and we will send some home with your child. More tests will be sent home for the remainder of the year.

Marrung Secretary Awards

Over the school holidays Rohan Anderson and Angela Swindle were invited to attend the Marrung Awards. This was an event to acknowledge the work that schools play in improving educational outcomes for First Nation people. I won’t go into too much detail as Angela has put an article together in this newsletter, but I do want to thank both Rohan and Angela for attending on behalf of our school.

Music News

This is a little music update to let you know that Mrs Legg will be taking some time off this term to have a medical procedure completed, her recovery will take a few weeks. We wish her the very best for a speedy recovery and we look forward to having Mrs Legg back towards the end of term 3. In the mean time, Selena Reynolds and Kristine Borys will look after our music lessons and Mrs Riley will be ensuring that choir continues, Miss Drill is looking after band. If you have any questions about instrumental music please reach out to Emma or myself.

The Termly Calendar/ Upcoming events

This week we will be sending home a term 3 calendar. It will be on paper so you can pop it on your fridge to keep you up to date with the events coming up. Although not all events are on the calendar, such as Sanctuary visits, all major events that require money are listed in this space, and of course there will be room for you to add events in too. We hope this helps your family keep track of what is happening at school.

Just a gentle reminder for next week… On Thursday 21^st of July we have Crazy Hair Day and on Friday 22^nd of July is the Ski trip for selected students.

That’s about it for this week. Have a lovely weekend,

Nerae Preece

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

21/7 – Crazy Hair Day and Special Lunch

22/7 – Lake Mountain Ski Trip

26/7 – Winter Sports Round Robin

5/9 – 9/9 – Prep Swimming

PFA…

The Secretary’s Marrung Award ceremony

Guests were greeted warmly upon arrival to the Secretary’s Marrung Award ceremony at the Melbourne Museum. Uncle Tony Garvey provided the Welcome to Country on behalf of Wurundjeri Traditional Owners, setting the scene to acknowledge the historic and current challenges faced by First Nations people accessing mainstream education, as well as celebrate some of the incredible achievements and progress made as a result of past and present leaders continuing to address these challenges. Badger Creek Primary School was in exceptional company with award nominees leading the way in providing educational experiences that are culturally safe, innovative, and student-centred. Our esteemed teacher and First Nations Advocate, Rohan Anderson, humbly accepted the Encouragement Award in true Badger Creek style – keeping the students and families at the heart of developing Individual Education Plans and the value in building and maintaining relationships with families to ensure the best possible outcomes for all children in education. The celebratory event left everyone feeling truly inspired by the work of staff from schools and regional offices in language programs, workshops, training and mentoring, murals, artwork and engagement, and advocacy. The framed award certificate was accompanied by a gift of First Nations books which we are excited to share with our school community. To read more about the awards you can click here.

This week in Music…

Dear Badger Families,

Greetings and welcome to term three. As you may have already heard, I will be away for much of the term to recover from some medical treatment. Nothing to serious, just temporarily decommissioning.

While I am away, instrumental lessons will continue, if you have any enquiries you can direct them to the office or to your instrumental music teacher. I know that Alan, our guitar teacher and Jamie, our drum teacher have been teaming up to do some small band work with the students, which is so good for our young musicians. Our violin teacher, Sally has also prepared a wonderful violin performance for the assembly. We are so very fortunate to have these dedicated and highly skilled people working with our children.

I will leave you with a video of out terrific Band students playing Seven Nation Army at the end of last term.

Wishing you a good few weeks,

Jenny Legg

Music teacher

School Band

Seven Nation Army

This week in Grade Prep…

It was wonderful to see so many smiling faces eager to start term 3! We were so proud of how happy and confidently the preps transitioned back into school after the holidays.

We also welcomed back Miss V, who will be with us for the next 3 weeks.

In Reading, we have been resetting our reader’s workshop. This involved us revisiting what reading in the classroom looks like, what strategies we can use while reading and ways in which we can stretch our reading,

“I know I can stretch my reading by choosing a good fit book”

“I can track the words in my book to help my reading”

“We can blend the sounds to help us”

We have linked our Writing prompt this week with our Inquiry unit of place, space, and interconnection. Our picture prompt was a picture of Queen’s Park, a familiar (and popular) location within our community. The preps were able to make connections with the picture prompt, engaging in conversations that then strengthened our word choices when it came time to brainstorming key words.

In Word Knowledge, we moved around to different learning stations, using concrete material to support our learning. These included playdough with letter stamps, the iPads, magnetic letters on the whiteboard, letter building blocks and letter tiles. At each rotation, we were learning to build words related to our word of the week as well as common words. This involved us swapping and changing sounds out of a word to create a new word, thinking about where the sounds belong.

Our SMART Spelling sentences were ‘Look at the hot wax. It is next to the box’, with our focus word being, ‘wax’. The preps enjoyed creating pictures and words with the wax from a candle.

In Maths, we have been learning about teen numbers. We learnt that our teen numbers always start with a 1. In this space, we were able to reflect on our learning around place value from last term. We know that teen numbers always have one ten in the tens column. We have also started using different language to describe our thinking about teens such as, ten and some more.

What a busy week back it was, we are already looking forward to next week.

We hope that you have a fabulous weekend, stay warm!

Friendly reminders:

Crazy hair day and special lunch order day is on the 21^{st of} July.

Details for our 100 days of prep celebration will be coming soon!

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

Dear Grade 1/2 Community,

Welcome back to school and we hope you’ve all had a wonderful school break. It has been wonderful to see our Balit Space packed with students ready to learn and following our school values of: Responsibility, Respect, Integrity, Pride, Care & Support.

In Reading this week, we have been focussing on what the Reader’s Workshop looks like in our learning space. Students have been unpacking what their role is during our Reading lesson and what Independent Reading should look like and sound like every day.

In Writing this week, we have been exploring the Writer’s Workshop and what this should look like every day in our learning space. Students have discussed their role during different elements of the Writing Workshop and gave practiced the different stages of a Writing lesson.

In Maths this week, we have been re-visiting our skip counting knowledge, counting forwards and backwards from 0 and a random starting point. Students have been utilising their own one hundred chart throughout the week as a visual aid.

In Inquiry this week, we have started our new unit on Geography and started off by exploring different environments around us such as school and home. As we progress, we will delve deeper into the different features of different environments and explore our communities.

We look forward to a lovely Term 3 with you all!

The Grade 1/2 Teachers 😊

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

Well a MASSIVE Welcome back to the 3/4 Kids! We are so blessed to have you all jump straight back into your learning. We have established routines, welcomed new students into our school and been able to kick off with some amazing learning!

In Writing, after writing about our holidays, we looked at what a sentence is, how it is made, what a conjunction is and how best to use them. In Reading we are looking at Questioning and how this helps us understand what we are reading. We have been inspired to see so many questions being asked about each of the books we are exploring. We can’t wait to dive into figurative language next week as we think that you will LOVE exploring new, incredible words and language features.

In Maths we have delved into Multiplication, showing all the ways we can multiply including repeated addition, vertical multiplication, groups of, and arrays. Well done on all your efforts as you work your way out of the learning pit!