Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal

Over the coming weeks, our school will be reviewing and updating our Child Safe Standards. These are extremely important in keeping the children in our community safe. School council started work on Wednesday night in ensuring that our policies and procedures are in place to protect our students and also undergoing training to explain what the child safe standards are.

If you would like to see our child safe policies you can find them on our website, over the coming weeks you will see that as they are ratified by the school council they will be updated.

It is important work that protects our children.

Medicines and treatments at school

We have had a number of children that are bringing medicine to school without notifying the office.

To keep our students safe our duty of care is to support them with administering their medicine. If your child requires medicine during the day we ask that you contact Brogan, who will provide you with a form that clearly states the accurate dosage before handing in the medication.

If you have any medical plans for your children (such as asthma or anaphylaxis plans) please ensure that your most updated copy is provided.

Thank you for your support.

When can I drop off my child?

We have been noticing that some students are arriving at school prior to 8:45am, some even as early as 8:00am. Sending your child to school this early doesn’t always guarantee adequate supervision. We ask that you ensure that your child arrives from 8:45am and makes their way to the classroom, ready for calm start. If your child arrives too early they will be sent to before school care, and the invoice will be forwarded to you.

Preps 2023

We are so excited to share that we have 34 preps enrolled for 2023! This means we will have 2 classes again. Teachers are yet to be confirmed, but we are not far away from confirming this. Parents will receive a letter of confirmation of place on the 26^th of August. We have our first transition Parent information meeting coming up on the 1st September at 5pm on Webex. Where all important details will be shared with our prep families.

Curriculum Day Friday 26^th of August

Just a little reminder that next Friday will be a Curriculum Day. Our team will be undergoing more Berry Street Training. We encourage you to reach out to CIRE if you need childcare arrangements. Call CIRE on 0499400250.

The Build Update

I had my first site meeting yesterday with the builders, architects and the VSBA. We are 2 weeks away from starting the project. You will see some fencing coming up on the 5^th of September to start our building compound area. There will be some works starting in the durn durn space, and the balit space as mentioned last week. Our classrooms 1-5 will be completely out of bounds for all of us unless we have permission from the builders. We will ensure those areas are completely locked up and definitely out of bounds.

A gentle reminder to save Friday the 9^th of September for our next Family Pride Day. Our task will be to pack up the library and the admin area.

Interested in some cabinetry? Come and have a chat to me. We have cupboards, shelving and workstations that could be demolished or salvaged. Perfect for sheds. You must be able to remove and transport yourself, and must be removed by Friday 2^nd of September.

I will endeavour to give you regular updates throughout the build. Stay tuned.

Baby news for Mrs Saffin

We are so excited to announce that Mrs Vanessa Saffin is pregnant. Baby Saffin will be arriving in October. Mrs Saffin will be finishing up at the end of term 3. We will keep you posted with her news as baby arrives later in the year.

Most importantly a BIG thank you!

I wanted to end my writing today to express a very big amount of gratitude to the families that came to help out last Friday for our Family Pride Afternoon. Our job was to clear out the classrooms 1-6. We really appreciate the time that you took to help us get a BIG chunk of the work done.

Thank you to…

The Prinsen-Alexander Family

The Morris-Morton Family

The Gore family

The O’Halloran Family

The Smith Family

The Budding Family

The Clemenger Family

The Alcorn Family

I also want to thank our educators who stayed back to help out as well. There has been a lot of work to do, but we are grateful for your time.

That’s plenty of information for this week. Have a great weekend.

Nerae Preece

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

23/8 – 5 / 6 Winter Sports

24/8 – Healesville High School of Rock performance – Grade 5 / 6 Students

25/8 – Book Week Celebration Day

26/8 – School curriculum Day

29/8 – Colour Fun Run & Special Lunch Day

2/9 – Expo Tabloid Sports – Grade 3 / 4 Students & Father’s Day raffle

5/9 – 9/9 – Prep Swimming

7/9 – Downball Championships

9/9 – Women’s Health Morning Tea

9/9 – Athletics Techno Challenge – Selected students

12/9 – Physical Maths Challenge – Grade 5 / 6 Students

12/9 – School dental forms to be returned

14/9 – Footy Colours Day & Special Lunch

16/9 – School Assembly & Last day of term 3 – 2.30pm Finish

PFA…

3/4 Hoop Time…

On Tuesday 16^th August, fifteen 3/4 students represented Badger Creek Primary at the Yarra Valley Hoop Time Competition held at the Yarra Centre in Yarra Junction.

Our two teams – Badger Creek Blasters and Badger Creek Breakers – were far and away the most dominant teams in the Future Stars competition, with both teams winning their pool and advancing to the finals. Unfortunately, this meant facing off against each other in the semi-final, with the teams so evenly matched that the Breakers snatched the win with two free throws after the siren. The Breakers then went on to convincingly win the grand final, and were awarded with a Molten Hoop Time Basketball.

All students are to be commended for the way that they represented our school. Outstanding results aside, both teams displayed teamwork, care and support and sportsmanship, in addition to their improving skills.

Well done Breakers and Blasters – you’ve all got game!

This week in Prep…

We have had loads of fun this week!

From Father’s Day shopping to fairy bread making, boy have we have been busy!

In Reading, we have been focusing on when the author’s purpose is to inform or to entertain. The children have been using the clues in the text to help them work out how they have responded to the book as a reader and identify the intention of the author.

Maybe to…give us information? Or entertain us? Our preps can figure it out!

In Writing, we have been sprinkling our amazing writing skills all over our procedural texts. We made fairy bread! But better than that, we created a procedural text on how to make fairy bread.

Each of our procedural texts have included lists of ingredients and materials as well as very explicit and clear steps needed to make fairy bread. We learnt how precise our language needs to be when Mrs. C attempted to follow our steps. At one point she ‘chucked’ the bag of bread on the plate and placed the whole tub of butter on top of the bread. We were quick to think about reader’s interpretations and how it needs to be broken down to every little move.

In Maths, we have been learning about subtraction. Tens frames, number lines and pictures have been our go-tos in helping us problem solve subtraction number stories.

The Preps have truly mastered the skill of creating and responding to subtraction number stories. Why don’t you ask your child to whip one up for you to solve. Or better yet, ask them the problem (inspired by one of our own preps) below. See how they go…

I have 10 puppies but I can Mrs. C and Miss H 9 puppies. How many puppies do I have left?

Kind reminders from us:

-We’re inviting the preps to bring their favourite book to school Monday to read to a Badger Creek Kinder friend (we’re so excited for this visit!!)

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

Hi Grade 1/2 Community,

We hope you are all keeping warm in the cold and damp weather we have been having. The warm weather is approaching slowly! It has been fantastic to see students representing the school values in our Balit Space and outside of the classroom during break times. Keep up the great work everyone 😊

In Reading this week, we have been practicing to use a dictionary and thesaurus to clarify unknown words while we read. Another tool we have been using is asking a friend to clarify a word for us. Some new vocabulary that we have discovered are: ‘nibble’ and ‘ancient’.

In Writing this week, we have been working extra hard on Procedural Writing. We have been learning about features of a procedural text, how to write a procedure and how to accurately follow the steps in a procedure. We used the text “Wombat Stew” as a guide on how to write a procedure. Below are some examples of students hard at work during Writing this week.

In Maths this week, we have been exploring Division which includes representing halves and quarters in many ways. Some of these include a collection of objects and on shapes. Students have also explored the connection between multiplication and division.

Reminders:

Grade 2 Sleepover is happening on Thursday 8^th of September
Don’t forget to bring a warm jumper everyday to school

Thanks,

Grade 1/2 Community 😊

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

We have been getting really excited for the upcoming book week. Plenty of whispers have been spreading through our classrooms about costumes and characters for next Thursday’s parade. In preparation for book week we have explored books written by some of our favourite children’s authors, Anh Do, Jeannie Baker and Alison Leister which hope to inspire some author studies next week.

We have recently published poetry and this week have had fun with fictional recounts in writing. Students are working hard to improve their writing skills especially in the revision and editing processes.

In Maths, we have investigated fractions, including improper and equivalent fractions. We encourage our students to log on to Mathletics at home to work through related activities to consolidate their learning. Next week we will be identifying and making number patterns with missing elements.

Check out some of the poetry from our students.