Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal

There have been some great events, for our students to enjoy this week. As you will remember from last weeks newsletter we had our year 6/7 Pizza night. This was a huge success, and a lovely opportunity for our students to catch up and talk about all the new adventures to be had at High School. For our grade 6 students, they were relieved that it wasn’t going to be that scary after all. Thank you to Alyssa, Matt, Erin and Edwina for hosting the event.

This week was also Colour Fun Run. The weather stopped us on the Monday, but when we got to Wednesday the afternoon weather made the event very enjoyable. It was fantastic to see so many families running together and getting colourful to raise money for Badger Creek Primary School.

The next stage is to collect all of the donations which will be due back to school on Friday the 9^th of September. A special thanks goes out to David Pitts, the PFA (thanks for organising the sausage sizzle, toasties and icypoles) and all of the other people who helped us to make the day great.

Another thing worth celebrating is our Response to Intervention (RTI). As many of you may have heard, schools were given money to place tutors in the school to help students catch up. At Badger we made catch up look a little different and a little more sustainable. With the guidance of our Learning Specialist, Jessica Riley our learning teams set to work to look at data and student work to identify who was missing a particular skill that was important for them to master. These students with similar needs are brought together for 15 minutes a day, usually they eat their lunch and learn, everyday to practice the skill. This usually runs anywhere between 2-6 weeks and then a new focus is set. Over 1/3 of our students have been involved in RTI over the year and we have seen students make phenomenal progress. It is a credit to the students to committing to their learning and our teaching team for being so determined to ensure that our students are able to master skills that they will need.

Parent Opinion Survey

A little reminder that if you received an email to complete a survey on the school, we would be so grateful for you to complete it. This data helps us understand how we are tracking as a school. The survey closes on Friday 16^th of September.

The Building Project

As you will all be aware, Monday is the BIG Day! We have moved out of most of Block A. There will be a few adjustments that we have to get used to…

An extra driveway will be installed into the southern fence, near the roundabout. This will be something to be mindful of at pick up and drop off.
The toilets near the library will no longer be accessible. However the toilets at the balit space and durn durn space will be available.
A new toilet is being built in the balit space (loud work will be completed before school)
An extension to the comms room is being built over the next 2 weeks (loud work will be completed before and after school)

If you have any questions or wonderings email me via the schools email badger.creek.ps@education.vic.gov.au

Family Pride Afternoon

Next Friday the 9^th of September, we will be hosting our next Family Pride Afternoon. We are moving the library and admin building. If you are willing and able to help, meet from 2:30-4:30pm next Friday to help us move into our new work homes. We had a great turn out last time, we hope you can help us out this time!

That is plenty for this week, have a superb weekend,

Nerae Preece

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

5/9 – 9/9 – Prep Swimming

8/9 – Grade 2 sleep over

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

14/9 – Footy Colours Day & Special Lunch

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

PFA…

This week in Prep…

What a fabulous and COLOURFUL week 8!

“This is the best day ever” many of the preps were heard saying this as they ran around the track splashed in the colours of a rainbow! It was a new experience for many of our preps, some were feeling nervous and a little worried, not knowing what to expect. We were so proud of the preps for being brave and stepping outside of their comfort zone. By the look on all of their faces at the end, it is safe to say that they had a blast!

In Reading, we were focusing on the CAFE strategy, checking for understanding. This means that we were using our inner voice to think about the who, what and why when reading… Who was in the story? What was happening in the story? Why did that happen? These are great questions to ask ourselves along the way to support our comprehension.

In Writing, we brainstormed, planned, revised, edited and then published a card for someone special in our lives for Father’s Day! We read the text, ‘Just the Way We Are’ and explored how our families are different and that’s okay because they are perfect just the way they are! The preps proudly shared their photos of loved ones along with stories to why their families are special to them!

“Dad, you are always there for me and I will always be there for you”

“Mum, you are the best mum in the world because you give big hugs and kisses”

“To Simon, thank you for letting me watch Harry Potter. I love you.”

Duck was our word in SMART Spelling this week, with the focus being on the /ck/ digraph. Our sentence was, ‘On the weekend the duck went back to the pond’. For each focus word in SMART Spelling we plan an experience associated with that word. This week, we of course had to play, ‘Duck, duck, goose!’, putting the sounds /d/, /u/, /ck/ on our fingers before we started! In Word Knowledge, we moved around to different rotations. Each station, the preps were supported to use concrete materials to form words from our checklist with the /ck/ digraph, ticking each word off as they formed it.

We continued with our learning surrounding ordinal numbers this week in Maths. We located and identified which superhero was 1^st right up to 20^th in a picture, we correctly ordered cars depending on their placement in a race, and ordered the food from 1^st to 15^th that The Very Hungry Caterpillar ate.

Friendly reminders:

Next week the preps have swimming! Please pack a separate bag from your child’s school bag for your child to take with them to swimming, smaller the better! They will need, bathers, a towel and goggles (if they wish). Please ensure that your child’s belongings are all labelled.

Have a wonderful weekend prep families!

Love,

Mrs C and Ms H 😊

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

WOW What a colourful week we have had this week. Not only on the colour fun run but in the classroom too!

In our Writing sessions the 3/4s have been using colourful language and ideas to create an amazing fictional recount, which they have just begun to publish! Some of the highlights include students gaining magical powers on a walk around town, accidentally (on purpose) ignoring parents direction and everything going awry.

In Reading, we have been colourfully summarising using our best language possible, following the Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then model. If you are reading with your children, ask them to summarise using this model! It’s a great way to identify the problem and solution/ resolution in the story you are reading.

In Numeracy, we have been working on everything Money related, and moving into Number Patterns. We have been using real (and fake) coins to make amounts of money and work out how much our most epic birthday would cost. Moving into number patterns we have been working out continuing number patterns and looking at how to identify a rule!

It’s exciting to see how school holidays approaching are captivating student interest. With our Tabloid Sports day today being an amazingly excited times. Look out on Compass or email for volunteering times in the next couple of weeks!

This week in Grade 5 / 6…

It never stops in 5/6 world!

In Literacy, we have enjoyed diving into our Good Fit books and making inferences about characters feelings, using our schema (prior knowledge) to infer and then supported our inference with evidence from the text. We have then added in wonderings, connections or any other personal responses to our inference.

On Friday the 2^nd of September, we had Melanie La’Brooy, author of The Wintrish Girl, and her new fantasy series Talismans of Fate. Melanie spoke to us about the writing process and some of the things she does as an author.

Black Out Poetry!
This has been a huge hit. Black out poems take pages from novels, Newspapers or Magazines, and black out words that the author no longer wants. We have created some outstanding poems this week. Check them out!

In Numeracy, we have been working on our division strategies, including using arrays, short division and dividing with and without remainders. We have also worked on converting remainders into decimals. We are much more confident with our division now!

We would like to say a big thank you to Mr Pitts and our wonderful Sports Captains for organising and setting up the Colour Fun Run!

It was a wonderful afternoon full of colour!

Lastly, on Tuesday the 13^th of September, we will be hosting Caine’s Arcade!

As you saw last week, we have been working really hard on constructing our arcade games, we are putting the final touches on our games, ready for week 10.

We ask that to play our games, you bring some silver coins.

All the money that we raise will be donated to The Kickstarter Project Inc. This project was started by a former Badger Creek student, who is now working in the Kenyan slums, helping to provide and education to help break the poverty cycle.

If you want to find out more, please visit the following website:

https://thekickstartproject.com.au/

Love,

The 5/6 Team!

Croydon Wind Symphony – Stage and Screen Singalong

Hi All!

Miss Drill is playing in another concert! This time it is a Stage and Screen Singalong, feature lots of well-known Disney songs, as well as Queen, Elvis, ABBA and even the Blues Brothers.

There are a few general admission tickets left.

Bring along some food, and drink and enjoy so well known tunes!

https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing?eid=905161&fbclid=IwAR3_7pmoM5KosY3uY2A457H1nVPGYibUNDZktObzZzHlcxI2Menc1O1aCuA