Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal’s seat

This week I have been asked quite a bit about how I am feeling about the school building being demolished. Grief is a funny thing as each of us experience it in different ways. For me, it was spending a quiet moment in the buildings in the last few weeks, remembering the fond memories that I had of teaching in those classrooms. For some of you who attended Badger Creek School, there will probably be lots of different feelings for you, it’s always good to come and talk about it if you need to.

Demolition

What a week it has been! To think at the end of last week we had a school building and this week a concrete slab. We have been diligently watching the demo and, if you have been watching closely you will have noticed the piles that were being made with the resources from the building. Those piles are the reuse/recycling piles. So most of the amazing resources in our old building are not being wasted, they will have a new purpose somewhere else.

Next week we will have the concrete slab broken up and taken away. This doesn’t happen often, but we are hoping that we can reuse the piers from the old buildings to ensure that there isn’t more waste than necessary. After some investigations from looking at our old plans (from the 1989 build) this will hopefully be fairly straightforward as the slab and piers are easily separated. Let’s hope it all goes to plan! This will be a little loud, we have ear protectors for kids who need them and of course our friends at the Sanctuary are aware too, so they can keep an extra eye out for the animals.

Cohort requests 2023

This is a call out to our families to let me know by Friday the 28^th of October of any important things we may need to know about placing your child in 2023. You can email me nerae.preece@education.vic.gov.au

Term 4 calendar

Brogan is currently finalising the term 4 calendar of events which should be coming home in a hard copy for your family. Keep a look out for it. We will have spares at the office if you miss out.

Resilience with Gwen

As you may be aware Gwen our resident therapist has been working with our students from term 2, we have learnt a lot about what bullying is and isn’t, and how to use our minds to help us become more resilient. We have Gwen back again in term 4, this term she will be working with some of our ½ students. Gwen will be available for parents to chat to from 9-10 every Friday in the Art Room. No question is too silly to ask, and sometimes we all need a time to download about how we are travelling.

Welcome Rayna Jane

Saving the best till last… It is with great excitement that we announce the arrival of Rayna Jane to the world. Over the holidays Mrs Vanessa Saffin gave birth to Rayna. Both mum and bub are doing well. We can’t wait for them to pop in and visit us before the end of the year. Thank you to all of the kind families who gave gifts to Vanessa, she is very grateful for your thoughtfulness.

That’s about all for this week, have a great weekend.

Nerae

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

18/10 – Prep concert – Pevan and Sarah

21/10 – School assembly 2.30-3.30pm

28/10 – Halloween Dress Up & Special Lunch

1/11 – Melbourne Cup Day

4/11 – School assembly 2.30-3.30pm

11/11 – Student free day

15/11 – Ocean swim – Life Saving Victoria – 5/6

24/11 – ‘The Final Word’ G6 Cyber safety

25/11 – School assembly 2.30-3.30pm

1/12 – Elephant Ed – 5/6

1/12 – Annual School concert

7/12 – Grade 6 Graduation

8/12 – Elephant Ed – 5/6

12-14/12 – 5/6 Camp

14/12 – Gr 6 Big Day Out

16/12 – Christmas themed bake sale

16/12 – Grade 6 leavers assembly 2.30-3.30pm

20/12 – Last day of Term 4

Music News

Dear Badger Creek Families and Friends,

It has been a long time since I took a pause from teaching to have some surgery on my shoulder and the recovery has been a little slower than I hoped but I am recovering and will be returning to full time teaching gradually in term 4.

My initial focus is planning and preparing for the end of year concert and community event that we will finally be able to hold live on Thursday, December 1^st. We have decided on an Australian music theme and will be presenting a variety of Aussie music including folk music, songs featuring First Nations Language, and some good old Aussie rock classics. We cannot wait!

Calling Musical Parents and Friends

As we have done several times in the past, we will be inviting our families and friends to join in with the music and to create a BCPS family band to play the last song of the evening, which the whole school will sing together. The song will be simple and I will support musicians and singers in rehearsing this piece.

So, if you love to connect with others musically, have a laugh and show the young ones how it is done, please get in touch with me on the email address below or via the school email address. We are looking for singers, guitar players, strings, percussion, woodwind, YOU NAME IT! Anyone is welcome to join in the rehearsals and performance.

Healesville Community Carols By Candlelight

BCPS and the Badger Creek Women’s Choir have once again been invited to sing on stage at the Healesville Community Carols in Queens Park on 17^th December in the afternoon. We will be singing two songs together, This Little Light of Mine and Somewhere Over the Rainbow / Silent Night Medley.

The School Choir rehearsals will now take place once a week at lunchtimes and students will be required to commit to attending regularly to be eligible to sing at the Carols. Check out the video of the Badger Creek Women’s Choir singing the medley as we will be singing it at the event.

So…Badger Creek, let’s have a musical term 4 and join together through the joyous medium of music and rebuild those connections that were put on pause over the past 2 years.

Have a great week and please contact me on the email address below if you have any queries or you would like to chat about joining with the parent and friends band for the end of year concert.

jennifer.legg@education.vic.gov.au

Jenny Legg

Music Teacher

This week in Prep…

2 weeks already down of term two?! We are so not ready for this term to fly by. We’re soaking up each week we have left in our little prep bubble, that’s for sure. But, these little learners keep reminding us that they’re not so little after all. I mean, the way they read, write, add, subtract.. that’s some big learning right there!

So what have we been up to this week:

In reading, we were practising the CAFÉ strategy ‘monitor and fix up’. This is when we track our reading by looking closely at the words and think deeply about what is happening. This helps us to keep track of the story making sense. If it doesn’t make sense, that’s a sign we need to fix up. What do we do if we need to fix up? Stretch the sounds out on our fingers of course. Cross checking that the word looks and sounds right, and makes sense.

In writing, we have been writing about our predictions. With feather as our word of the week, it made us wonder why birds have feathers… So we began writing down our ideas over the week and discovered the biological reason on Friday. So many of our predictions were aligned with the facts. Ask your child why birds have feathers, they’re the birdy experts!

In maths this week, Mrs. C got up to lots of mischief… The preps were absolutely shook when Mrs. C ran back from Mrs. Griffiths’ office with a stolen lolly jar filled with snakes!!! But, the preps kept her in line by keeping track of how many snakes were inside the jar, how many Mrs. C ate and how many Ms H put back inside (because she’s the sweet teacher…) The preps did such an amazing job at recording their thinking in their maths books and using the numbers lines/charts to problem solve.

Rest assured, Mrs. C thought carefully about her actions and returned the jar to Mrs. G with a sincere apology.

Reminders:

THE PEVAN AND SARAH CONCERT IS ON TUESDAY!! YAY!!

Please arrive to school no later than 8.30am on this day. The bus will be departing at 9am.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. C & Ms H xx

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

Well, it’s certainly been an interesting week at Badger Creek Primary, and especially in 3/4, as we had an adjoining classroom knocked down as part of the demolition. A lesser cohort of students may have let this phase them, but not our kids! The 3/4s seized upon the experience and used it to enhance their learning. Why are we not surprised!

One of the activities undertaken this week involved tuning into their five senses as they observed the buildings being torn down. This then formed the basis of a Writer’s Notebook entry to be crafted into an extended piece of writing at a later date. We’re hoping to share some of these in a future newsletter.

Maths has seen students revisiting subtraction through what we call ‘number talks’, where students investigate a problem and share their answers with the class, with equal value being given to both the strategy used in addition to attaining a correct answer to the problem. Students are encouraged to find multiple ways to solve the problem with forms the basis of a broader discussion around the range of approaches used in the classroom – hence the name ‘number talk’. We will continue to explore subtraction in this way next week and will continue ‘number talks’ in other areas of maths throughout the term.

All of the learning aside, we must acknowledge the resilience and flexibility that the 3/4s have shown throughout the week’s disruptions. You’re such a special group! Keep up the fabulous learning, 3/4s!