Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal’s Seat

Welcome back to a new term. We are thrilled to be starting a new term. This term will be jam packed and a little longer than usual, and a lot of fun!

Breaks

In our staff meeting on Monday we have reflected on our learning at Berry Street and had a little look at little learning breaks during learning time that some students may need from time to time. We wanted to make it clear and fair for our students. Here is a little break down of the expectations.

Brain Breaks- We take these as a whole class when our group needs a bit of movement after strong focused learning or a calm down when we need to settle our bodies.

Reset Break– We have used the Zones of Regulation to help us with this… If someone is in the blue zone (they maybe really upset or feeling low) and they are finding it hard to focus on learning, the student needs to help seek and ask their teacher, who lets them take a learning buddy and a timer, for no more than 4 minutes, to go for a walk outside the classroom.

If they are in the yellow zone, they may have already moved to choice on our proactive chart, this means that they can ask their teacher to use a sensory tool or complete a task that helps them reset for 2-3 minutes.

Finally if someone is in the red zone an adult will gently guide them outside to a safe space where they can be safely supervised by an adult until they are calm and ready to share their problem.

Toilet Breaks- Recently we have been finding that there has been a lot of damage made to our beautiful new toilets with people standing on toilet seats and on the toilet role dispensers! This makes other people who want to use the toilet really sad. Our rules for the toilets have always been…

Go to the toilet in your break times first

If you do happen to need to go to the toilet during learning time you must…

Ask the teacher if you can go to the toilet
Go to the toilet in pairs, the teacher will choose a buddy
Wait until all whole group instructions are completed before you go to the toilet (this is usually 30 minutes after the break, teachers are aware of students with medical needs and will be sure to make sure no one has an accident)
Report any damage to the toilets to your teachers

If you have any further questions about these breaks your child’s teacher will be able to help you.

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

18/10 – Prep concert – Pevan and Sarah

1/11 – Melbourne Cup Day

11/11 – Student free day

1/12 – Annual School concert

20/12 – Last day of Term 4

This week in Art…

Hello Badger Creek Community,

It’s lovely to be back in the art room for another term. Our students are busily working on new and ongoing projects with great enthusiasm and we look forward to sharing their creations throughout this term.

Our year 5/6 cohort have just glazed their clay looms, which they will start weaving into next week. They have been focussing on colour, thinking about analogous and complementary colour combinations for their artworks.

The 3/4 classes have been painting their dog sculptures, which are very close to being finished and they will exhibit them in the coming weeks.

Students in 1/2 this week made a pinch pot tiger out of clay using a range of construction techniques, including slab, coil and pinch pot. They are super cute and after going in the kiln, will be painted and varnished.

Our lovely preps this week have been looking at landscape drawings with a focus on the horizon line and warm/cool colours. They drew their own landscapes and used oil pastel and food dyes to colour them.

Well done to all our students, you are so creative!

Vanessa Imberger

Art teacher

This week in Prep…

The Preps arrived back at school so excited to share their holiday adventures and catch up with friends that they had missed over the break. We are pretty sure that they missed their teachers just as much!

In Reading, we revisited the strategies cross checking and back up and reread. It was super cool to see how the preps were able to connect these two strategies together by cross checking a word and then back up and rereading.

In Writing, we left it up to the preps to create their own picture prompt. We saw drawings which were imaginative or based on real events. Just a reminder, you can always check out our published writing pieces in the classroom…we publish every Friday. While you are in the classroom, check out our literacy books to see where the magic happens!

In Maths, we were deciding when two sets are of equal size, or when one is smaller or bigger than another. The Preps moved around to different rotations as we practised this skill.

‘Which teacher likes to read to them?’ was our SMART Spelling sentence with our focus word being /t/ /ea/ /ch/ /er/. This was our first word with three digraphs!

The Preps were SUPER excited to spend time with their buddies this week. Our buddies came and played a game of boggle with us. Ask your child how to play using the sounds below:

sh	a	i
l	ea	p
d	s	ch

Friendly reminders:

Please ensure that your child has a wide brim hat to wear during play times as we move into warmer weather.

Love from,

Mrs C and Miss H 😊

Prep News Report (from the children):

We have been learning about adding numbers together and when numbers are equal. We played snap and had to say ‘snap’ when the numbers were the same, this means that they are equal.

We have been learning to write on lines.

We have been writing sentences and then we revise and edit our work so we can publish our work.

We played boggle with our buddies.

Love from,

The Preps 😊

This week in Grade 1 / 2…

YEAR 1/2

What a start to Term 4! Can you believe that in 10 weeks, we will be finishing our year?? Your gorgeous children will soon be Grade 2 and 3s! We can already see a ‘step up’ in the maturity and readiness of our students this term, and know we are going to have an amazing end to the year!

Home Learning

Take Home Reading books, satchels & Reading diaries

We remind all parents/students of the importance of Take Home reading satchels and diaries. Students are encouraged to bring their satchel each Monday to change over their weekly books, selecting 5 new texts for the upcoming weeknights. Our Take Home books live in our classrooms, making this process very quick and simple. Please feel free to help your child to select their books, each Monday. If your child does not have a satchel, please feel free to use something similar such as a manila folder or library bag. We check off Reading Diaries each Monday so please assist your child to record their books, nightly. Please note that Take Home books should be ‘easy’ for your child to read, ensuring that their reading time at home is enjoyable and independent. Please don’t hesitate to chat to any Year 1/2 teacher if you have any questions about Take Home reading.

Reading to your child

Please remember that reading to your child is another great way for enjoyable reading to occur at home. Hearing a fluent reader is highly valuable – we read to our children anywhere from 2-6 times EVERY day.

Mathletics

Mathletics is also a valued part of our learning program. We remind parents/students that we set 5 tasks every week, for students to access at home. If your child requires a username/password reminder, please let us know.

This week in Year 1/2!

We’ve already settled into our final term of 2022. Routines are set and expectations are well and truly understood. We welcome Mrs Riley back to the balit space, full time. We know she is delighted to be back teaching, 5-days a week.

In Reading this week, we have been working on inferring the illustrator’s mood. We analysed the colours and style used to convey character’s feelings and impact our emotions. We also explored how ‘reading’ the pictures helps us to further comprehend the text.

In Writing we have been working on identifying persuasive techniques that author’s use to convince us to do/buy/believe something. We conducted an investigation of magazines to see what techniques they adopt. These included juicy pictures and vivid word choice. We then designed our own posters! We’ve planned a persuasive topic idea to work on next week. 🙂

In Maths, we’ve explored place value. We’ve been playing a great interactive warm-up game, called Wishball. You can play it all home by clicking on the links below:

WISHBALL: (tens) https://www.scootle.edu.au/ec/viewing/L8459/L8459/index.html#

WISHBALL (hundreds) https://www.scootle.edu.au/ec/viewing/L8457/L8457/index.html#

In Inquiry, we’ve begun a new topic on Biological Science. We created a Science Journal (check out some of our front cover photos), word wall and made predictions about what minibeasts we might find in our school garden. These predictions included cicadas, worms, ants and spiders to name a few.

Next week in Year 1/2!

Next week in Literacy, we are completing our Writing cycle by drafting, revising, editing and publishing a persuasive writing piece. We are also beginning a 2-week unit of work on figurative language including onomatopoeia, alliteration, metaphors and similes. We also look forward to booking in some time to buddy read with our Prep students. Take a look at our Term 3 photos attached. Thanks Preps, for hosting us! 🙂

Next week in Maths, we are continuing our work on Place Value, exploring adding 10 and 100, and subtraction 10 or 100, from an ‘unfriendly’ number (one that is not easy to work with, e.g. 53 is not as easy to work with as 50). We are also learning about expanded notation, e.g. 458 is 400 + 50 + 8.

Next week In Inquiry, we will see how accurate our predictions were by going out to the school-yard and taking a closer look. We may need some microscopes to spot a minibeast!

We look forward to a wonderful Week 2 and welcome all our families back to school!

The Year 1/2 Team

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

WELCOME BACK 3/4s

What an amazing week of learning we have begun with! We are so excited to see how motivated everyone is in their learning this week!

This week we launched deep into our Inquiry work in Biological science by examining strange food that we thought was a lemon, but turned out to be a POMELO! Students described the flavour as a “grapefruity mandarin”.

In Reading we are looking at inferring and how we “guess” what happens in a story by inferring meaning from clues and our background knowledge (schema). Using the Boy and the elephant for both inferring and writing, we have been developing the words beyond this amazing picture story book by Freya Blackwood.

In Maths we have been studying shape and in particular, symmetry and transformation. We’ve been hands on looking at symmetry in the environment and creating our own symmetry in our books.

Thanks for all of your amazing support parents in our learning! We look forward to inviting you to some events in the next few weeks! Look out in your inbox!

This week in Grade 5 / 6…

What a wonderful first week back for Term Four – our last term with our wonderful Grade 6s. It’s going to be an incredible one at that!

We’ve hit the ground running in all areas. In Reading, we’re exploring word choice; not just interesting words and phrases, but also analysing the author’s choice in selecting them and evaluating the effectiveness. This ties in nicely with our earlier learning around Author’s Purpose. Even the teachers have expanded their vocabulary. Have you ever heard, used or know the meaning of sagaciously, Vandemonian or abnegation? Our word walls are filling up!

In Writing, we’re revisiting punctuation, looking at dialogue or talking marks, and consolidating our use of apostrophes. “Aren’t we just the best?” rejoiced the students, “You can’t deny it!”

They had us there.

It’s been encouraging to see our recent focus on the operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) being applied successfully in our current measurement unit focusing on volume and capacity. Even though we use volume and capacity every day, it’s not something always we pay particular attention to. Remembering to include our units of measurement and understanding why volume is in cubic measurements is something we are locking into our memory. We’re encouraging students to estimate, measure and check with volume and capacity at home too. So, if you’re cooking dinner, don’t hesitate to get the kids involved to estimate and check the capacity (how much a container holds) and/or mass of objects/ingredients.

This term, Inquiry explores Survival and our students are keen to understand how animals, plants, and fungi adapt to changes in the environment. Our first lesson discussed food access and security. We talked a little about nutrients; what they are, how we consume them, what happens if we have too much or too little, and how different organisms access them. We’re going to set up soil experiments and start planning to test our own hypotheses. We’re excited to have some guest speakers to share about their work in science and sustainability. Keep your eye out on Compass for a permission form for a research visit to Healesville Sanctuary.

We’d also like to congratulate those students who participated in Division Athletics sports on Thursday. From all reports, they did an incredible job and showed excellent sportmanship. We are so proud of them!