Week 6, Term 2

Hello from the Prep rooms!   

To celebrate meeting all twenty-six characters from Milo’s Birthday Surprise, the highlight this week was Milo’s Birthday Party, an event we had all been eagerly anticipating! We were incredibly impressed with the effort everyone put into dressing up as one of Milo’s friends and bringing in a plate of food that began with the same letter as their character's name. For example, Jack Jellyfish brought in jelly cups, Roxy Rabbit delighted us with rocky road and Oscar Octopus shared Oreo cupcakes. Throughout the day, we enjoyed a range of fun activities, including a character hunt around the school, a character quiz and classic party games such as pass-the-parcel, musical chairs and bobs and statues. We then got to share the wonderful assortment of themed party food. Thank you for supporting this memorable and fun event, it was a fantastic experience for all the students.

As well as the party, students also completed their second Cold Write for the year. It was amazing to see the independence and growth they have shown since the first independent writing sample in Term One.

In Maths, our focus has been on money. We explored the different Australian coins, learning about their value and the unique animals on each of them. A highlight was creating coin rubbings and setting up our own shops, which made the learning hands on and fun.

As part of Reconciliation Week, students read Welcome to Country and reflected on their connection to the land by writing about their favourite thing to do on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. We also explored a range of other books to improve our understanding and appreciation of First Nations culture and history.

Next week in Literacy, we will be meeting the FSZL Gang and reading and writing words using these codes. We will also continue to practise our handwriting daily as we become more confident in writing full sentences, remembering to include capital letters at the beginning, spaces between words and full stops at the end. In Maths, we will begin exploring numbers beyond ten.

Enjoy the weekend,

Nicole and Miss Else

Hello from the Golden Wattle Building!

This week, the Grade 1/2s read Looking After Country with Fire by Victor Steffensen as part of Reconciliation Week. We discussed how First Nations people have listened and responded to the land and made friends with fire, using this knowledge to encourage plants and seeds to flourish, and creating beautiful places for both animals and people to live. Afterwards, we made our own campfire and either coloured in leaves or plucked pieces of grass and one-by-one dropped them into the fire with a wish of reconciliation.

In Literacy, we have been focusing on questions. This tied in well to our Big Question "What do we know about where we live?", as we came up with questions to interview Miss Cox, our school’s business manager, who has lived in Castlemaine her whole life. Some of our questions included:

What was your favourite place in Castlemaine?
Did you ever get the cane?
Who was your favourite teacher?
Did you use chalk and slate to write on?
Did you bring your own food or did they give it to you at school?
What has changed in our school over the years?

In Maths we have continued building our addition and subtraction skills, this week focusing on using our knowledge of place value. We practised adding and subtracting using base-10 blocks and place value charts. A favourite game was ‘Addition Battle’. This involved using spinners to generate two 2-digit or 3-digit numbers. We then added the tens and ones of each number together to find the total (or hundreds, tens and ones for 3-digit numbers). We competed against a partner and whoever had the largest total won! 

We put our engineers’ hats on as part of our STEAM Challenge this week, where we looked at transportation through history and worked in small groups to design and build a form of transport for our class mascots. The challenge was ensuring that our mascots could safely travel the length of our classroom without falling out! We came to realise this wasn’t so easy! Afterwards we reflected on how we contributed to our groups and whether we would do anything differently next time.

Our ‘Star of the Week’ enjoyed sharing their class journal showing what they got up to on the weekend with our class mascots. We also practised generating good questions by interviewing our Star of the Week to learn more about them.

Next week, our Big Question inquiry focuses around how toys have changed over time. In Literacy, we will be identifying the difference between fragments and complete sentences, while in Maths, we’ll deepen our understanding of addition and subtraction by looking at near doubles and exploring open-ended questions.

We hope you have a lovely weekend,

Wendy, Laura, Claire, Sarah and Andrew. 

Welcome to the Silver Banksia, 

This week we have been fortunate to have been part of some rich learning experiences within our community as we move towards Reconciliation. Our students were part of the Sorry Day Commemoration at Victory Park, and we were proud of Lochie and Gulliver who spoke from the heart on the topic of Reconciliation. We also got to meet the legendary Shane Howard as we sang "Solid Rock" on the steps of the Market Building.  

Our Literacy this week has been focused on researching and attempting to understand defining moments in the history of Australia since colonisation for First Nations people. Here is Remy’s understanding of Sorry Day and the Stolen Generation:  

From 1920 to 1970, Australians took Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from their families and forced [them] to act like a white person. They were placed in foster homes, boarding schools, orphanages and many more unforgiving homes. They told the children that their family had died or something horrific of the sort. The 26th of May, Sorry Day marks the day, seventeen years ago, when Kevin Rudd apologised on behalf of Australia for what the First Nations people went through and are still impacted by today. Sorry Day starts an active week full of learning and reflecting on the Indigenous people’s ways of living back then. We learn about their ancestors and Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people nowadays. This is called Reconciliation Week, and it all starts by saying sorry.

Our wellbeing session this week was focused on building community and cohesion amongst the groups as students responded to the challenge of making a bridge out of paper straws. Students were enthusiastic and creative in the way they worked together as we focused on the Wilson values; “Pursue your personal best no matter who you work with”.

In Maths, we have been exploring fractions and have set the challenge for students to develop their own ‘flag’ for their own country. This has allowed them to show their knowledge of fractions and how to simplify them. Next week we will be exploring division.

Region Cross Country 

Congratulations to our eight students who qualified for the Region Cross Country in St Arnaud this week; Jack T, Remy V, Lani M, Mary C, Darcy B, Eli H, Sofia D and Sadie A. Thank you to the families for supporting your child to attend. Please send in any other photos to include in next week’s newsletter. Best wishes to Mary, who finished in the top 12 and progresses on to the State Final early next term.

House Athletics Grade 3-6

Today, our Grade 3-6 students participated in the House Athletics. Stay tuned for a full report next week.

Bendigo Braves School Cup 

Our CNPS team was valiant in the Bendigo Braves School Cup Semi Final last weekend, but unfortunately hasn’t made it through to the final. Great effort and achievement to all of our students who took part. Thank you to the families for supporting your child to participate in this fun event and watch some elite basketball together! Thanks Mei for the photos.

1/2 CS

Jarvis H - for your focused effort when writing questions to ask Miss Cox.
Asha M - for the insightful contributions and connections you make during shared stories

1/2 L

Finny L - for the care you show during handwriting sessions, and the effort you are making to turn your Ps around.
Ben E - for the wonder you showed when we learnt about how indigenous people light cool-burn fires to care for country.

1/2 WA

Rosie W - for your thoughtful questions and beautiful presentation of the Miss Cox interview.
Dorothy M - for carefully thinking through a maths problem and explaining your thinking to the class.

3/4 H

Sonny L - for the positive way you approached athletics day.
Ffion M - for always looking for the wellbeing of your classmates.

3/4 L

Codie R - for the way you help out without being asked.
Eli H - for your awesome effort at regional Cross Country.

3/4 S

Bexley B - for the resilience you showed when overcoming challenges on camp.
Daisy H - for the confident way you answered questions during our Reconciliation Week session.

5/6 BC

Lula T - for the leadership you bring to our class in frequently including others during learning.
Hugo A - for frequently seeking and respectfully giving feedback.

5/6 BN

Jessica H - for always turning up ready to do your best work.
Agnes J - for the growth mindset you show in all aspects of your learning.

5/6 H

Jet M - for stepping in to support your classmates.
Alba M - for your dedication to achieving your personal best.

5/6 J

Lachlan H - for being proactive in catching up on recent writing.

Stilt Licenses

Level 1: Aster B, Thea R, Pippa W
Level 2: Codie R, Frances W

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