Week 4, Term 3

SRC News

Hello from the Preps! 

This week in Literacy, we have been exploring syllables. We also learnt a new two-letter sound ‘ck’ (black duck) and the rule that helps us know when to use it. We use ‘ck’ at the end of a word, after a vowel saying it’s first sound. It is challenging to spell many words with the ‘k’ sound because it could be a ‘k’, ‘c’ or ‘ck’! We will keep practising. This week in handwriting we learnt how to write ‘sky’ letters (letters that start in the sky and finish in the grass) and ‘dirt’ letters (letters that start in the grass and finish in the dirt) using our new dotted thirds lines.

In Maths, we have continued exploring subtraction through using number tracks, number lines and playing ‘Animal Rescue’. Thank you to families who helped research animals.

To finish off our Big Question “ How are we connected to living things?”, students participated in the Friday STEAM challenge where they used this information to create a model of their animal and it’s habitat. Then at our ‘Expo’ everyone spoke confidently and shared their animal facts. Thanks to those families that came. We enjoyed our ‘Neurodiversity Celebration Day’ on Thursday, where we read the book ‘All Brains Are Different’. We discussed how our brains are all different and we are all unique. We decorated our own puzzle piece with pictures of things we like, then joined them altogether to create a completed Prep puzzle. If you want to have a look it is on the window on the ramp outside the classrooms.

Next week is a busy, fun packed week. Here are two big highlights that are happening:

• On Monday, we will be celebrating Book Week with our whole school Book Parade. We are looking forward to celebrating at our school assembly at 9am, where we will get to see everyone dressed up as a book character. The students will then work in multi-age groups to read a shortlisted book and make a craft.

• On Friday, we are celebrating Winter with our Winter Warm Up. Students can come to school in their pyjamas. We will enjoy delicious soup and watch a movie together.

In Literacy, we will continue focusing on the ‘ck’ rule when spelling, and in Maths, we will be learning about mass and capacity.

Enjoy your weekend,

Miss Else and Nicole

Hello from the Golden Wattle building!

What a fun-filled week we’ve had! This week, we have put everything we have learned about animals, their adaptations and their symbiotic relationships together as we created models and habitats of our imagined animals. We thought about the features they need to survive in their habitats, how they source their food, and what they do to protect themselves from predators. We look forward to sharing these with you at our student-led expo later this term.

In Literacy, we enjoyed reading Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing. We had wonderful discussions about belonging, feeling alone, looking out for others and being curious about the world around us. We used the book as a source to discuss the four different sentence types: statements, questions, exclamations and commands and wrote our own sentences based on the story.

In Maths, we have continued our focus on multiplication by making groups and arrays out of collections of objects. We have focused on multiples of 2, 5 and 10 and practised skip counting to find the total of our collections.

Thursday was Neurodiversity Celebration Day, where we learned more about how our brains are all different and with that comes individual strengths and challenges. We thought about our own unique brains and identified our personal strengths and preferences. We also enjoyed making a whole-school human rainbow using our colourful outfits!

It was also Science Week, and our classes participated in a range of different science-related activities. Some looked at the concept of weight and force distribution by seeing if balloons can lift a person or a group of people off the ground! Others participated in an online incursion with Ecolinc where they made bug boxes. We also listened to Mark Greenwood, read his new book, Lucky's Star online. Lucky's Star explores the true story of the meteorite that landed in Murchison, Victoria in 1969. Timely considering the meteorite we experienced this week!

Hello from the Grade 3/4s! 

This week, we have integrated our Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships wellbeing program with our literacy lessons. Students wrote and illustrated a story about help-seeking that includes details about the emotions their character felt, and the coping strategies and strengths their character used when faced with a challenging situation. We look forward to sharing our stories with some younger students at our school when they are completed.  This helps us to pass on what we have been learning about emotional responses, positive coping, help-seeking and persistence. Throughout our story writing we revised the structure of a narrative, the importance of using various ways to start our sentences, as well as using punctuation, verbs and adverbs effectively. 

In Maths, we have been exploring division and its relationship to multiplication.  We have been solving some open-ended tasks such as:  

Grandma has a bag of 96 cookies that she wants to share equally among her grandchildren. Each grandchild must receive the same number of cookies, with none left over.​ What are all the different possible numbers of grandchildren she could have and how many cookies would they receive? 

Students have been practising using different strategies to divide both small and large numbers. The students have been working hard to master these skills, and it's great to see their confidence growing as they tackle more challenging problems. 

As part of CNPS Neurodiversity Celebration Day students explored the story, The Brain Forest, which follows a mother and her son down the path of understanding the different ways brains can be. Brains that go fast, brains that go slow, brains that do what they're told, brains that say NO! The story focusses around building a strengths-based society where everyone is valued for what they have to offer. It helped our classes start conversations about what we can do to create more inclusive environments.  We responded to the text by creating our own Brain Forests identifying what we love about our brain and things that our brains love to have which makes everyone unique. 

Next week is a busy but exciting week ahead. We look forward to the Book Week Parade on Monday, the Grow your Mind incursion on Tuesday, an incursion with Drama Victoria on Thursday and finishing the day with our pyjamas, soup and movies for the Winter Warm Up on Friday. In between these fun activities we will manage to squeeze in some learning!

Enjoy your weekend,

Sally, Louise, Hannah, Carly and Mr Scott

Hello 5/6 families, It’s been another busy and productive week in the Silver Banksia building! 

We’re now halfway through our P4P program with Bron. This week, students reflected on what the adults in their lives are asking, and how conversations can be made more respectful and create a safe space to share thoughts. As always, there were some curious questions—especially around how babies are made—and Bron provided clear, factual answers while dispelling common myths. Students were also set a new life-skills challenge… learning how to use the washing machine!

In Literacy, we began working with the DIAL template to plan a character analysis. Students explored how the author describes Ruby in Us Mob Walawurru and how the illustrations on the front cover can help readers make inferences about her character. This process is helping students develop stronger inference and analytical skills.

We continued our focus on data collection, representation, and interpretation. Students will soon be completing a learning journal task to demonstrate their understanding of data and graphs. A friendly reminder—please return any learning journals that are still at home so students can complete their work.

In our Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships work, we revisited the topic of help-seeking. Students created their own “helping hands” to identify the people they can support, as well as those they can turn to when they need help. We also practiced having trust and courage by leading a peer blind folded around the classroom.

This week, CNPS celebrated Neurodiversity Celebration Day. We listened to some of our neurodivergent students share their experiences and learned that although our brains all receive the same information, we can interpret it in different ways.

We compared similarities and differences in the way our brains work, and explored important questions, such as:

• How can we show respect for everyone’s different ways of thinking and learning?

• What accommodations might someone need to fully participate, and how can we help?

• Why is understanding different brain types important?

• How can we plan group projects so everyone can contribute using their strengths?

• What could we do if we noticed someone’s needs weren’t being met?

• These conversations sparked empathy, respect, and a deeper appreciation for the diversity in our classrooms.

We’ve got a full and exciting week coming up: 

Book Week Parade – Monday

P4P – Wednesday

Winter Warm Up – Friday

Have a great weekend,
Hannah, Jay, Mr Higgins, Bec, Ben & Nicci

 HARI KEMERDEKAAN – Independence day

This Sunday marks the 80th anniversary of Indonesian Independence Day. As part of this occasion our friends from ‘Baguskan’, Nita & Aaron, who we have partnered with for our annual Indonesian day, have been invited to perform with their gamelan & dance group at Federation Square in Melbourne on Sunday 17th August, and have extended that invitation to our students and their families. There will be a range of celebratory activities happening from 1.30pm and it will be a great opportunity to have an immersive Indonesian cultural experience. If any students would like to participate in the dance performance that they learned and practised in class this week then they are welcome to come along and join in from 1pm, which will allow time for costume preparation. The performance will be no longer than 30 minutes total. The dance is a follow on from the dance that was performed earlier this year at the Castlemaine Fringe Festival and is part of a broader dance, the ‘Ponogoro Reog’ that is being developed by Baguskan. With Aaron & Nita’s recent success of receiving a grant to share this unique cultural form we can look forward to seeing more of this in our community and hopefully being part of future local performances too.

If anyone would like more information, then please contact Ibu Kimberley or Nita directly.

Kimberley.craig@education.vic.gov.au

Nita Rahayu – 0421 912 012

Loddon Mallee Region Soccer – 19 August

Our Grade 5/6 Girls’ Team were the Goldfields Division Soccer winners last term. We wish them well as the team prepares to head to Swan Hill on Tuesday 19th August to compete in the Loddon Mallee Region Soccer. Car pools will depart from school at the Bull St Gate at 7:30am. Teams will need to arrive by 10:15 for an event briefing before their first match at 11:00. The day will conclude at about 2pm. Rules and fixtures can be found on the School Sport Victoria event webpage.

Jay will be the teacher attending, but transport will not be provided by school. Families will need to organise transport for their children – carpooling is possible but needs to be arranged by you.

Please return permission forms on Monday if you haven’t already done so.

District Basketball, Cricket and Tennis – 5 September

During Grade 3-6 P.E. lessons this term, we have been practising cricket and tennis in preparation for the District event on Friday 5th September. Grade 5/6 students have selected their preferred sport to participate in match play against students from other schools. The Grade 3/4 classes will participate in skill rotations in both cricket and tennis (having already had their basketball experience in Term 1).

Permission forms will be sent home next week. We will require the support from parents/carers to help supervise groups of students. Please indicate your availability on the form or to your class teacher.

PARENT HELP WANTED!

We are chasing some volunteers for our Whole School Performance later this term. If you are able to assist with the production in any way, please let us know by filling in the form below.

Prep E

Oscar S - for the brave way you make mistakes and have another go.
Rassie M - for the way you have been concentrating and trying your hardest every day when learning to write in dotted thirds.

Prep N

Clancy H - for sharing your knowledge of animals with such enthusiasm and passion.
Amelie E - for your kindness, thoughtfulness and passion for learning that you bring to our classroom each day.

1/2 CS

Leo J - for your enthusiastic approach to maths.
Ella M - for the care and detail you put into your animal habitat.

1/2 L

Alice D - for the care you put into drawing your exceptionally neat arrays.
Torben E - for the enthusiastic and confident way you explored arrays in maths this week.

1/2 WA

Scout V - for the fantastic design and creation of your mythical animal, the Dolphingo.
Miles S - for consistently making strong choices. Your friends and teachers can always rely upon you.

3/4 H

Wesley H - for being a lovely friend and for working with other to solve a maths challenge.
Caitlyn Y - for persisting in your understanding of division.

3/4 L

Quinlyn N + Henry C - for working well to respectfully negotiate and compromise to include each other's ideas.

3/4 PS

Elijah A - for your passion and focus when completing division tasks.
Jack B - for your outstanding work ethic and focus during activities this week.

3/4 S

Anita F + Elijah G - for the brave way that you were willing to have an open and honest discussion with your classmates.

5/6 BH

Beau W - for your contributions during RRRR lessons.

5/6 BN

Jess H - for your thoughtful engagement with your movie review of Inside Out 2.
Poppi W - for taking initiative and using your skills to fix our couch.

5/6 H

Luke C - for your enthusiasm and positive attitude towards learning.
Atticus H - for the high standard of writing you demonstrated during a literacy review.

5/6 J

Keir E - for your thoughtful contributions to our neurodiversity discussions throughout the week.
Evelina S - for working on your reading fluency and summoning the courage to read to the class.

Indonesian

Otto C - for the respectful and focused way you approach all learning tasks.

Performing Arts

Pranavi K - for the wonderful, emotive way you sing during Performing Arts.

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