Week 8, Term 2

JAY DOBELL - an article by Rafi A

Jay is an amazing teacher who has been working at C.N.P.S. for almost 6 years. 

Jay likes pizza, writing and soccer. His favourite soccer team, Melbourne City, just won the grand final, which made him very happy. Even though he likes soccer, he also likes footy, and he goes for the Saints. 

Jay’s favourite book is The Giving Tree. This is his 43rd year on the planet! He will be turning 43 on 5th of November.

Jay is pictured with his treasured class mascot, Brett.

This week, I want to share a couple of pages from a great resource, ‘Neurodiversity Affirming Handbook’ by Megan Mott at ‘AdaptEd.’ which focus on gaining a diagnosis for a neurodivergence.  

Here at school, we’ve observed the benefits to students better understanding their neurotype whether they have autism, ADHD, dyscalculia, dyslexia, dysgraphia or another neurodivergence.  

The only change I would make to the below graphic is the neat, straight line between ‘noticing differences’ and ‘diagnosis – in reality, there are more twists and turns and ups and downs in that path! 

Hello from the Preps! 

This week in Literacy, we continued reading and writing words that end in double consonants: ff, ll, ss, and zz—commonly known as the ‘FSZL gang’. We enjoyed the challenge of using these correctly in our writing and have been looking carefully to avoid being tricked by ‘rule breaker’ words such as has, is, and if. We have also been focusing on writing on the lines, putting spaces between words, and using full stops at the end of sentences. It’s been amazing to see the improvement we are making each week! 

In Maths, we have continued our focus counting and understanding place value with numbers to 20. We have identified missing numbers and ordering them from smallest to largest. As part of our Big Question, we read several Dreamtime stories such as ‘How the bird got their colours’ and ‘How the kangaroo got his tail’, which the students thoroughly enjoyed.

In Wellbeing, during our Positive Coping session, we read ‘The Magical Yet’ and discussed how not being able to do something yet doesn’t mean we won’t be able to do it in the future. We shared times when we have found things hard and how that made us feel. We then explored helpful self-talk we can use to encourage ourselves to try something new or to keep going when things are hard. For example, “I think I can, I think I can.”.

Our STEAM challenge this week was to design and build a boat to help the Gingerbread Man cross the river, inspired by the story The Gingerbread Man. We loved testing our designs and learned that sometimes things don’t work the first time—and that’s OK!

Next week, in Literacy, we will focus on add ‘s’ and ‘es’ to words and, in maths, we will continue growing in confidence counting, writing, ordering and matching collections, the numbers 11-20.

We hope you all enjoy your weekend. 

Nicole and Miss Else

This week in Literacy we have continued our big question, "What do we know about where we live?" with an Indigenous focus. Students have enjoyed exploring and retelling Indigenous creation stories by sharing some classic stories such as Tarrangower and Lalgambook (the two feuding volcanoes), Tiddalick, Bunjil: Creation Story and The Rainbow Serpent. Students delved deeper into the stories by discussing the message behind each story and what they are trying to teach us.  We have used these texts in our writing as our writing focus has been on using various ways to start our sentences, as well as using verbs and adverbs effectively. 

We have continued learning about Positive Coping through our wellbeing program, Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships. This week we have been focusing on making apologies – an important skill for everyone! Students described the kinds of actions that can hurt or upset others and how they might make a meaningful apology. While discussing some scenarios and real-life situations students practised ways to apologise when they have hurt or upset someone.

Students also had the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery with Hannah as part of the Arts program. Students enjoyed the exhibition of local artist Les Thornton and made connections with his paintings of familiar buildings throughout Castlemaine. Thank you to Hannah for organising such a rich experience for our students and thank you to the parents who helped out on the day. 

Next week, as part of our big question "What do we know about where we live?", we will recognise how Indigenous cultures care for and live in balance with the land, investigate division in Maths and use games to talk about skills for problem-solving in our wellbeing lessons.

Included below are some photos from the Grade Four camp. You can also view our photo gallery from the Grade Three camp here.

Enjoy the weekend,

Sally, Louise, Mr Scott and Hannah

It has been a cold and wintry week here in Silver Banksia.

We continued with our learning about Civics and Citizenship and about different types of governments. Students synthesised this information by creating their own ‘country’ and choosing what type of government they would have and why. We will continue with this after our Incursion on Monday about the Parliamentary Process.

We have continued our learning about decimals this week, relating them to fractions and locating them on a number line. We recorded times on stopwatches to build our understanding of tenths and hundredths. It was quite a challenge to stop a stopwatch at exactly 10.00 seconds!

In Literacy, we have continued to read about Australia’s history and using a structure to write paragraphs. Here is Mick’s recount of the Convict era and the start of Federation: 

CONVICTS 1788  

In 1788 the first fleet arrived and there were 11 ships with convicts in them. Convicts are prisoners. The notorious prisoners would have a person to keep an eye on them so they didn’t get in to trouble. Their food was bread and water, some of the punishments were getting flogged by a leather rope with little shards of metal in them. The men would get lashed on the back and the boys would get lashed on the bum. There were about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts, if they behaved, they could be free and would even get some land. They brought the convicts to Australia because Australia had more space for prisons.     

FEDERATION

All of the states were separated in Australia in the late 1800s. Federation is where all separated states become a whole country. In the 1800s each colony had its own laws at the time, and different railway gauge, postage stamps and taxes. All of the states were separated, all the states thought they should start a federation so they did. It was pretty tough to get everyone to agree. But once all six states agreed they made Australia. Australia became a great federation and still to this day. In the 1800s Chinese, black people and different countries couldn’t come to Australia even though it wasn’t white people’s country; it was Aboriginal land and always will be. Nowadays everybody can come to Australia.

Our Wellbeing topic this week has been Problem Solving. We needed to write a problem we have on the stem of a flower, and then choose many different ways we could possibly respond to the problem (written in the petals). We then talked about which response would lead to the best outcome. Our problems were varied but included: fighting with siblings, needing to learn a language, going to a different high school to their friends, and wondering why there weren’t more girls on the oval. There were many rich discussions.

We also had an excursion to Castlemaine Secondary College on Friday. Two classes participated in a science experiment while the other two engaged with a materials technology task. Following this, the Grade 6 students went to Music while the Grade 5 students toured the Technology area.

The Grade 3/4 students thoroughly enjoyed their visit to the Castlemaine Art Museum this week, exploring Sir Leslie Thornton’s exhibition. We were fortunate to have the gallery all to ourselves with two volunteers. It was wonderful to see the students actively engaging with the artworks, asking thoughtful questions, and making personal connections to the familiar subject matter.  

Thank you to the parents who gave up their time to join us.

Essendon AFLW Player Visit 

On Monday 16th June, Essendon AFLW players will visit our school at 12:00-12:45 for a combination of a Question and Answer and kick-to-kick session with some of our classes. Please be aware that students may be captured by photograph or video by AFL Vic, as per our current permissions.

Goldfields Division Winter Sport (select Grade 5/6 teams) 

On Monday 23rd June, we will be entering football, netball and soccer teams to contest the Goldfields Division event. This is a progression from our District, where our students are selected for these teams to play against other schools from Macedon Ranges and Maryborough, as well as our own local Castlemaine area. Permission notes to be returned with payment to the office by Thursday 19th June. Parents and carers are invited to assist us with coaching and umpiring these teams, which may include lunchtime training before the day if you’re available. We are also hoping to borrow footy jumpers from a local club, so please get in contact with carly.mcginniskin@education.vic.gov.au if you can help with any of these tasks.

Prep E

Jade B - for the confident way you are writing, counting and ordering numbers to 20 in Maths.
Arlo M - for always listening for your turn to share during classroom discussions and instructions.

Prep N

Amelie E - for showing your classmates how to be kind, caring and make great choices every day!
Leo L - for the confident way you are reading words automatically without needing to sound them out.

1/2 CS

Alfie M - for the enthusiastic way you are practising your sounds when reading.
Oona D - for showing curiosity and wonder by bringing in books related to our Big Question.

1/2 L

Ollie A - for showing care by stopping to support a classmate who had tripped during memory tag.
Grace J - for your peg doll clothes design, inspired by your doll's love of nature and animals.

1/2 WA

Hazel S - for the passion you show learning your maths facts.
Georgie N - for the beautiful and creative repeating pattern work in maths.

3/4 L

Quinlyn N - for the way you pursue your personal best in all learning activities.
Eli H - for your open and honest conversations with your teacher.

3/4 PS

Harper J - for your passion and dedication during our maths zoo work.
Eliza S - for having the courage to ask questions during challenging maths sessions.

3/4 S

Frances B - for your impressive use of descriptive phrases in your Big Write.
Elijah G - for the care and effort you showed during the Table City Skyline maths task.
Art T - for the kind and supportive way you shared your ICT expertise with your peers.

5/6 BC

Beatrix V - for the great strides you have shown during fraction and decimal work.
Emilia H - for always having the courage to try new things.

5/6 BN

Hendy S - for the creativity of your writing about Australia's history.
Orlando F - for your thorough understanding of our Australia's history readings, and skill in writing about it.

5/6 H

Charlie S - for consistently demonstrating a strong work ethic.
Ivy R - for working hard and kicking goals.
Evan M - for putting others before yourself and contributing to the greater good.

Indonesian

Eddie C -  for consistently pushing your learning to the next level.
Louis H - for the positive and curious approach you bring towards your learning.
Florence T - for working hard on your 'Transportasi' poster and always putting in 100% effort.
Jack T (5/6BC) - for the kind and caring way you show up in your classroom and for the effort you apply to focusing.

Note: Last week's Values Awards will also be handed out at assembly on Monday.

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