Filter Content
- From the Principal
- Kinder working with patterns in nature
- Prep/Grade 1
- Grade 1/2
- Grade 3/4 - Information Texts
- Grade 5/6 - Poetry
- Grade 5/6 - Illuminate Challenge
- Clean Up Australia Day
- Premier's Reading Challenge
- Expression of Interest - Country Gold Coaching positions
- Canteen - Thursday 12th June
- Winter Solstice
- Silent Disco
Dear BPS community,
As we settle into the cooler months and pass the halfway point of Term 2, our school continues to buzz with warmth, energy, and focussed learning! Despite the frosty mornings and the ever-growing mountain of lost jumpers, our students are diving into their learning with bright smiles and curious minds.
To help everyone stay happy and healthy this winter, we’d like to share a few friendly reminders. Please ensure your child is dressed in warm, clearly labelled clothing—especially jumpers, jackets, and hats. Encouraging regular handwashing and packing nutritious snacks can help boost immunity during the colder season. And of course, a good night’s sleep makes those chilly school mornings a little easier for everyone.
I would like to extend a huge congratulations to all students who entered the Bay of Fires Art Competition. Each entry was a wonderful expression of creativity and beautifully captured the theme of “the bush.” A heartfelt thank you goes to Bron Pierce, Melanie Fidler, Tash Lowe, and Tanya Greenwood for supporting our students’ artistic journeys. We’re proud to announce that Poppy Cunliffe and Kai Harris (K–2), Lyla McCabe (3–5), and Rubi-Mae Quin (6–8) have been selected as finalists—well done!
Meanwhile, our Early Childhood playground has had a delightful upgrade. Thanks to the talented team at Landscape Now, the new space is designed to inspire adventure, confidence and essential gross motor in our youngest learners. With steps to climb, balance beams to conquer, and a bigger, better natural sandpit to explore, we wait in anticipation till it’s ready to use. A big thank you to the Bicheno Primary School Association for their generous $15,000 donation, which helped bring this project to life. While the space is looking fantastic, the grass is still a little shy in this chilly weather, so the orange fencing will remain until it’s ready for little feet to run wild.
Finally, a quick reminder about asthma and allergy management. If your child is at risk of anaphylaxis or has asthma, please ensure the school has an up-to-date action plan completed by your medical practitioner. Along with this, we require any necessary medication and a completed Authorisation to Administer Student Medication form. If you’re unsure whether your child’s plan is current, don’t hesitate to contact the school office.
Kind regards,
Tom Spykers
Principal
In Kinder, we have been exploring how patterns help us understand sequences that we see in our everyday lives.
Recently, we have been exploring how to identify and create patterns made from colours, shapes and sizes.
We know that patterns are all around us. Some are created by someone (manmade), and others are made in nature.
Here are some of the patterns we have made.
We have also completed daily name writing activities, where students have identified how many letters, and which letter is at the beginning of their name.
As part of our inquiry into patterns, the Prep/Grade 1 students have been exploring patterns in music, nature, art, literature, and numbers. We have been learning about spiral and symmetrical patterns in nature, as well as investigating patterning in reptiles and eggs. We used our class 100 chart to look for patterns in numbers and noticed lots of different patterns in the numbers. The students then used mini 100s charts to search for their own patterns, finding diagonal patterns of numbers counting up and down, columns of numbers all ending in the same digit, and rows of numbers all starting with the same digit.
As thinkers, the students have been displaying curiosity and open-mindedness as they explore different lines of inquiry into patterns. They have been working on persistence and collaboration as they encounter challenging tasks such as building complex marble runs in groups.
This week, students stepped into the role of mathematicians as they revisited different types of patterns. In this lesson, they thought back on previous learning to sort patterns into categories such as repeating, growing, decreasing, visual, and number-based.
Their learning was guided by the question: “How can we name and sort patterns in different ways?”
Students focused on being Thinkers—using dispositions like being curious, logical, and reflective.
Working in small groups, they discussed, justified, and sorted pattern cards while making deeper connections between patterns in numbers and patterns in the world around them.
This term in English, we've shifted our writing focus from narratives to information texts. We began by enjoying Alison Lester's non-fiction children's book, 'Are We There Yet?', which follows a family traveling around Australia in their camper trailer.
Next, we explored information texts themselves! We looked at an example about Australia on the National Geographic website to identify key features like main headings, sub-headings, paragraphs, and visuals such as photos and maps.
Using the same website, students chose a country they were interested in researching. This led us to develop our "success criteria" for being effective researchers and note-takers. Here's what we decided:
Successful researchers and note takers…
- Use appropriate search engines
- Read information carefully
- Write clear and neat notes
- Share information with people researching the same country
- Ask for support from other people researching the same country
- Stay on task
Our next step is to focus on writing our own information reports. We'll be focusing on developing writing skills including using the correct structure, incorporating descriptive adjectives, and ensuring proper tense and pronouns.
We're excited to share our completed reports with you at parent-teacher meetings at the end of the term!
In 5/6 English, we have been studying poetry. We have been wondering how patterns can help us communicate with creativity and clarity.
Through our inquiry, we have learnt about poetic techniques such as similes and personification as well as structural techniques poets use such as rhyming schemes and different poetic forms.
We have been reading William Wordsworth’s ‘I Wander Lonely as a Cloud’ and investigating how this master poet has used these techniques. We have symbolised the rhyming scheme in this poem as ababcc. We have also used our clarifying and questioning skills to understand the meaning. After much discussion and thinking, we have decided that this poem is about the sustaining beauty of nature. The beauty of the field of daffodils brought Wordsworth joy when he was feeling pensive and lonely.
For the taking action phase of our inquiry, we are writing our own poems to help us when we are feeling pensive and lonely. We took some time to be in nature and write some creative observations using the techniques we have learnt about. We are now editing and forming our poems. We are being mindful of the patterns we are creating in our writing that will help our reader understand and enjoy our poem. We can’t wait to share them with you!
Week 3 has been our Illuminate Challenge week! Adam Mosgul from Illuminate has been guiding our 3-6 students through a challenge to create a STEM solution to a local problem.
Students have had to rely on their Self Manager, Thinker and Collaborator assets as they work to solve complex issues and prototype their solutions. Teams were made up of different grades, allowing students to build deeper connections and use each other’s strengths.
We have been very proud of the way our students have tackled some difficult tasks, thought deeply and problem solved. They have included each other and managed to keep to tight deadlines. Well done teams!
Grades 3-6 practised being a contributor to our community by cleaning up the foreshore on Wednesday 4th June. We’d like to thank Nigel Palfreyman for helping us and providing us with the bigger picture of how this supports the Great East Coast Clean Up. It was pleasing to see that there was very little rubbish around. It was even better to watch a whale breaching off the point while we searched for rubbish!
We can’t wait to launch the Premier’s Reading Challenge at BPS on 16th June!
Reading is a crucial part of learning and at BPS we value any opportunity to get our nose in a book.
Students will be given a book-mark and are encouraged to set a target for how many books they can read during the challenge. Please support your child to record books read on their reading log.
All children who achieve their target will go into a draw for a prize!
Our Student Leaders will also be leading a buddy reading program across the school during the challenge. This will support children in their reading targets and build connections between students of all grades. There is nothing like sharing a good book!
BEFORE YOU ORDER PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR CHILD IS SET UP IN THE CORRECT CLASS IN SPRIGGY
Dear Parents,
Blue Edge Bakery will provide the next canteen lunch on Thursday 12th June.
To make this an ongoing offer, we need volunteers to pick up the lunches from the bakery and deliver it to the school. Please get in touch with me if you are happy to go on a roster to help out maybe once a term. 0487 513 886 (Susanne Lucas)
Please make sure to download the Spriggy Schools app to order your child's lunch. For all parents that have the app installed already, please make sure to allocate the correct class to your child before you order. Cash orders are not accepted. Our volunteers rely on accurate information to make it as easy as possible to get the lunch order to your child on the day.
The Bicheno Primary School Association committee
Dear parents and families,
As the winter nights grow longer and colder, we invite you to come together for two special events that promise warmth, joy, and community. Whether you're looking to connect, celebrate, or simply enjoy the season, there's something for everyone.
As the longest night of the year approaches, we invite you to gather with us for a heartwarming Winter Solstice Celebration filled with fun, music, and delicious hot soup to chase away the chill.
? When: Friday, 20th June @ 3.30pm
? What to Expect: Live music, community vibes, and comforting bowls of hot soup
? Please Note: This is a strictly non-alcoholic event
Let’s embrace the beauty of winter together—bring your warmth, your friends, and your cozy spirit!
Get Ready to Boogie at Our Tropical Silent Disco!
Thursday, 27th June
Shake off the winter blues and step into a summer state of mind at our Tropical Silent Disco! We’re turning up the heat with island vibes, good tunes, and a whole lot of dancing—headphones on, worries off!
? When: Thursday, 27th June
? Theme: Tropical! Think bright colours, florals, and summery fun
? Who’s Invited: Everyone—parents and carers are welcome to join in the fun!
Dress to impress in your most fabulous tropical outfit and get ready to groove the afternoon away.
NOTICEBOARD