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Our Motto: Friendly Respectful Courageous Learning
Our Commitment: With courage we learn, connecting to people and place. Striving for excellence by being curious, creative, and resilient.
Dear Bicheno Primary School Community,
This week, we had the pleasure of welcoming our professional learning partner, Shaz Bailey, to Bicheno Primary School. Shaz has been working closely with our teaching team to support ongoing reflection and refinement of our classroom practices, particularly around student agency and learning through an inquiry lens. Her insights have helped us deepen our understanding of how to empower students to take ownership of their learning, ask meaningful questions, and explore concepts that support our understanding of the world. It’s been a valuable opportunity for staff to collaborate, share strategies, and continue building a learning environment where students feel confident, capable, and engaged.
Across the school, students have also been exploring the concept of perspective, a rich and complex theme that has been the focus through our inquiry units. Whether unpacking characters in literature, navigating social situations, or discussing ideas around democracy and decision-making, students are learning to consider multiple viewpoints and reflect on how experiences shape understanding. These conversations are helping to build empathy, critical thinking, and respectful dialogue—skills that are essential both in and beyond the classroom.
Looking ahead, we’re excited to celebrate the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Book Week in Week 5. This year’s theme, “Book an Adventure!”, is a perfect fit for our school’s spirit of exploration and imagination. Book Week is always a highlight on our calendar, it’s a time when stories come alive with our costumes, and students dive into the magical worlds that books offer. This year’s CBCA feature the work of Jess McGeachin. Jess is an award-winning Australian picture book illustrator whose artwork beautifully captures the adventurous essence of this year’s theme. Her illustration, a whimsical map filled with imaginary characters and fantastical landscapes, invites young readers to embark on journeys beyond the page. It’s a celebration of creativity, curiosity, and the power of storytelling to transport us to new places. Jess’ work reminds us that every book is a doorway to adventure, and every reader is an explorer. We look forward to seeing how our students respond to this theme, through reading, writing, art, and of course, dressing up for our Book Week parade!
Thank you for your continued support. As always, we’re proud to be growing a school community where learning is purposeful, and full of possibility.
Kind regards,
Tom Spykers
Principal
Our Term Three inquiry is about how different perspectives influence us. As a class, we have talked about how perspectives are the way we think and view things. We know that everyone has their own perspective.
We have also been engaging in Investitive play to explore the concepts of perspectives, our class favourite is the Space Station. This is where students can hop in our Kinder rocket and blast off into space. We have explored how different planets can appear large or small, depending on the position of the rocket in the solar system. We can also explore perspective when we look through our very own telescope.
Our Learner Asset for this term is being a communicator. We have been investigating ways to share our thinking and ideas in different ways. We demonstrated this asset by responding to the learning question What do you think our playground needs?
The class went out into the Early Childhood Playground and discussed with a partner the things they believe the playground needs. Then, we brainstormed our ideas and then drew a detailed illustration of what we believe our playground needs.
Here are our perspectives on this.
In maths we have been learning how to read and order numbers to 100 (and beyond). The students have worked collaboratively on a range of activities to reinforce these concepts, including creating a large whole-class 120 chart, playing “race to 100”, making greater/lesser crocodiles to compare two numbers, and making collections of 100 objects.
For science we are learning about what living things need to survive. We have two class stick insects, Larry and Leafy and the children have taken responsibility for setting up the enclosure, checking on the insects each day, and changing the leaves once a week. Larry and Leafy are two different species of stick insect, and so far we have noticed that Larry is much better at camouflaging and Leafy sheds it’s skin as it grows. The students have also designed and set up their own “wildlife rescue” role play area, by considering all the different things the animals will need to help them recover from their injuries and return to the wild.
Exploring Multiplication
During Weeks 2 and 3, students in 1/2 have been exploring multiplication through the concepts of making equal groups, skip counting by twos, and representing arrays. They've been guided by our learning question:
“How can we show multiplication using groups and arrays?”
Using hands-on materials like counters and unifix blocks, students have been building equal groups and arranging them into arrays to help them understand how multiplication works. They have also been learning to connect these groups to matching multiplication sentences (e.g. 4 groups of 2 = 8).
Our learner asset focus has been Thinker, and they’ve been asking themselves:
“How can we use what we know to solve problems in different ways?”
This hands-on learning has helped students show their thinking clearly and build strong foundations in multiplication.
How Do Different Perspectives Shape What Happens in a Democracy?
Host Curriculum Area: HASS
Learner Asset: Communicator
Concept Focus: Perspective
We unpacked the concept of perspective by exploring how people can see the same issue in different ways. Using the Macquarie Point Stadium as our focus, students worked in collaborative groups, each representing a different character with a unique viewpoint.
As a class, we also explored the Communicator learner asset, discussing why being a good communicator is important in a democracy—especially when listening to others and sharing our own opinions respectfully.
We went deeper into what respectful sharing and listening looks like in our democratic classroom. Being a communicator means expressing our ideas clearly, listening with care, and trying to understand different perspectives—even when we don’t agree.
On Thursday 7th August, St Marys District School Grade 5/6 students visited for a challenge day. This event was part of the transition process to build connections and relationships with St Marys District School. Students were put in groups and worked through a STEM challenge, physical challenges and an Art challenge.
It was great to see new friendships form and collaboration between the students. Thanks to Ms Walsh for organising the challenge day!
Rachel and Katie, set off on an adventure with our book buddies, Penny the Platypus, Franklin the Fairy Penguin, and Wesley the Wombat. Bringing some beautiful Australian authored and illustrated books supplied by Red Parka, a Hobart small business. We were heading to the East Coast, ready for deluges of rain, frantic winds, cheerful school children’s faces, and some sunshine.
Our first stop was Orford Primary School; we skipped through puddles and protected our swag of goodies. The lovely library person, Kathy chatted to us about reading aloud, sharing new books and using Sora and Story Box Library. Orford Primary School has around 90 students, and the classes regularly listen to a story and choose books in the library.
Back into the car we carefully made our way in the rain to Triabunna District School. The school has about 170 students from kindergarten to grade 12. In the school library we spoke with the principal Erica, the business manager Noelene, teacher April, and Kate the library staff member, and the student representatives Aria and Amelia. We loved the large library and the outlook to the vegetable gardens and playground.
Our last stop for the day was Swansea Primary School, where we met Beth the library technician and Anna, the principal. Gosh their library is fresh, with new furniture and bright displays. It is a joint library model, with the public library co-located at the school. The school website lists the library as being part of the specialist classes and is open at break times twice a week.
Day two we got up early to beautiful views of Swansea. It was a clear day at St Helens District High School it has a large school library, lots of books for young people to enjoy, Rachel and I had fun posing in front of the reading chair, and the flamingo wall. The library team of Louise and Jo cater to over 530 students, from kindergarten to Grade 12.
Our next stop was St Marys District School, wow, a large school with 2 library spaces, a senior collection and a middle school library space. Meg the assistant principal and Sarah library staff member talked to us about refreshing the collection and were keen to learn more about the Sora app.
Bicheno Primary School was our last school. We had an around the table chat about Story Box Library and the Sora app with the enthusiastic staff, and talked about alternative ways of purchasing popular titles, due to their isolation. The students loved their book buddy Franklin the Fairy Penguin.
Thank you to the schools for making time and sharing the joy of books in school libraries.
NOTICEBOARD