28 March 2018

Newsletter Articles

From the Principal

What an awesome time of year at Bicheno Primary School with students excited about their learning, such beautiful weather for our athletics day and training, and the much needed rain for water tanks, our gardens and the resultant reduced risk of bush fires!

The East North-East athletics team have been training hard last week and this week and will head off to the carnival today to participate and compete at St Helens. We wish them well in all their events as they try their best!

This week we are finalising the election of our student and community leaders. Carrie and I were very impressed with the quality of the eleven students’ applications and their sincere interest in taking on a leadership role. Today Carrie and I will be interviewing applicants individually to discuss their leadership qualities and ask any clarifying questions. On Thursday at 9 am applicants will speak to the school community about their leadership connected to our school values. Students from Prep through to Grade 6 will then vote in an election overseen by their teachers in classrooms. These votes will be counted by School Association members, and the 4 School leaders and 4 Community/House leaders will be announced at a special school meeting at 2 pm Thursday before we break for Easter. Parents of students who applied for leaders’ positions are invited to the 2 pm special school meeting in the Grade 5/6 classroom) to announce the successful applicants and present them with their badges.

This afternoon our teachers will be meeting with the leadership teams from St Marys and St Helens; focussing on leadership around quality teaching across our schools and striving for East Coast Schools of Excellence. This is the first step in working collaboratively across our schools with an absolute focus on improving student wellbeing and learning outcomes.

I wish everyone a safe and happy Easter catching up with families!

School Association Update

Grade 3 4: Class Profile Posters

As a way of getting to know each other and how we make up a classroom community we created a poster. Each poster included eight elements; these included an autobiography, a map to school from our house, a self-portrait, a timeline of our life so far, a wish list of some of the things we’d like to learn this year, a funny story about ourselves and a picture or two of our favourite things.

Kinder and Easter

Kinder completed their own Unconventional Canvas Challenge based on the theme: Easter. Check out @artcartkids and @artful_play on Instragram to see if our art work has been chosen!!!

“We made this for Easter bunny to see when he drops our eggs on Easter morning!”

Grade 5/6 Endangered Animal Research and PSAs

In Science this term we have researched and compiled Information reports on an Endangered Species of our choice. We have learnt their status as an endangered animal; whether they are endangered, critically endangered or extinct. We found out where in the world our animal comes from and researched some interesting facts. We also investigated what is threatening the species and what can, and is being done to protect them.

As part of our English work on persuasive texts, we then our research to create a campaign to raise awareness about our animal, making Public Service Announcements and a supporting poster. A Public Service Announcement [or PSA] is a type of persuasive text that uses carefully selected images and key phrases that can get a message across quickly and that evokes an emotion and favourable action or response. Our posters (another type of persuasive text) had to compliment the PSAs.

Axel

Bayli:

Charli:

Connor:

Georgie:

Grace:

Hallie:

Lola:

Maceo:

Natarlie:

Nickolas:

Ocean:

Olivia:

Ruby:

Shae:

Sienna:

Isak:

Sunny:

Tarrant:

Zali:

What’s happening in our classrooms?

In Kinder this week

English: We are learning to recognise our name
Maths: We are learning to see numbers in our classroom and around the school
Social: We are learning to use a listening body during mat time Prep/1 this week:

In English the Preps are learning the most commons sounds for the letters s and a.

Prep/1

In English we are learning to predict what may happen next in a story and recording this in our writing. The Preps are learning the most common sounds for the letters p and t and the Gr 1s are learning how we spell the ‘ch’ sound.

In Maths we are investigating how we count forwards and backwards from different starting points to support out problem solving.

Our social focus is exploring friendship and asking questions such as ‘How can we be a good friend?’.

Grade1/2

English:

• How can we ‘bump up’ our writing?

Maths:

• Subitising and explaining our thinking and ‘how we worked it out’
• Measuring length using non-standard units

Science:

• How do living things change over time?

Grade 3/4

In Literacy we are using the Tree-storey series by Andy Griffith & Terry Denton as a ‘seed’ for our ‘Writer’s Notebook’. Students are creating their own 13 storeys and weaving a story throughout their tree. They will then choose their favourite storey and add it to the class tree house. Once our 20 storeys are selected we will come up with a collaborative story incorporating a little bit of everyone’s.

In Numeracy we have started to look at how we can apply our knowledge of maths in the kitchen. We have begun by looking at the units of measurements needed. The next step is to choose some yummy recipes, add in a pinch of mathematics and use this to show our understanding.

In Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) we have started looking into the history of the food we eat and how this has changed over the last couple of generations.

Our social focus has been on trying our best and giving it a go. This is in line with our school value of courageous.

Grade 5/6

We have been revising our understanding of place value and learning about decimal place value (tenths, hundredths and thousandths) and how they are represented on a place value chart and their value.

In English we have been looking at different types of persuasive texts; their structural features, language features and their similarities. We have produced Public Service Announcements and supporting posters to raise awareness of our chosen endangered animal and have begun looking at debating.

Whilst reading our class novel; The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, we have been learning to recognise the difference between literal and inferential clues for meaning and identifying language features such as similes that the author has used to engage the reader.

In our unit on Federation, we have been learning how Australia has moved from a land of British colonies to a nation of states.

In Science we have been using an assessment rubric to Self-assess our reports on our endangered animal.

In Art we have visited Nature World to observe and photograph native Tasmanian animals in preparation for our workshop with visiting art teacher; Tash Lowe.

Our social foci have been making the most of our learning time and using integrity (doing what’s right when no one is watching).

Indonesian

In Kinder they are participating in the ELLA Indonesian learning program.

In prep/1/2 they are focusing on naming body parts and how to say which bit hurts.

In 3/4 they are labelling an Indonesian mask and learning how to describe things.

In 5/6 they are working on a conversation role play.

Grade 1/2 HASS – Bicheno Past and Present

In History and Social Sciences Grade 1/2 have been investigating what Bicheno was like in the past. We walked to Whalers lookout to think about how Bicheno has changed over time to connect our learning with the material we have been studying in class

Don’t forget

Last tennis lesson is Easter Tuesday – same times

Responsible Students

In Grade 5/6 one of our learning objectives is to develop a strong work ethic and responsibility for our own learning. These attributes will set the students in good stead for high school. Throughout this year the students are working towards being recognised as a “Responsible Student”.

Responsible students are those that consistently demonstrate our classroom values of: using integrity (doing what’s right when no one is watching), being self-directed, making the most of learning time, working independently, taking risks in learning and challenging themselves.

Responsible students are learner’s who are trusted to work on independent tasks in other areas of the school unsupervised.

At last week’s sharing assembly the following students attained their status as a responsible student:

Athletics Carnival

Final scores: Apsley 822 Denison 717. Well done to Apsley.

Footy Tipping – School Association

Congratulations to Danny O’Neill who had the winning margin ticket for round 1!

Important dates

School Information

Phone: 63751222
Email: bicheno.primary@education.tas.gov.au
Principal: Robert Presswell
School Business Manager: Sandra Silberberg

Teachers

Kinder and LiL: Eliza Spykers
Prep/One: Emily McCormack and Jen Sliskovic
Grade 1/2: Bron Pierce and Ali Jones
Grade 3/4: Matt Woolley
Grade 5/6: Jill Bosua
Support Teacher: Robert Presswell

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