22 May 2019

Newsletter Articles

How to set PUSH notifications on SZApp

Make sure you check that Notifications are turned on under the Manage tab

From the Principal

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.

I would like to thank our Grade 3 and Grade 5 students for their courage and positive attitude in doing their best with the NAPLAN assessments. What was interesting was the vast majority of our Grade 5 students expressed a strong preference completing the online assessments versus the paper-based tests they did in Grade 3. Well done to everyone involved in ensuring students had a calm and supportive environment to complete all NAPLAN assessments.

I was very proud of our students at the sharing assembly last week. To watch out Prep/1’s reading about their measurement, the 2/3’s sharing their work with shapes and tangrams, 3/4’s sharing their work with fractions around numerators/denominators and equivalence, and the 5/6’s with their amazing and descriptive stories which certainly captured the visual imagery to all of those in the audience. Also to every student who received a merit award for their values and commitment to learning new skills. Well done everyone!

Yesterday we had a very successful Middle Years Literacy Project meeting with St Mary’s and St Helen’s Principals, our Middle Years Literacy project coordinator, our literacy coaches and Pamela Macklin from Zbar Consulting. Key outcomes included fine tuning our project planning around developing an evidenced based Instructional model for all 3 schools, improving student learning, building consistency of practise and continuing to build all teachers into great teachers. On the 27th of July all teachers and teaching assistants from our 3 schools will be participating in a professional learning day to launch our ‘cluster of schools’ name and our Instructional Model.

Our first Wilds’cool meeting with Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife, student leaders, and volunteers will be held this Wednesday 22nd May at 12.00. This will involve working in with TPW staff, school staff, parents, student leaders and EON/POKEON volunteers. If any parents are keen to be involved please confirm your attendance either Kate Stevens, Sandra Silberberg or myself. This meeting will scope the partnership and focus of collaboration between Freycinet National Park and projects our school community can take on around the Bicheno Coastal Reserve.

Have a great week.

Best regards
Rob Presswell

What’s happening in our classrooms?

Grade 1/2

Grade 1-2 have been investigating tangrams.

The tangram is a 7 piece puzzle invented in China 200 years ago.

It is created by cutting a square into 7 geometric shapes called ‘tans’.

The 7 shapes are:

• 5 triangles
• 1 square
• 1 parallelogram

Tangrams help children to understand geometry and spatial relationships and are a learning tool to develop STEM skills.

Prep/One

We are learning to be resilient while at school.

We are learning to recognise and say letter combinations such as ‘sh, th and ch’ and the sounds they make.

We are learning to use finger spaces and full stops in our writing.

We are learning to understand how the weather affects everyday life.

We are learning about who the people in our family are.

In HASS we have been learning about where we live and how it relates to other places.

Grade 3/4

English:

• We will define and explain what informational writing is.
• We will identify types of informational writing.
• We will describe text features and text structure found in informational writing.

Maths:

• We will recognise and use formal units of measurement including centimetres, metres, kilograms and litres.
• We will use scaled instruments to measure temperatures, lengths, shapes and objects.

Grade 5/6

In English we are learning

• about the different reasons we use commas
• about irregular plurals such as: one “antenna” two “antennae” and “curriculum” and “curricula”
• about the fantasy genre in reading

In Maths we are learning

• how to reduce a fraction to its simplest form 8/16 down to 2/4
• how to add and subtract fractions with common denominators
• learning to order fractions from biggest to smallest or smallest to biggest

In HASS we are learning

• about the 3 levels of government : federal, state and local and the services that fall under their jurisdiction

In Science we are learning

• about the three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas

Indonesian

In kinder we are using the ELLA apps and practising introducing ourselves.

In Prep/1 and 1/2 we are learning vocabulary around who is in our family.

In 3/4 we are extending vocabulary around who is in our family  (keluarga) and what pets we have.

In 5/6 we are learning vocabulary around occupations or jobs.

Guru / teacher Nelayan / fisherman

EON report

A big thank you to Cynthia Maxwell- Smith, Sustainably Officer at Glamorgan council,  for her talk at BPS on putting the right rubbish in the right bin.  We learned that the blue lidded soft plastic bin no longer takes cling wrap, that bottles heading into the yellow recycling bin need to be without lids (lids to general waste- red bin), only the lids from takeaway coffee cup can go into recycling (the cup itself is mixed cardboard and plastic, so needs to go into general waste).  No need to worry about labels on bottles (thanks Finn for asking!).  Robert’s query about aluminum foil was confirmed - just scrunch it and pop it in recycling.  The big message was that it is super important to avoid contamination, as this can prevent the whole load from being recycled. Cynthia and 4 brave school leaders then tipped the recycling bin on its head for a check, finding 32 items that belonged, but then 40 pieces of general waste and 42 for the soft plastic bin.  So a bit of work to do, hopefully, we’ll see this ratio improve next term.

KEON clean up

Another lovely day (11th May), and another big load of rubbish retrieved by KEON! This time we scouted around the Recreation area opposite the service station, then along the Foreshore track to Redbill, doubling back on the main road before heading towards to the Sealife Centre, again via the foreshore track. We decided not to empty our bags on the the day for analysis, as there was a bit of a breeze, but our main find was bottles, cans and toilet paper!

Merit Certificate Winners

School Association Update

Well done SCAGI (Seymour Community Acton Group Inc), over 15 hectares of gorse removed over the years, but the maintenance continues.  As volunteers worked away cutting and pasting new gorse shoots, a couple of KEON girls helped collect old plastic plant covers and other rubbish before a solid play among the trees

Walk for a Cause  money is in! 49 kids raised $2,426! Congratulations Atticus Lockhart who walked the most laps. Atticus walked 14 laps!!!!

Such an amazing effort Thankyou to all families who supported the “Bali Children’s Charity”

Thankyou for all the delicious donations for the Association cake stall. The Mother’s Day Cake Stall raised $200.

Bonfire - Saturday May 25

Premier’s Reading Challenge

29 April 2019 – 5 July 2019

Reading logs have now been given to students from Prep-Grade 6. We encourage all students to read 10 books in 10 weeks.

2 of our enthusiastic readers will be given Free Family Pass to a Hawks Launceston game. So let’s get reading!!

NAPLAN testing

All our students working hard during their Naplan testing.

Footy Tipping Margin Tickets

Winner of round 8 was Deb Kean

State Athletics Carnival

Congratulations to Stephen Omenka who placed 2nd in the state for the Grade 5 Boys Long Jump.

Attempted Break-In

Over the weekend of the election, there was an attempted break-in at the school. Significant damage was done to our Art Studio/Canteen. This is very disappointing as it means school funds are now needed to cover insurance excesses, so we have less funds to focus on student outcomes. If anyone has any information which would be helpful in finding those responsible, please contact Tasmania Police as the incident has been reported.

Community Information

Woodworking Group

Kaden, Jye and Byron have been working with Scott every Tuesday on small projects. They are making a wooden pencil case with a sliding lid.

Fence panels for sale

We have some old fence panels (which were used on the top oval) for sale. They are 2400mm x 900mm in “rustic” condition. $10 per panel.  Please contact the school office.

Important dates

Information for parents

A friendly reminder that the school has a duty of care for student from 8:15am, extending to 3:15pm. Students on the school grounds outside of these operating hours must be under parental supervision. The school toilets and classrooms are closed at 2:45pm. There are public toilets located next to Little Penguins Child Centre.

Rob Presswell

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: Bronti Cooke and Bron Pierce
Grade 1/2: Bruce Campbell and Jen Sliskovic
Grade 3/4: Sam Kelly
Grade 5/6: Jill Bosua
Support Teacher: Bron Pierce

School Calendar