Balgowlah North Public School eNewsletter

"We acknowledge and respect the traditional custodians on whose land our school rests. Their footsteps and whispers blow in the wind, drift on the clouds, remain deep in the sandstone and float on the waterways of this place. Their memories and Dreaming stories will continue to connect us to the land and guide future generations of our school community. Country is alive if you take the time to look, listen and learn."

Principal's message

Thank you to our amazing school community for the incredible support you showed the World’s Greatest Shave last week. The tremendous success of this event is best reflected in the words of the students themselves, so Max S and Henry J have written a wonderful wrap up of our school’s extraordinary efforts below.

World’s Greatest Shave
On Thursday 28th of March, parents got their shavers and scissors out and got ready to give a new hairstyle to their kids. Balgowlah North Public School raised over $33,000 towards the Leukemia foundation. That's the most money raised by a primary school in the whole of Australia! A whole continent!! 11 of the top fundraisers walked up to the front of the COLA and shaved/cut their hair in front of the whole entire school.

This was a big moment for our little school.

K - 5 contributed by coming to school with a wacky hairstyle. There were people with balloons, cans of soft drink, hair spray, and all sorts of vibrant colours in peoples' hair. Excitement filled the air and almost everyone contributed to this wonderful cause.

Playground update
Look how amazing our playground is looking! This week we are hopeful that the two new decks will be complete, the new timber wharf, sandpit and filling the garden beds ready for planting. We are on track to be completed by mid April!

Parent Teacher Interviews
We look forward to sharing the opportunity to connect with you at our Parent Teacher interviews next week. Please be aware that the interviews occur over both Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon. Every year there are a few parents who miss their interview due to a mix up of dates. Please check the date, time and day for your interview carefully. If you have to change the time due to unforeseen circumstances please call the school office and we will endeavor to reschedule another mutually convenient time.

NSW Police Legacy Child Safety Handbook
Recently all principals received the NSW Police Legacy Child Safety handbook to distribute to staff and families. Please see the link below for a great resource from the NSW Police Force. It covers many topics including safety at home and at school, cyber bullying, drug awareness and has many useful community service numbers.
NSW Police Legacy Child Safety Handbook

Smart watches and mobile phones
Mobile phones and smart watches are not to be used during school hours. Please ensure that smart watches are disabled during the school day.

PSSA Winter trials
Planning is underway for winter PSSA. The first step in this process is to survey our students to ascertain interest in school representation for winter PSSA. Once this is complete, trials will commence, coaches selected and training organised. Trials will be completed early next term. More information will come out over the next few weeks.

Opportunity Classes for Year 5 in 2025
Applications for Year 5 entry to opportunity classes in 2025 open on Thursday 4th April and close on Monday 20th May 2024. The application link will be published via the Application process website.

All applicants will sit the Opportunity Class Placement Test on Thursday 1st August 2024.

We have included some information below about Opportunity Classes or visit Selective high schools and opportunity classes – information for parents and carers (nsw.gov.au)

A webinar run by the Federation of Parents & Citizens Association will be held on Wednesday, 3 April 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm AEDT. If you are interested, register via this link: https://www.pandc.org.au/applying-for-selective-high-school-a-webinar-for-parents-and-carers-of-year-4-students/

Kind regards

Brooke Keevers
Principal

Assistant Principal's News

Instructional Leadership across K - 2

This term, the K - 2 team have been engaging with opportunities to enrich teaching and learning in foundational concepts of numeracy. Through rich assessment and purposeful instructional leadership, the K- 2 team have been working together to establish differentiated group structures in their classrooms that allow students to engage with tasks that consolidate and develop their understanding of how to combine and partition numbers using additive strategies.

In the early years of school, students are supported to use concrete materials and mental strategies to model addition and subtraction. Our focus in classrooms has been on students working in differentiated groups to ensure they are developing their conceptual understanding and have the opportunity to build flexible strategies for thinking about problems.

Not only are our maths groups incredibly powerful learning experiences, but they are also fun, dynamic and inspire students to build confidence in themselves as budding mathematicians!

Important Attendance Update for all Families
We are reviewing our attendance procedures in accordance with NSW DoE Attendance Policy.

Please ensure you make yourself familiar with the following attendance procedures that will be implemented from Term 2:

Parents or carers are required to explain the absences of their children from school promptly.

The school will contact the parent or carer of any student absent without an explanation by the next school day. Your absence notification will be sent via email from School Bytes.

An explanation for absence must be provided to the school within 7 calendar days of the first day of any period of absence. If no explanation has been received within 7 days, the student’s absence is unjustified. Unjustified absences will appear on your child’s school report.

From Term 2, all student absence notifications must be sent through the School Bytes parent portal. SchoolZine will no longer be a recognised platform for communicating student attendance.

DoE attendance policy and procedures can be found here:

https://prod65.education.nsw.gov.au/policy-library/policies/pd-2005-0259

School News

Creative Arts Corner

Hip Hip Incursion for all students - Tuesday 2nd April 2024
The Hip Hop Incursion was an electrifying experience from start to finish, captivating all students from Kindergarten to Year 6 at BNPS. The incursion kicked off with a high-energy performance that had everyone on their feet and the students were eager to join in. Everyone was mesmerized by the dancers' skill and enthusiasm, and they couldn't wait to try out the moves themselves (even some teachers too). They were then led through a series of activities where they learned the basics of hip hop dance, including helicopters on the floor, popping, locking, and even some freestyle techniques. The instructors were fantastic, breaking down each move step by step, encouraging the students to express their creativity through dance and helping students to build confidence in their coordination. It was a day that won't be forgotten and luckily some students got their autographs to remember these memories!

‘The Hip Hop incursion was interesting because we got to learn fun hip hop moves then got a chance to show off all of our skills! The people teaching us were so cool’ - Harrison R and Rex G from 3R

Worlds Greatest Shave and Zany Hair Day

On Thursday 28th of march, excitement filled the air as the buzzer went through our hair. The rest of the school had zany hair day, there were balloons in the air and packets of skittles scattered in their hair. 11 kids in front of the school shaving their hair off or cutting for a wig raising money for a great cause.
Cooper I and Logan P 6/5H
Zany Hair Day was not the only excitement of the 28th of March. Although the colours were vibrant and the styles were the most creative you could ever witness, The World's Greatest Shave was the event of the day. The crowd screamed with excitement, as 11 of the year 6s walked up to the stage to get their hair shaved or cut off for the people who have leukemia. The school raised over $32 000 making our school the number 1 primary public school in Australia. Minutes passed, new wigs were ready to be made and most year 6 walked away bald or with much shorter hair. This was an astounding moment for our school, which raised a lot of money and awareness to the community of what leukemia is. This was a proud moment for everybody who donated and a surprise to our buddies. We hope they like it!
Amy G and Charli K 6/5H

Outdoor Learning

ANZAC Day
On Friday, April 12th at 9:15am, Balgowlah North will hold a special assembly in the hall to commemorate Anzac Day. Each class will create a wreath which will be presented by the SRC during the service. We look forward to commemorating the contribution and sacrifice of veterans and serving personnel.

Sports News

Regional Swimming
Yesterday 13 students from our school participated in the Manly Zone team at the Sydney North swimming championships at Homebush. Our swimmers:

Megan A
Benjamin B
Billy B
Liam D
Millie G
Edward G
Nic H
Vincenzo M
Alice O
Jamison S
Toby S
Amelia S
Freya VR

All of these swimmers represented our school and Manly Zone extremely well. There were many personal bests and some fantastic swims amongst tough competition. I was very proud of their efforts - everyone gave their absolute best! There were some fantastic results on the day including our senior girls relay team and our junior boys relay team both finishing in 2nd place. They will go on to compete at the state championships. Official results are to come, but we wish all of our Balgowlah North swimmers who made it to the State Championships the very best of luck.

Library News

Congratulations to:-

Harvey M, Seren B, Evie R, Will J and Benny M who have completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge for 2024.

A reminder that students can still participate in the Challenge. The Challenge aims to encourage a love of reading for leisure and pleasure in students, and to enable them to experience quality literature. It is not a competition but a challenge to each student to read, to read more and to read more widely. The Premier's Reading Challenge (PRC) is open to all NSW students in Kindergarten to Year 10, in government, independent, Catholic and home schools. If you need help using the website and the answer cannot be found on the PRC Support site, please contact - prc@det.nsw.edu.au

Friday 23 August 2024: Challenge closes for student entries
For more information and an updated booklist please check the Premier’s Reading Challenge website https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/home.html

Admin News

School Bytes
As School Bytes will be our only platform from Term 2, please make sure you are registered before the end of term.

Method 1 - Parent Portal - accessed via this link: https://portal.schoolbytes.education
Method 2 - Parent App
App Store - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/school-bytes/id6463097826
Google Play - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?
id=education.schoolbytes

Illness
With the change of seasons there will be an increase in cold and flu symptoms. If your child is unwell please keep them home to prevent the spread of illness in our school community. If your child exhibits symptoms they will be sent home.

Many thanks

Admin Team

Positive Behaviour for Learning

Class Snapshot - 1M

The Week Ahead

Tuesday 9 April Parent Teacher Meetings
Wednesday 10 April Parent Teacher Meetings
Friday 12 April ANZAC Day Service 9:15am
Friday 12 April Last day of Term 1

P & C News

Koolkuna News

Dear Families,

REMINDER – 2 WEEKS UNTIL AUTUMN VACATION CARE

Please find attached the 2024 Autumn Vacation Care Program. Bookings are open via the Xplor Home App.

Please use the Xplor Home App to find the bookings tab and book into the appropriate sessions labelled "Vacation Care K-2" or "Vacation Care 3-6". If your session does not appear, this is due to the session being fully booked. In this instance, please select “request a space” for this day which will automatically add you to the waitlist.

If your place is approved from the waitlist, you will receive a notification on your Xplor Home App so please ensure you are monitoring this.

Changes or cancellations will be accepted up until 2 weeks prior to your booking and must be requested via Email.

Koolkuna

Canteen News

Please find below our latest menus!

School Community News

The NSW Health Go4Fun Program will take place at Brookvale Public School in Term 2, 2024.
Go4Fun is a free NSW Health program for children aged 7 to 13 years and their families. Run by trained health and community professionals, it’s a fun way to build self-esteem and learn about eating well, staying active and living a healthy life.

Program information:

10 weeks throughout Term 2
Wednesdays, 1May to 3 July, 4-6pm at Brookvale Public School
Group learning and fun game-based activities focused on living a healthy lifestyle

The benefits of Go4Fun include:

Better overall health
Improved self-esteem and confidence
Improved team work and communication
Improved diet that means better concentration, moods and behaviour
Improved sporting skills and fitness

Since 2017, the NSLHD Go4Fun programs have positively engaged with 233 families. What parent’s are saying about the program –

“We found the program to be really rewarding, it gave my child a true source of ownership and belonging with a new group of friends”.
“The program keeps reminding us how to choose a better and energetic life.”

For more information visit Go4Fun, email NSLHD-Go4Fun@health.nsw.gov.au or contact 8797 7296.