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 News

Connections and Relationships
Strengthening our partnerships with our local high schools is a key priority for our Beaches network of Principals this year. We are excited to focus on building connections with Mackellar Girls and Balgowlah Boys High Schools. This term we have a wonderful opportunity for our bands to perform at Balgowlah Boys High School on Thursday, May 22nd,

The Harbourside Festival, which BNPS has developed over the past four years, continues to expand, showcasing the incredible talent of our concert and performance band and providing an opportunity to connect with Balgowlah Heights and Balgowlah Boys. We encourage our junior band to attend, as it’s inspiring to see the pathways that music can open for students into high school.

We are truly fortunate to provide our students with a variety of musical opportunities that continue past primary school and into high school. Through the Arts unit and in collaboration with Mackellar, Balgowlah Boys, and Forest High School. Together, we are creating enriching experiences that will shape their future.

"Unleashing Potential: Igniting Excellence in the Physical Domain!"

What is the physical domain?
This refers to natural abilities in muscular movement and motor control.

What do we mean by potential?
High potential students are those whose potential exceeds that of students of the same age. They may benefit from an enriched or extended curriculum and learning opportunities beyond the typical level of their age peers.

When teachers and school leaders recognise high potential, providing optimal learning conditions will make a difference in supporting the development of talent.

“It takes a team approach, to translate potential into talent, including a school, family and community.”

We provide many opportunities to develop talent at BNPS in the physical domain through our local clubs and representative pathways provided through the School Sports Unit. We regularly compete in knockout tournaments in netball and soccer, basketball gala days as well our usual myriad of activities we provide on a weekly basis. Yesterday our students participated for the first time in the Sydney North Rugby 7's gala day. Our students love the opportunity to compete, and our teachers are always looking for an opportunity for our students to engage and challenge themselves. Thank you, Susie Stock and Kerry Kelly, for making this happen.

Click on our Sports policy to understand what else is possible!

Primary School Rugby 7’s Sydney North Competition
Yesterday, students participated in an exciting Rugby 7's tournament. It was divided into Stage 2 and Stage 3, with each stage featuring a Pool A and Pool B draw. Balgowlah North proudly competed in Pool A, where the junior team showed exceptional grit and determination, with strong tackling and exciting tries throughout their matches. They played with great teamwork and skill, convincingly winning all three of their pool games to earn a spot in the final against Naraweena. Despite their strong performance throughout the day, the team was ultimately outmatched by the size and agility of a few standout Naraweena players, who secured the win in the final.

The senior team put in a strong performance, dropping only one game in their Pool A matches. This effort saw the senior boys qualify for the second-placed pool competition, where they needed a win to secure a spot in the State Cup Rugby 7's Competition. They played with guts, courage and skill, proudly representing their school throughout the day. In a thrilling final game, the seniors secured a hard-fought victory, earning third place overall and a spot in the State Cup on Thursday, 29th May.

Congratulations to all the BNPS players who demonstrated immense pride, passion, and outstanding sportsmanship. Your teamwork and resilience were truly commendable. A big thank you to the parents for coming along to cheer on your children, your presence and support made a meaningful difference. A special thank you to Rod Anderson for his exceptional guidance which contributed to our senior team's success.

Celebrating
I hope that everyone had a lovely weekend, it was a wonderful chance for our mums to listen to our choir and hear our bands perform on Thursday morning.

Brooke Keevers

Principal

Vocabulary Matters: Continuing Our Work Through a High Potential Lens
As we continue our journey of fostering rich learning experiences for all students, we are excited to continue our focus on developing rigorous vocabulary—this time with a more intentional focus through a High-Potential Gifted Education (HPGE) lens.

Why Vocabulary Through HPGE?
Vocabulary is more than just word knowledge—it’s a gateway to higher-order thinking, deeper comprehension, and sophisticated expression. When approached through a HPGE lens, vocabulary instruction becomes a powerful tool to challenge learners and scaffold complexity for all students. This lens encourages us to raise the ceiling on our expectations and create access points for students to explore nuance, multiple meanings, and cross-disciplinary language.

What This Looks Like in Practice
Tier 2 and Tier 3 Vocabulary in Context – Embedding rich, precise vocabulary in authentic texts and inquiry tasks.
Word Conscious Classrooms – Cultivating curiosity about words through etymology, morphology, and wordplay.
Complexity with Purpose – Elevating rigor by teaching vocabulary that supports conceptual understanding and deep learning.

As we continue to elevate vocabulary instruction we’re not just building word banks—we're building learners who are empowered to read, write, speak, and think with clarity and confidence.

Julia Gough

Assistant Principal Curriculum Instruction

School News

Kindergarten Enrolments 2026 - Help Us Spread the Word!
Exciting times are ahead, we kindly ask for your help in spreading the word to friends and neighbours who have little ones ready to embark on their educational journey next year. Our enrolments are officially open, and we have a school tour scheduled for Tuesday, May 27th. This is a fantastic opportunity for prospective families to explore our vibrant school, meet our enthusiastic student leaders, and begin forging connections within our community.

If you have a child currently attending Balgowlah North and a sibling who will be joining us next year, please take a moment to fill out the online enrolment form linked below. We have a wonderful lineup of connection events planned for the upcoming terms, and we can’t wait to welcome our new families. Thank you for your support in making our community even stronger!

Online Enrolment Application

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)
Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

year of schooling
category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools
consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools
develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy (https://www.education.gov.au/privacy-policy).

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school.

Mini-Lit
Congratulations to Henry N, Ivy S, Harper L and Tilly G for successfully completing Part A up to Lesson 30 of the MiniLit Sage Program. They have reached a benchmark indicating that they can now continue learning in class through differentiated lessons and support within literacy groups. Mrs Harris is was so happy to watch them flourish in their phonic journey this year.

Curiosity & Outdoor Learning -Plants

Class Snapshot - 2HL

Sports News

Cross Country 2025
We were treated to perfect autumn sunshine for our cross-country carnival last week. It was so wonderful to see all of our students participating with enthusiasm and so many of them challenging themselves to achieve their personal best. The results of each race are listed below. Students who placed first, second or third will receive their ribbons at our next K-6 assembly on Monday the 26th of May at 1:40pm. The first 6 students in each age category (excluding 7/8 years races) will represent our school at the cross country on May 27th.

Thank you so much to all of our parent volunteers who gave their time to support the running of the carnival and to our school community who were able to cheer their children on from the sidelines.

Tennis
We still have some spots available for tennis if you would like your child to take part.

PSSA
Starts this week so good luck to all of our teams.

Girls PSSA Soccer
Training is cancelled this Friday.
Senior girls will train on Thursday at 8am for this week only in preparation for our knockout game.
Junior girls have a bye this week and will train at the PSSA venue.

Thank you
PSSA Coaches

Library News

Meet our Wednesday Library Monitors
Their favourite books are:

Skye H - New City by Debra Abela
Henri Y- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Premier’s Reading Challenge
Congratulations to Jasper C, Grace W, Issac R and Violet R who have completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge for 2025.

Scholastic Book Club Orders
All orders for Scholastic Book Club need to be submitted by Friday 16th May

Amanda Mason
Teacher Librarian

Admin News

Parent Helpers
For any parent wishing to volunteer in a classroom or assist with excursions the Department of Education require you to complete the Declaration for Non-child related work form. You can also complete this form online via the FORMS tab on the School Bytes Parent portal or in person at the office.

Because you are a parent, you only require the Non-Child related work form.

We do not require you to obtain a WWCC from Service NSW.

Emailing the school
When you email the school, please include the surname of the child you are emailing about and the parent surname so your correspondence can be sent to the right person.

Medical
If you have listed a medical condition on your enrolment form that requires treatment at school, we will need documentation for this treatment to be administered eg: Asthma plan, Anaphylaxsis, Allergy and Request for Student Health Support form at school

Student Department emails
If you need your child's email address this can be found on the "Dashboard" of your School Bytes Parent Portal, at the bottom on the page under "Student details".

Administration Team

PBL week 3

The Week Ahead

Friday 16 May Walk to School Day
Monday 19 May K-2 Assembly 2.30pm
Wednesday 21 May National Simultaneous Storytime
Wednesday 21 May Stage 1 Art Gallery Excursion
Wednesday 21 May Stage 3 Sydney Writers Festival
Wednesday 21 May P & C Meeting 7.30pm
Monday 26 May Whole School Assembly 1.45pm
Tuesday 27 May School Tour 2
Monday 2 June 3-6 Assembly 2.30pm

P & C News

🌸 Special Thanks to Our Mother's Day Gift Stall Leaders & Helpers! 🌸
Thank you to our fantastic Year 2 Mother's Day Gift Stall fundraising team led by Rachel Surgeon, Natalie Phlilips, and Christina Parks as well as all of the Year 2 helpers for a wonderful event last Thursday. The children had a lovely time choosing and shopping for beautifully sourced and wrapped gifts for Mother's Day.

Trivia Night Tickets Will Be Live at 2PM on the 19th of May!
Get ready for one of the biggest nights of the year! Tickets for the annual BNPS Trivia Night (taking place on the 21st June) will go on sale on Monday, the 19th of May at 2PM via Flexischools and will sell out quickly! Mark your diaries, grab your table of 8 people, and start thinking of a table theme. Tickets will be sold as tables, so it's best to nominate a table captain to purchase the tickets on the table's behalf.

Save the Date - Upcoming P&C Events

Join Us for Our Next P&C Meeting on Wed, 21st May at 7:30PM

Eco Warriors

Band News

Spreading a Little Sunshine
It was a privilege for our bands to play for Mums and special guests at the Mother’s Day Breakfast last Thursday morning. Thankfully the rain held off allowing our bands to spread a little sunshine as a proud audience watched on. Congratulations to all bands who handled the outdoor environment well.

Term 2 Conducting
While our Band Director, Mrs Clain, is looking after her health, we have a team of experienced conductors who have stepped in to keep the band program humming.

This is an awesome team, who will work together seamlessly to keep the bands progressing. See the schedule below

Monday morning: Junior Band – Mr Brasche
Monday lunch: Concert Band – Ms Luu
Tuesday morning: Concert Band – Mr Bullough
Tuesday lunch: Performance Band – Mr Brasche
Wednesday lunch: Junior Band – Ms Luu
Thursday morning: Performance Band – Mr Tart

Next Performance:
Thursday 22 May – Concert Band and Performance Band. Harbourside Music Festival @ Balgowlah Boys. 5.30pm arrival. 6pm Concert

Caroline Fechner
Band Manager

Koolkuna News

We hope everyone had a lovely Easter break. We wanted to give a HUGE thank you to all the parents and families who donated books for the "Books for Africa" Charity. We can't thank everyone's generosity enough and the response was absolutely amazing.
Coming into Term 2 we wanted to announce that it is a legal requirement & the responsibility of the parent/guardian to ensure that their child/ren are signed into OSHC for BSC & Vacation Care and signed out of OSHC from ASC & Vacation Care. All parents/guardians must use their Xplor Home Accounts to sign their child/ren in/out of care. If someone other than those listed on the Enrolment Form will be picking up your child, please send an email to the Centre to provide temporary authorisation for collection. If your child/ren is found not to be signed in or signed out of OSHC by an authorised contact, educators will contact the parent/guardians and a No Sign In/Out Fee of $11.00 will be applied to your account. We are looking forward to Term 2 and we can't wait to see everyone back again at Koolkuna!

Kind Regards,

Sam

Koolkuna OSHC Admin