Newsletter Term 1 Week 5 2021

Principal's report

School Excellence

As most of you are aware our School Improvement Plan is in the last final planning stages. I’d like to thank the school community for their valuable input through our ‘Tell Them From Me’ surveys, our focus group and through engagement and dialogue at P&C meetings over the past 6 months. Below is our draft school vision statement and our school’s strategic directions. If you would like the opportunity to give feedback please email me at balgowlahn-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au

School vision statement

At BNPS every student, teacher and leader is part of a community of continuous improvement. Curiosity and creativity is fostered and the learning culture is underpinned by high expectations. Wellbeing is nurtured by meeting individual needs through collaborative practice and feedback. Our school is a place of quality teaching, quality learning and quality behaviour. We pride ourselves on ensuring every student is known, valued and cared for.

Strategic Direction 1 – Growth and Attainment

Purpose - To maximise student learning growth in reading and numeracy and to build strong academic success, through effective, evidence-informed teaching with high expectations for all.

Strategic Direction 2 – Fostering curiosity and building resilient, confident learners

Purpose - Resilience, creativity and kindness are shared values of the BNPS community. We aim for positive, respectful relationships which ensure an optimal learning environment for all. Strengthening student engagement, student voice and student wellbeing will provide our students with the skills needed to thrive in an ever-changing world.

Strategic Direction 3 - A collaborative culture of high expectations and continuous improvement

Purpose - Through the analysis of data teachers collaborate to ensure deep understanding of where students are situated. Learning programs are adjusted to ensure a culture of continuous improvement with a focus on individual student learning goals in mathematics and English, building assessment capable learners.

Communication

Thank you to all the parents who made the time to meet with their child’s teacher. Feedback from the teachers has been very positive. We will send out a link next week to obtain your feedback on the process. The library was used as a venue because the classrooms were full of students!

Brooke Keevers

Principal

Deputy Principal's report

What Works Best - Explicit Teaching

This week’s spotlight from the What Works Best (CESE, 2020) is about explicit teaching. We know that explicit teaching has a very high impact on student learning outcomes. Explicit teaching also supports activities such as project based learning, with the explicit teaching occurring beforehand, and then supporting the students through investigations and research. We know that teachers using the ‘I do, we do, you do’ model is highly effective, and is evident particularly when teaching phonics, mathematics and reading comprehension skills. Feedback is a critical component of explicit teaching, and may look like teachers providing individual feedback to students about a concept taught, whole class feedback, peer feedback. Feedback should always move learning forward, and be timely and relevant.

SEAT

Our SEAT (Scripture, Ethics and Additional Activities Time) program starts on Thursday, 25 February. The SEAT classes on offer are Combined Christian Scripture (also known as protestant scripture), Catholic Scripture and Ethics. We continue to require ethics volunteers. Students without a volunteer teacher will attend Additional Activities until a volunteer can be found. If you are interested in volunteering to be an ethics teacher, please contact bnpsethics@gmail.com . The more ethics volunteers we have allows more students to be part of the program. We are unable to conduct formal teaching during SEAT, so students who are part of the additional activities program or do not have a volunteer for their class that week will be able to read, draw or complete unfinished classwork. They are supervised by a member of our teaching staff. Our teachers are rostered on to support the grades and volunteers. They will be popping into each classroom throughout the SEAT session.

Using our School App

Our school app is a vital tool in communicating between the school and parents. All notes go home on the app and we regularly put communication notices that apply to either the whole school, or to specific grades. 

To ensure you are receiving all updates please make sure you have done the following:

1. Download the Schoolzine app from Google Play or the Apple Store
2. Once downloaded, add Balgowlah North as a subscription
3. Click ‘Manage’ and ensure you have subscribed to all the necessary year group channels, including ‘Parents/Guardians’. We recommend also subscribing to the P&C, and Band and Koolkuna if your children are involved in either of those groups.
4. On the ‘Home’ tab, you can submit an absence form, read our newsletter, contact us and many other functions. 

NAPLAN 2021

NAPLAN is scheduled to occur in Weeks 4 and 5 of Term 2 (10 - 21 May). NAPLAN is for students in Years 3 and 5 and will be completed online (Year 3 writing only is completed with pencil and paper). We recommend that parents have a look at the public demonstration site. Students will become familiar with this site also in class and they are supported and encouraged to use the tools available before the tests are completed. Find the public demonstration site here: https://www.nap.edu.au/online-assessment/public-demonstration-site

Students in Years 3 and 5 will also have the opportunity to learn the site through a practice test later this term. This practice test does not record any information and allows the students to ask their teacher questions about how to use the site and become fully familiar with completing NAPLAN online. Many of our students are very familiar already with online assessments as we have been completing the PAT Reading and PAT mathematics assessments as school based assessments for some time. 

We expect that all students will sit the NAPLAN assessment, and want to stress that this is a ‘moment in time’ snapshot. We don’t receive the results for some time after the assessment, so the results are more valuable to us for looking at trends over time in specific areas of English and mathematics, and assist in our analysis of many pieces of data to help make decisions regarding strategic directions of the school. Your child’s teacher will have the most accurate and up to date information about how your child is progressing and as always, we recommend chatting with your child’s teacher about their progress. If you do not wish for your child to sit NAPLAN, please email me so that we can discuss your options.

The Forest High - Gifted and Talented test for Year 7 2022

 A reminder: please be advised that the advertised dates are now incorrect. The Forest High has advised us that they will advise new dates in the coming weeks. We will let you know through the newsletter once the dates have been confirmed.

Smart watches and mobile phones

This is another reminder that students should not have mobile phones on during the day, and that all smart watches must have cellular capabilities turned off. Mobile phones should remain at home, or if necessary to be brought to school, left turned off in school bags until the end of the day. If smart watches are unable to have the cellular capabilities turned off then they should be left at home.

Belinda Norrie

A/ Deputy Principal

Sport news

ZoneTeam - all students in yellow type

PSSA Zone Carnival

• PSSA Zone Carnival will be held on Friday March 5 at Warringah Aquatic Centre – no parent spectators this year.
• 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place getters in 50m freestyle events will represent us.
• 1^st and 2nd place getters in the breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly, 100m freestyle and 200 Individual medley will represent us.

House Points Score:

Congratulations Kangaroos. You are the swimming carnival 2021 champions!

Kerry Kelly, Molly McIndoe and Susie Stock

Band news

Great Start for the Bands and Strings Ensembles.  Come and join us.
Our bands and strings have completed nearly two weeks of rehearsals. It is fantastic to see the enthusiasm of the children as they walk into rehearsals with smiles on their faces and when they leave rehearsals you can see they are proud of what they have achieved.  Thank you to our conductors, Angus, Natasha and Yenny for getting things off to a great start.
Join our band program - sign up nowCome and join our wonderful band program - send us an e-mail if you would like to know more - bnpsband@hotmail.com.  We will be in touch to chat to you about instruments and arrange a covid-safe instrument tryout if necessary.
How Learning a Musical Instrument Benefits Your BrainThe research says it all - the benefits of learning an instrument include improvements in literacy, numeracy, communication and language development, social skills, impulse control, wellbeing, the development of empathy ... and more.  These can be measured both at an individual level, and within a group or community such as a school.  Your child will gain skills and attributes that they may not otherwise develop.  It has been proven that playing an instrument switches on parts of the brain that aren't usually switched on through normal use or during other activities 
This video is a good summary of the benefits of learning an instrument: https://youtu.be/R0JKCYZ8hng. 
Further information.  If you would like to know more about band and strings please get in touch on bnpsband@hotmail.com.  

Waste Free Wednesday

Well done to KM and 2K who were waste free last week!

Dates for your diary

17/18 February

• Meet the teacher parent meetings - 12.30pm-4.30pm

22 February

• School swimming carnival
  

24 February

• Kindergarten meet the teacher - 12.30pm-4.30pm
  

25 February

• SEAT Begins

Community information

Koolkuna

We are delighted to announce that we have been successful in winning a Tender to operate Manly Vale Public School OSHC. This will enable us to centralize administration & provide work for our team of educators across two sites. 
Jordan is currently establishing the new Centre & we have promoted Maire Feehan & appointed Hannah Goodeve as Co-Directors. Everyone knows & loves Maire & we congratulate her on a well-earned promotion after 2 ½ years. Hannah has worked as Centre & Assistant Director for OSHC’s at Balmain, Balgowlah & Mona Vale. Hannah is a dedicated educator and brings loads of energy & ideas to the team.

Jordan will continue to manage Koolkuna & be assured his happy face will not disappear from the Centre.  Please make Hannah welcome as she gets to know our families.

Koolkuna OSHC Admin Team

Mob: 0400 774 697 | admin@koolkunaoshc.com.au

Second hand uniform shop

For those who are new to our school, BNPS has a second hand uniform shop available to all families. 100% of the money raised from sales goes directly back to the P&C and helps to provide resources for our children and the school.

All items are $10.00 each, with the exception of things like hats, library bags, etc. which are only $5.00 each!!

As Covid still restricts parents on school grounds, the second hand uniform shop now uses an online ordering system.

All orders can be emailed through to: bnpsuniformshop@gmail.com

Please ensure you include your child’s name and class with the order.

Orders are filled on a fortnightly basis and placed in the office for collection by your child. Please note, the office is only accepting cash payments, and we would appreciate you trying to send your child with the correct money.

Reply emails will be sent advising when items are ready for collection, what items are / are not available, and the amount owing for orders that can be filled.

To make this whole process possible, we need your uniform donations. Please only donate items that carry the current logo and are in good condition (would you put it on your own child?). We would also appreciate items being washed before being donated and please only donate items that are the current BNPS school uniform. All uniform donations can be dropped to the office at any time.

Please keep an eye out on the ‘North Balgowlah Community Group’ and ‘BNPS uniform shop’ Facebook pages for reminders of when orders are due.

Thanks in advance for your support,

Brooke Krncevic and Vanessa van Rijswijk

(Second Hand Uniform Shop Volunteers)

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