Newsletter Term 1 Week 6 2021

Principal's report

Class Parents

All classes now have a class parent. This role is very important. We have three main communication points

1. Newsletter/ app 
2. P&C
3. Class parents

Please use these three communication points to keep up to date with what is happening, and any changes you need to be aware of.

P&C

Thank you to the P&C for organising the following working bee. It will be great to see parents coming to connect in with our school community. 

Year 1 and Kindergarten Working Bee

What: Working bee in the Green Grove including gardening, painting, light carpentry. Note: Please BYO secateurs, gloves, spades, and buckets. 

When: Sunday March 21

Time:   10:00AM-12:00PM

Where: Green Grove

Please sign up here: https://m.signupgenius.com/#!/showRSVPSignUp/30e0a4dada829abf49-bnps1

This is a great family event and will be a fabulous opportunity to meet other Kindie and Year 1 families, with cold drinks and a sausage sizzle to reward you all for your hard work.

Our P&C AGM will also be coming up on the 17th of March. We are hoping to hold this in the school hall. More information will be out soon.

Selective High School Placement Test

The Selective High School Placement Test will be held on Thursday 11 March 2021 from 9.00am to 1.30pm.

Unless parents have made special arrangements with the High Performing Students Team to attend an individually allocated test centre candidates from this school have been sent to: 

Northern Beaches Secondary College Manly Campus

138 Abbott Rd

NORTH CURL CURL NSW 2099

Go to https://education.nsw.gov.au/public-schools/selective-high-schools-and-opportunity-classes/year-7 to find:

• Test centre allocations by public school. 
• A map of test centre addresses under the heading 'The test'.
• The bulletin, Test information for parents and students. The bulletin contains very important information about the test and should be read carefully.

Brooke Keevers

Principal

Class snapshot

Deputy Principal's report

Student Leadership

Congratulations to our SRC, library monitors, house captains, sound crew and band captains who all received their badges at our K-6 assembly on Monday. Photos of each of the groups are in this newsletter, along with photos of the students who received their Principal Award, Banner and Medal.

Dance Sports Challenge

We were excited to welcome Mr Gordon Gilkes and Ms Sandra Nori to Balgowlah North PS to present Harry and Lara with their 2nd place trophy for the Tango from 2020’s interschool challenge. Ms Nori also presented the school with the “Sandra Nori Founders Award’. This award recognises one school in the competition who has demonstrated the ideals of the program of kindness, respect and challenge. We are very proud to receive this award and thank Gordon and Sandra for their acknowledgement. 

What Works Best - Effective Feedback

Effective Feedback is a proven, highly effective strategy to move student learning forward. Students receive feedback in a variety of ways, including verbal, written and peer feedback. Clear, explicit feedback is given and relates to the learning conducted. For example, a writing lesson might be specifically about generating ideas or using literary devices such as metaphor or simile, so the feedback will relate directly to the learning intention and success criteria. The written feedback will address this, and won’t necessarily address other aspects of the writing that aren’t specific to that lesson, for example, sentence structure, punctuation or spelling. They would be part of a specific lesson and feedback given accordingly. Feedback asks students to reflect on their learning and their current knowledge, and asks them to think about what they need to know next to continue improving. 

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 as soon as possible so that we can discuss your options.

Attendance

Thank you for providing explanations for your child’s absence. If an explanation is not received within three days, teachers may send home a paper note and ask you to provide a reason. Please return that note as soon as possible. Please submit all absences on the school app.

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.

The tech hub

Meet Dash!

Some curious creatures have been visiting our Stage 1 classrooms! Over the past few weeks, students in Years 1 and 2 have been working with our new Dash robots. Students have been exploring and completing challenges by programming these robots using iPads. Dash bots can move, speak and even dance! 

Students across K-6 will have opportunities to interact, code and innovate with a variety of new robots as part of Digital Technologies in the NSW Science and Technology syllabus. I will be team-teaching with class teachers on a Wednesday to embed these robots into student learning activities. Keep an eye out in future newsletters for the different robots that will be used by students across the school.

Oliva Wakelin

Teacher

Sport news

Waste free Wednesdays

Balgowlah North Public School is proud to continue with our Waste Free Wednesday program for 2021. We have a weekly competition where each class' waste-free lunches are tallied and the class with the most receives a certificate and Wendy, our waste-free frog, to foster for the week. We ask for your child’s lunch to contain as few items as possible that must be thrown away. Ideally, your child’s lunch will only contain items that will be eaten, composted or recycled.

Reusable containers are a handy way to pack a waste-free lunch. They also make it easy to buy food and drinks in bulk which can save money over time.

The Waste-Free Wednesday challenge is one of Balgowlah North Public School’s sustainability education initiatives. By participating, students will develop a better understanding of how we can take action to reduce our waste.

Waste-free lunches also save money and promote healthy eating.

Thank you for supporting your child’s participation in Balgowlah North Public School’s Waste-Free Wednesday challenge and congratulations to all those students who have helped their class to be winners!

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the Waste-Free Wednesday program, please don’t hesitate to contact Mrs Katherine Evans at the school.

Can you be waste-free every day?

Waste Free Wednesday winners

Well done to our 100% winners  KM, 1H, 1R & 2E!

Dates for your diary

05 March

• Zone swimming carnival

11 March

• Selective High School test 

14 March

• P&C working bee 

16 &17 March

• Stage 3 science incursion
  

17 March

• P&C AGM 

18 March

• Harmony day

19 March

• Kindergarten parent night event
  

Green grove

Calling all Kindergarten and Year 1 Families to meet and help out at our next Green Grove Working Bee with some basic gardening, painting and a few odd jobs. 

Please sign up here by March 15th: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0A4DADA829ABF49-bnps1

Community information

Canteen news

Thank you!!  Around 2 thirds of lunch orders for last Friday were place the night before.  It made a huge difference to us and we'd like to say a big thank you to those of you who were able to do so.  Unfortunately, Flexischools let us down between 8 and 9am and we are looking into other options.  Until the issue is resolved we can only recommend ordering the night before.

PSSA

We're excited that the children are able to participate in PSSA but really need your help to ensure things run smoothy at lunch time.  Children going to PSSA games at leave early and naturally need to pick up their lunch early.  So that we know who needs an early lunch it's vitally important that you add a "PSSA Alert" to your child's lunch order.  The PSSA Alert is it's own category in the flexischools app so step 1 is to click on the category and step 2 is to press the green + symbol to add it to the order and then go ahead and add food items. Thank you.

Mel & Alex

BNPS Canteen

step 1 & step 2

Koolkuna

Koolkuna’s Autumn Vacation Care program & booking form is now available. Please double check your emails or it can be located on Koolkuna’s website.

We have lots of fun activities planned for all ages including Bubble Soccer, Sky Zone, Ian Potters Wild Play Park, Ultimate Sydney, and much, much more. Please book ASAP to avoid disappointment as excursions are already filling up.

Please note that Vacation Care bookings are not processed through the My Family Lounge system, we require a signed booking form to secure any bookings.

https://www.koolkunaoshc.com.au/

Koolkuna OSHC Admin Team

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

Second hand uniform shop

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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