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 report

Learning from home

As we settle into Week 5 of the term, we are continuing to deliver flexible, connected and engaging learning from home programs and supervision of learning on site for children of essential workers. We understand that it is a very challenging time for everyone at the moment and balancing personal work commitments with home schooling is extremely difficult.

We continue to pass on our sincere thanks to all the families who are continuing to support our community by keeping their children at home to minimise movement in the community. And thank you to our essential workers for their important critical work within the broader community.

All families are reminded that there is minimal supervision on site at our school for those students who cannot be educated at home, for example if their parent or carer is an essential worker. All students and families will continue to be supported with learning from home materials and resources. If you are working from home and your child can be educated from home, please keep them at home.

Each day we have only two or three teachers supervising students, while our teachers are planning the online programs and resources for the next week, conducting zoom sessions, providing feedback for students in their classes and managing student learning and well-being. Staff still attend staff meetings, stage meetings and professional learning meetings. Some of our staff are managing all of this and balancing their own children’s needs and supporting them to learn from home. I know many of our staff are working incredibly long hours to best support their students.

We thank our staff for providing our students and families with quality learning from home materials and resources.

This week there are some great Education Live opportunities at 10am each day - link below. This week there’s a mad science lesson, a creepy crawly lesson and even a singing lesson on Friday with The Voice’s Bella Taylor Smith.

https://education.nsw.gov.au/teaching-and-learning/learning-from-home/learning-at-home

I have attached a quick survey that will provide our school leadership team with a snapshot of feedback from our school community. I would greatly appreciate it if you could take 5 minutes to complete by this Friday.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMUgNHNei1rvcI2P5uzoUR2-b5yigSDnvzXx8RcumIAsblpQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Super Heros Day

On Friday our SRC have organised a fundraiser for Bear Cottage. This is a fun opportunity to focus on family responsibilities this week and include our students in jobs and tasks that will lighten the load for everyone. I look forward to popping into class zooms over this week to connect with our students and their learning. I’m especially looking forward to our dress up day on Friday!

Stay safe everyone

Brooke Keevers

Principal

School news

Returning in 2022

Thank you to the parents who have already emailed or called to let us know if they are changing schools or moving for 2022. It is very important that we have this information as it assists us in creating the best options for our students and our classes in 2022.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdD41eRNYbPggoaPmAOrIMaR4nmuLb2XNQGzIB1DVWxPrHu9Q/viewform?usp=sf_link

Kindergarten enrolments for 2022

Our kindergarten enrolments are steadily rising. At the moment we have 55 students enrolled to commence kindergarten in 2022. If you are intending on sending your child to school in 2022 can you please contact the school as soon as possible to complete the necessary paperwork.

BNPS Kindergarten orientation 2022

Enrolment

ICAS update

If you registered your child in any of the ICAS assessments this year, we have been advised that these will be postponed until October. Our revised dates for these tests will be:

Writing - Thursday 7th October

English - Monday 11th October

Science - Tuesday 12th October

Maths - Monday 18th October

Please note that entries have now closed.Your child can only participate if you completed registration in Term 2.

Assembly

We are excited to be resuming assemblies in Week 6. Class Teachers will present the merit awards for their class and Mrs Keevers will present Merit Certificates, Banners and Medals.

Zoom Details will be distributed via the SZine app and email this week.

K - 2 Assembly

Monday 16th August 2pm

3- 6 Assembly

Monday 16th August 2:30pm

Please ensure you support your child to have their microphone muted for the entirety of the assembly.

Wellbeing Focus

As lockdown continues, it is so essential that our number one focus is on wellbeing. Wellbeing of students, wellbeing of teachers, wellbeing of parents and families, wellbeing of our community. In difficult times such as these, we are reminded of the core truth of human experience- that we all need to feel safe, secure and connected in order to achieve a state of wellbeing that will enable us to thrive.

Making sure that you are okay, that your children are okay, is the number one priority. Our teachers are exceptional at what they do, and we have no doubt that they can support students to stay on track and get back on track with their learning when we return to school.

What we need to partner with our parent community in providing is a focus on relationships, mental health and wellbeing- once broken, these things are much harder to fix. As always, we are here if you need us. Please reach out via phone or email if we can support your family at this time. We have also provided some helpful links below that you might find useful:

https://education.nsw.gov.au/student-wellbeing/counselling-and-psychology-services

https://kidshelpline.com.au/coronavirus

https://au.reachout.com/collections/coping-during-coronavirus

Rachel Ridley

R/Deputy Principal

Old Worlds, New Worlds and Other Worlds

Book Week is coming! This year Book Week will be celebrated from August 23rd – 27^th (week 7). We will be celebrating a little differently this year, but still aim to have lots of fun! The official book week theme is Old Worlds, New Worlds and Other Worlds which recognises and highlights the diversity of books throughout time and across imaginations. Students will spend time throughout the week celebrating books and Australian children’s authors in their online classrooms and on Wednesday of Week 7, students have the opportunity to dress up as their favourite book character for their Zoom meeting. No extravagant costumes are needed for this. Any representation of a favourite character will be wonderful. I am so excited to see what characters are show cased this year!

During Book Week we will also be holding an online book fair as an alternative to our library book donation day. Grandparents are welcome to get involved. This will be an opportunity to either donate a book to our library or purchase one for your child at home. More information will be in next week’s newsletter.

Deborah Horsley

Teacher Librarian

Stage 3 art or technology projects

The Stage 3 students were asked to present a pictorial interpretation of their novel study books either using art or technology. Here are some examples from 5M, 5R, 6M, 6RZ and 6/5S.

Susie Stock

**Week 5 PBL**: https://youtu.be/lfU6GErnsfc

Primary Ethics Bites!

The Primary Ethics team at Balgowlah North would like to give a big shout out to our ethics students working hard during lockdown. Your Primary Ethics teachers miss listening to you share your amazing ideas and opinions in class. Primary Ethics is proud to offer a lockdown alternative to ethics classes in school. Bites! is our series of 20 specially designed bite-sized lessons for children to chew over at home, practising their skills in close listening and ethical reasoning, based on material from our curriculum. Each week during Greater Sydney lockdown, Primary Ethics will be posting an ethical dilemma to get you thinking. Bites! are short, interactive videos designed for children to tackle individually or with the family.

Here is the link https://primaryethics.com.au/education/

We hope you enjoy Bites! and we cannot wait to be back in the classroom having ethical discussions together soon.

Susan Gray and our Primary Ethics Team