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

At this time when many of us are feeling anxious about the constantly evolving health crisis that has us currently in lockdown at home, it is important for us to have hope that we will move through this time and be stronger, more resilient and grateful for those people who are important in our lives.

Our children are positive, flexible and adaptive learners. They are learning skills at the moment that are going to keep them in good stead as they grow and develop. We as parents and educators will continue to show strength, resilience and a positive mindset to ensure the best possible learning and wellbeing outcomes for our students.

Thank you to Caleb and Annie for providing a wellbeing message for our students and school community.

IMG_1196.mov - Google Drive

BNPS Newsletter - Leader Message 2 - YouTube

Wellbeing

If you are finding these times difficult there are various ways that you can help your family’s mental health during this time. Being in lockdown can be very isolating and quickly impact our mental wellbeing so it’s important to stay connected to family and friends. It is important that we look after ourselves during lockdown:

Stay connected
Stay active – go for a walk and talk
Get enough sleep
Eat healthy
Drink lots of water
Practise mindfulness
Check-in with your child/ren to see how they are feeling
Just do your best with Learning from Home, the wellbeing of your family is most important
Switch off your child/ren’s devices so they can wind down

If you are struggling, please seek help early. We are here to help.

Wellbeing Resources

We can share a few more resources to support your families and their wellbeing.

This Way Up – Focusing on Solutions During the COVID-19 Pandemic. has been prepared by the University of NSW and St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. This resource provides practical and solutions focused activities to support you and your loved ones during this time.

Some useful resources from Emerging Minds for Supporting Children’s Mental Health During a Pandemic Toolkit –can be found in the links below:

Using play to support children during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

Helping children cope with stress during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic

Parent Workshop Opportunity

Our school community has the opportunity to participate in the family and carer Coach2Cope session run by EquiEnergy Youth. While we understand the extreme nature of the mental health support offered is not suitable for every family, we are aware that these issues are incredibly important and some of our families, particularly those with older children, may benefit from support in this area.

Feedback

Thank you to the many families that completed our quick survey last week. Many families have also emailed or rung the school directly and spoken to their individual teachers and supervisors. This feedback is very important as it gives us an opportunity to hear from all our school community.

As a leadership team this week we have reflected on this feedback as well as with our teachers and our students feedback as to what changes we can make to keep our students engaged for the next 4 weeks without ‘digital fatigue’ that I’m sure we are all feeling at the moment.

From next week we have added ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’ to our weekly activities. This will be a time to turn off devices by 12.00pm and spend time together engaging in a variety of gratitude activities. Siblings will be able to work together on these.

We have also planned some theme days for our students and teachers to look forward to as well. These theme days will be an opportunity to shake things up, we often have these days at school and both our students and our teachers are missing these.

BNPS Theme Days

Week 7 - Book Week dress up on Wednesday the 25th of August created by Mrs Horsley

Week 8 - Jersey Day dress up on Friday the 3rd of September with fun PE challenges from Mrs Kelly

Week 9 - STEM Day 8th September fun Science challenges!

Week 10 - Create and Connect Day 15th September celebrating the Arts

In the words of Anne Frank - “I’ve found there is always some beauty left - in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself: these can all help you”

Take care

Brooke Keevers

Principal

School news

Zoom Free Days

Over the next couple of weeks each of our classes will have a Zoom free day to give students the opportunity to reset and recharge away from their screens. Our teachers are also required to supervise at school on a rotating roster and it is not always possible for us to facilitate Zoom class catch up and small groups while they are at school. Your child’s class teacher will advise you of your class’ Zoom free day in advance.

Assemblies

Great to see many of our students at our zoom assemblies on Monday. It was a lovely opportunity for us to come together to celebrate student success.

If you have changed your address within the last 12 months please ensure you have rung the school to let us know or via the schoolzine App using the Change of Details Form on the Home Page. We are sending out merit awards through the post. This may become a form of communication over the next few weeks as well!

ICAS

This year's ICAS assessments have been postponed to the following dates:

Writing - Thursday 7th October

English - Monday 11th October

Science - Tuesday 12th October

Maths - Monday 18th October

Due to the date changes, the school will reopen registrations via the Parent Portal until Monday the 23rd of August.

Your school access code is: GUU692

Your parent page link is: https://shop.icasassessments.com/pages/pps

Please contact us if you have any further questions,

Feedback

Feedback is an integral part of the teaching and learning cycle. We have put together this infographic to support our community in understanding our approach to feedback for home learning. The three big questions that feedback addresses are -

Where am I going? Feed Up

How am I going there? Feed Back

Where will I go next? Feed Forward

Students who are assessment capable learners seek feedback and recognise that errors are opportunities to learn.Feedback opportunities are planned carefully and come from three sources: self, peers and the teacher. During Home Learning feedback will look different to what happens within a classroom environment.

Rachel Ridley

R/Deputy Principal

Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds

Book Week is just 1 week away! This year we will celebrate a little differently from home. The theme is Old Worlds, New Worlds and Other worlds and students are invited to dress-up next Wednesday, August 25 for their class zoom. If students prefer not to dress up, a picture of their favourite character would be wonderful. Costumes can reflect this year’s theme or a favourite character. Students attending school on this day are also welcome to dress up.

As part of our celebration this year we will be holding an Online Book Fair. 10% of all sales will be donated back to the school for further book purchases. Books will be posted, free of charge, to your home.

You may also donate to the school library by adding the ‘Donation’ items to your cart. You may also donate specific books by noting ‘Donation to School’ in the comments before paying on the website. The book fair can be found at the link below and is now open. Happy reading!

https://www.thechildrensbookshopspeakersagency.com.au/book_fairs/

Premier’s Reading Challenge

It is my great pleasure to announce another group of readers has now completed the reading challenge for this year. Well done to: Walter F, Jake I, John S, Camilla H, Sophia C, Olive H, Cooper I, Isabelle K and James R.

Deborah Horsley

Teacher Librarian

Music

Congratulations to all the children who have been producing fantastic work with online music! It has been a delight to view your work and videos. Thank you also to all the parents for your support and encouragement with your children and with music.

Kiana created an amazing musical piece on Incredibox

This week the following children’s performances can be enjoyed by the school community.

Heidi H from 5M will perform beautifully on piano playing Song of Twilight composed by Yoshinao Nakedo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIO0cwlWxcs

A huge congratulations to Clementine R from 5R who has been selected to play with the Extension Arts Alive Band. This is a commendable achievement to be selected for the primary years 4 to 6 band, a culmination of determination and practice

Here is the link to Clementine playing her audition piece on the french horn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtvZufRo0-I

Band news

Our band members have been meeting regularly to continue working on pieces which we can perform when we are allowed back together. The sessions are fun and interactive with so much enthusiasm from the students. The conductors have been working extra hard to ensure the students remain engaged. Well done team.

We are working on a project to show some of their work online – keep an eye out for that.

Senior Band

Senior Band have been learning a piece by Brian West called Bunyip Blues. We have looked at pictures of Bunyips and thought about how the composer uses different articulations to create a scary atmosphere. We also learnt to play the notes of the blues scale which is what composers use when the write blues music. Here is a video of Finn Cupitt playing the Blues Scale on the trombone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z89-XQhXkjg

We are all also working on composing our own piece for our instrument using the notes of the Blues Scale. Here is a video of Oscar Gill playing the first of his compositions using the notes from the Blues Scale on piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kbvFVz8GDE

Stay tuned for the release of more Blues Scale compositions, as well as the full band recording of Bunyip Blues!

Concert Band

Concert Band has been working online to put the finishing touches on “I’m A Believer” by Neil Diamond. We have been doing lots of work with our metronomes and discussing how different practise strategies help us learn faster. Lockdown has enabled some of the players in band to get a lot of extra practise on instruments that they don’t usually have at home. Erin has the band’s vibraphone at home and is enjoying being able to revise all her mallet parts on the actual instrument she uses in our performances, and Karina has perfected her skills on tambourine and now has the timpani at her house as well so that she can spend some time improving her technique and learning to tune them!