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

Thank you for your continued support of our students with before school drop offs and after school pick ups. The weather is making school life quite challenging at the moment and it is much appreciated when our students come to school in a rain jacket or have a rain jacket kept in the bottom of their school bag!

Forest High visit

Next Monday Mr Lawler Principal of Forest High will be visiting with SRC students from Forest. They will be attending our Stage 3 assembly, and we look forward to building stronger connections with our local high school.

Extra curricular

Students at Balgowlah North are extremely fortunate to have teachers who provide a variety of extracurricular activities either at lunchtime or before and after school. Students have the opportunity to be involved with Junior band, Senior band, Concert band and Beginner strings. The Bands are still recruiting, if your child may be interested in exploring this as an option please make contact with Caroline Fechner our Band manager.

Band - Balgowlah North Public School (nsw.gov.au)

We also have choir, senior dance and junior drama. Opportunities for a variety of sports including eagle tag, volleyball, newcombe ball, AFL and cricket. Debating has recommenced, as has Book club and chess will return next term at lunchtime.

Zone swimming carnival

Good luck to our swimmers that have gone off to compete today at our zone carnival. Thank you to Mrs Kelly and Ms c Indoe, we look forward to hearing how they go!

Assemblies

Assemblies will continue this term under our COLA. We look forward to welcoming parents back at the end of the term for our special K-6 recognition assembly. Next term we are hopeful that we will return to fortnightly assemblies hosted by each class with parents in attendance.

Buddies and Peer Mediation

Our Buddies program and Peer Mediation will commence in Week 7.

Kind regards,

Brooke Keevers

Principal

School news

ICAS

Students who participated in the ICAS assessments in 2021 have now received their certificates. Our school administration team will distribute certificates to students who have left our school via post or younger siblings still at BNPS.

Parents have direct access to their child’s results via the TAP ID system. If you require assistance locating your TAP ID and PIN please contact ICAS directly on 1800 931 775 or icasassessments@janison.com.au

MiniLit Information session

MiniLit is a special teaching program from Macquarie University, designed for young children in Years 1 and 2 who have been identified as needing a little extra support in learning to read. Our MiniLit program is led by Mrs Amanda Mason and Ms Cassie Cowburn. They will be working with small groups of four or five children for four or five days per week in the Learning Lab. Mrs Mason and Ms Cowburn will be working with small groups for 40 minutes a day, using the carefully structured MiniLit program materials.

Each MiniLit lesson has three main components:

- Sounds and Words Activities – where children learn to pay attention to the different sounds in words and to associate them with the letters of the alphabet

- Text Reading – which gives children the chance to practise their new skills

- Story Book Reading – which involves the teacher reading and discussing a story book with the students, to help improve their vocabulary and comprehension.

Research completed over the last five years has shown consistently that students make remarkable gains following MiniLit instruction. For children who are struggling to learn to read, intervening early is the best way to stop reading problems from becoming more established.

An information session on MiniLit will be held with Mrs Mason via zoom on Thursday 3rd March at 5pm. All welcome to join.

Topic: MiniLit information session

Time: Mar 3, 2022 05:00 PM Sydney

Join Zoom Meeting

https://nsweducation.zoom.us/j/65310078166?pwd=Mm5nSHA0b3pRQWtuQi9zQlhmTE5mUT09

Meeting ID: 653 1007 8166

Passcode: 734980

Rachel Ridley

Deputy Principal (Acting)

SEAT 2022Weekly SEAT (Scripture, Ethics and Additional Activities) starts tomorrow - Thursday, March 3rd. 3-6 SEAT is from 140-210 and K-2 is from 210-240. This year, we have no Ethics volunteers for Years 3, 5 and 6. Therefore, these children will be placed in the Additional Activities group. Thank you in advance to our SEAT volunteers. We look forward to welcoming you to our school tomorrow. Sascha Carroll

SEAT Co-ordinator

Library news

Sydney Writer’s Festival

I am very excited to announce the Sydney Writer’s Festival School Days Program will be held again this year. I would like to extend an invitation to interested students in years 4, 5 and 6 to come on this excursion on Tuesday May 24. This is an all day event which will be held at the Concourse Theatre in Chatswood. The program includes an exceptional line up of Australian authors and illustrators this year. The sessions are fun, interactive and an opportunity to hear the presenters discuss their craft, share their stories and take questions from students. If your child would like to be part of this fantastic opportunity, please fill in the form below. https://forms.gle/Ah5CRDzKwFGptXmr5

Unfortunately, there are a limited number of tickets, and these will be allocated in order of responses. More information about the program and presenters can be found at the following brochure: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/swf.org.au/live2021-media/7405/swf_primary-school_2022.pdf

Premier’s Reading Challenge

Registration for the reading challenge is now open! Student’s will need their DET Username and Password which they use at school. If they are unsure about this, please contact their classroom teacher. Visit the Premier’s Reading Challenge Website to register and enter the Student Site by clicking on the section at the top. Here, students can discover books within genre groupings, look up books and enter the books they have read. Please contact me if you have any problems with registration.

Deborah Horsley

Teacher librarian

**Millie G winner of U/9 Surf Race at NSW State Surf Lifesaving on Thursday!**

Peer Mediation

At peer mediation we did lots of URSTRONG tasks and part of the tasks were helping us learn how to deal with other people’s friendship fires. We also did lots of team building exercises to help our teamwork skills. I learned techniques to identify when people are being mean on purpose. The team building exercise helped me to get to know my peers and I think this will help me with peer mediation.

Matthew D 6/5M

I enjoyed doing the play. I think I played a really important part. I learnt the 4 friendship facts, what a peer mediator means and how you should behave a lot more things.

An important part of being a peer mediator is to have a great attitude and be an awesome role model. If you are a peer mediator, you need to understand their language and do stuff that they know.

Mila K 5S

We had an amazing time at the Peer Mediation day. We have learnt new skills such as being a good friend, how to deal with friendship fires and how to be patient with little kids. We are excited to help in Kindy land and grow to be responsible leaders. We understand that we need to be hard-working and caring. We enjoy helping others, such as going through the Friendship Cycle and the Friend-o-meter. We did that course to help us understand how to be a top-notch leader someday.

Hana & Helena 5R