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 message

Welcome to Week 10. What a fabulous term of learning we have had. Thank you to our students who have worked hard to provide their personal best at all times, thank you to our teachers who have continued to provide engaging learning opportunities, high expectations and connection to each and every student. We hope you take time to celebrate your child’s achievements when you receive their reports on Friday. These are important milestones in your child’s educational journey.

Thank you to our whole school community for continuing to support our school and the work we do. Strong partnerships with parents underpin the values of Balgowlah North Public School. A particular shout out to Luke Hannan who has been able to provide the school with an outdoor ping pong table, noughts and crosses games and a tube installation for the Kindergarten/ Year One playing space. Thank You!

Holiday maintenance
Please be aware that the holidays are an opportunity for maintenance of our school grounds and buildings. We have had some damage to our futsal field and are waiting for repairs of this area. If you notice something of concern could you please report this to school security or the police. Mr Gaulter is busy working on refurbishing our gardens at the front of the school and the carpark. There may be machinery on site at different times, it is important that students using the grounds in the holidays are supervised by an adult.

Industrial action
Tomorrow there will be industrial action. Our school will provide minimal supervision for students. All usual school and class programs will be collapsed on this day.

Staffing changes
I would like to acknowledge the work that Eliza McAllister has provided to Balgowlah North this year in her role as music and dance teacher. The students have had many wonderful opportunities to explore a variety of experiences in the performance space with their class mates. Eliza will be taking maternity leave at the end of this term. Ms Carol Saab will be working in this role on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Mrs Michelle Mandalidis will also be joining us on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Congratulations
Our Senior Dance Ensemble performed at Glen Street Theatre last night for family and friends. We look forward to sharing their performance with our school community next term. Thank you to Eliza Ross and Steph Rooleht for the choreography, costuming, rehersals and organisation of this for our students who excel in the area of dance. We are also looking forward to our Drama Ensemble group performing at Chatswood Concourse as part of the Arts Alive Festival early next term as well, fabulous to have opportunities for our students to showcase their areas of passion!

I hope everyone takes time out in the holidays to spend time connecting with friends and family and taking time to recharge the batteries for Term 3. We will see you all back on Tuesday the 19th of July 2022.

Take care

Brooke Keevers
Principal

Good buddies!

Well done to our Banner and Medal Recipients!

Principal's Certificate recipients - great work!

Congratulations to our World's Greatest Shave Highest Fundraisers!

We're very proud of Kyrie for being awarded his Citizenship Award K-2!

We're also very proud of Freya V for being awarded her Citizenship Award Y3-6!

Congratulations to Chloe G for obtaining her NSWA PSSA Record Certificate
for Girls 13 years 50m Freestyle, well done Chloe!

Well done to Isaac R for being Sydney North Primary Schools Cross Country Age Champion!
Fantastic effort Isaac!

School News

Premier’s Debating Challenge

Last Wednesday was round three of the 2022 Premier’s Debating Challenge. The two BNPS teams competed with Manly Vale PS. Team Manning (negative) defeated the Manly Vale Owls on the topic ‘that parents should have to provide pets for their kids’. BNPS Team Bardoo (affirmative) were unsuccessful against the Manly Vale Foxes on the topic ‘that parents should ensure their Years 5 and 6 kids spend at least one afternoon a week unsupervised’.

As in previous debates, our two teams were very competitive and are looking forward to next term when they compete against one another for the final round in Term 3.

Congratulations to Ella M., Darcy Y., Naomi G., and Talia W.

Chris McCall
Debating Coordinator

ICAS
We are delighted to inform you that Balgowlah North Public School will be providing our students with the opportunity to participate in the world-renowned ICAS competitions this year.

What is ICAS?
ICAS is an online academic competition that is designed to assess students’ higher order thinking and problem-solving skills in English, Mathematics, Science, Writing, Spelling Bee and Digital Technologies.

Each assessment celebrates students’ accomplishments by providing opportunities for recognition and development. Every student who participates will receive a printed certificate and an online results report. Top performers will be eligible for medals.

Learn more about ICAS here. (https://www.icasassessments.com/products-icas)

ICAS Assessments on offer at BNPS in 2022:

Assessment	Cost	Grades	Date
Writing	$23.65	3-6	Tuesday 9th August
Digital Technologies	$19.25	3-6	Friday 12th August
English	$19.25	3-6	Thursday 18th August
Science	$19.25	3-6	Tuesday 23rd August
Mathematics	$19.25	3-6	Wednesday 31st August

How to participate in ICAS

If you wish for your child to participate in ICAS this year, please:

read about ICAS subjects and prices here: (https://www.icasassessments.com/products-icas)
go to Parent Portal here: (https://shop.icasassessments.com/pages/pps)
enter our school’s access code – CQO552
enter your child’s details, select the tests you would like to purchase, then proceed to payment.

Please note that the ICAS tests shown for selection are at the school’s discretion. Assessments will be conducted during the school day. If your child is absent on the specified assessment date, we will endeavor to schedule a make up session within the assessment window.

After payment is made via the Parent Payment System, you will receive an order confirmation email, please keep this for your records. Please note parent ordering will close on Monday 1st August.

We will notify you of the date your child’s ICAS results are ready. You and your child can access the results once released via the Reports Portal using the TAP ID and pin found on the back of the ICAS certificate.

NCCD
Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

year of schooling
category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools
consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools
develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the:

Australian Government’s Privacy Policy(https://www.dese.gov.au/about-us/resources/department-education-skills-and-employment-complete-privacy-policy-0).

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school.

Class snapshot - 4W

Library News

Well done to another successful group of readers who have now completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge:

Kindergarten - Ellie S

Year 4 - Olive B, Kurt H, Louisa O, Anna S

Year 5 – Ruby T

Year 6 – Heidi H, Karina O, Mia R

The challenge finishes on August 19, so there is still time to complete reading requirements and submit book lists.

Over the holidays, please make use of our online platforms to read and listen to books. Storybox library is a wonderful resource with a huge amount of video read alouds. They also have great activities to go with each book. Username: booksbnps, Password: books

We also have our EBook and Audio Book library, with a collection of books for all ages groups, K – 6. This can be accessed by downloading the EBook by Wheelers app.

Debbie Horsley
Teacher/Librarian

Tec Hub

Robotics and 3D Printing in Stage 3

We used the Mindstorms and learnt how to code them to go through a course with turns. We added challenges along the way such as spins, adding noises and completing the course backwards. This activity helped us to feel more comfortable with coding. When we are older, we might want to make this our job, and these skills can help us with making apps, computer programing, web developing or computer systems engineering.

Henry, Isaac and Van 5R

When we created our robot, we had the idea to make it go around the course Miss Rooleht assigned by using colour sensors instead of coding. This meant that when the sensor saw the colour white, the colour of the edge of the track, the robot would turn back. Sadly, the sensors’ code wouldn’t override the moving code so we changed our plan and decided to make the robot move around the classroom. We used a distance sensor and a button sensor so when the robot was too close to an object, it would say “HEY!” and when it hit an object, it would say “OW”. We taught ourselves lots about sensors!

Ewan and George 5R

In the last two weeks year six have been programming robots through mazes. Every student was put into partners and we were taught how to make the robot move. We used an app called EV3 classroom which we connected our robots to and then programmed them. On week one Mrs Wakelin took our class and taught us how to decorate the robot and use sensors. On week two Mrs Stock created a maze out of sticky tape for our class to lead the robots through. We had to try many attempts as creating coding was very hard and we had to think outside the box. We had to program them to go straight, turn and do a 360 without any help! Our robot Dagbert was the first to finish and coming close in second was Emily and Issy’s robot, Essy. Sadly Arther, the highly decorated robot did not make it through as well as most of the other students in the class. Coding and programming robots has been a very fun and educational activity and we were glad to take part in it and hope that next year at our high schools, we can take part in something like that again.

Heidi H and Amira S 6S

Here's the link for the video:

https://youtube.com/shorts/dx89ST2Shp8?feature=share

Tinkercad is a fun website that helps you 3D print. It is very useful. Stage 3 have made name tags for themselves but Tinkercad can be used for so much more. An example of this happened in Melbourne, Victoria, they 3D printed a house which had one bedroom and one bathroom for only $7 ,000. That is very cheap considering the rise in house prices in Sydney. So overall Tinkercad is the future and will be a big help to us later in our life. Now I'm going to tell you about how to use tinkercad. The controls of Tinkercad are quite fiddly but once you get used to it becomes the hobby you never thought you’d like. Tinkercad is a 3D printer program to bring your designs to life, say you want a Centaurus which is a horseman from Greek mythology. Now let's get into the controls. The triangle when you are on the ‘front of the cube’ can be found top left to bring the printing above or below and the black cubes determine the length and width.

Lachie S and Toby B 6S

Dance and Drama news

Dance News
On Monday night, the Balgowlah North Senior Dance Ensemble participated in the Sydney North Dance
Festival. We enjoyed watching the other dances performed by different schools while we waited backstage.
The group felt more excited and nervous as there was a live audience this year. We really enjoyed the
whole experience and had so much fun on stage. We hope that Balgowlah North will continue dancing and
performing!
Issy and Summer - Year 6 Dancers

Sports News

Athletics Carnival 2022
The school athletics carnival for students in Year 2-6 will be held on Tuesday 26 July at Seaforth Oval. Students in these years have very enthusiastically been competing in an athletics program at school over the past few weeks. They have all had a chance to do long jump, high jump and shot put. From these lessons, finalists have been selected in each age group. Finalists will be posted on the sports noticeboard (outside 6/5M) this week. Shot Put finals will be held on the carnival day and long jump and high jump finals will be held at school on Thursday 28th July from 12pm-3pm.

Kerry Kelly
Sports Coordinator

PSSA results

24th June 2022 Round 7

Girls Soccer

Team	Senior A	Senior B	Junior B
Opponents	Manly West	Manly Village	Manly Village
Score	0-2 loss	1-0 win	2-1 win
Best & Fairest	Issy K	Rose K	Hazel H

Boys Soccer

Team	Senior A	Junior A	Senior B	Junior B
Opponents	BYE	BYE	Manly Vale	Manly Vale
Score			2-1 win	3-2 loss
Best & Fairest			Otto K	Lachie T