Month: June 2023

Messages from Mrs Inglis

Heidi InglisPrincipal

On Monday we celebrated Superhero Day to raise money for the Royal Children’s Hospital.  Our school raised $856.35 .  Thank you to all those families that contributed and dressed up.  We all had a fun day dressing up – thank you SRC, Eve and Nate for organising.

Prep Enrolments 2024

Enrolments have currently open for Preps 2024.  The Department of Education have introduced timelines (similar to the timelines for Year 7 enrolments).  All enrolment submissions are to submitted to the school by Friday 28th July.  All siblings are required to complete an enrolment form, please do not assume that we know who all our younger brothers and sisters are.  Offers will be sent out by 11th August.  Last year, we were full after our first offer of acceptance so please make sure if you have a child or know of anyone who would like to attend our school in Prep next year, to collect an enrolment form and submit it by 28th July.  We have received a lot of applications for next year, so it is important we have all our siblings’ applications to avoid disappointment.

In regards to our grade 6 students, they will find out their Year 7 acceptances early next term.

Volunteers – Parent helpers

A big ‘thank you’ to all our parents who have completed our requirements to comply with the Child Safe Standards to be a volunteer at our school.  I suggest if you have not done it and you can see in the future that you might help out in the classroom, on an excursion or would like to be considered for a camp helper, that you complete the process now – to avoid missing out or frustrations if the process takes longer than expected.

Last year, we received new Child Safe Standards. As part of the new standards, we need to induct our volunteers that are working at our school with information regarding the code of conduct and their duty when working with our students at Beaconsfield Primary School. 

You were sent a notification regarding the process through the Sentral for Parents apps and an email.  If you cannot find the information, please email the school and we will send out all the information and links. Once completed you will be eligible to be a volunteer at our school. 

Your induction will last for this year and we will ask you to complete it each year. Thank you for your support and completing the induction. It is important that everyone working with our students are ensuring that they are creating a safe environment for all our students.  

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (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 disabilities.

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.education.gov.au/privacy-policy).

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

Leave

As I mentioned to the students at assembly on Monday, I will be taking long service leave next term.  I will be away the first three weeks, returning in week 4.  I will be heading overseas to visit London, Paris and Berlin.  While I am in Germany, I will be visiting family.

Tyson Buckingham will be taking on the role of Acting Principal during my absence.  Cara Trott will join the leadership team and Chris Jeffries will take a couple of days of the week working in the leadership office. Linda Amos is back on board after enjoying her leave.

For those that have worked out what is happening in London at the moment, I will be going to watch the cricket.  However, I will be watching the women’s ashes.  For those cricket lovers out there, what an amazing couple of weeks of test match cricket.  The win against India was an amazing start (and I did call Scott Boland having an impact!) and then the first test – how good did that win feel!  Sorry for those families that are from England, but it felt good to have a win when we were constantly reminded of falling 2 runs short in the past.  Hopefully it is the first win of many.

Take care over the break and I look forward to seeing you all when I return in August.

Auf Wiedersehen!

Heidi Inglis

Principal

News from Mr Buckingham’s Office

Tyson BuckinghamAssistant Principal

We have come to the end of another semester and what a success it has been. It’s great to see students excelling in their work and taking risks in their learning. I could say the same for our teachers with their amazing work on developing new Core Literacy routines and procedures as well as some deeper learning into Disability Inclusion.

One of the other pieces of learning being undertaken by a few staff members is a Leading Mathematics course through the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership. This course is getting us to unpack our practices and look for areas for further growth and improvement.

I would like to share with you one of the articles from the course that I feel may assist you helping with mathematics at home. Many parents ask and are looking for ways to help their children with Mathematics but worry about their own confidence and experiences with maths in school.

Below is an article by Doug Clarke, a professor at Australian Catholic University (Melbourne). Doug has worked in classrooms and has a passion in the mathematics education space, working with students, teachers and parents. In his article, Doug unpacks some general principles about helping your children and provides some practical suggestions of what this might look like.

How to help your children with maths

By Doug Clarke

Unlike secondary school, there’s not much research evidence that “traditional” homework (doing more class work, finishing work set at school) makes much difference to student achievement in primary school. However, where homework is focused on family activities, children do much better at school.

Build on success

Create the impression that learning mathematics well is desirable. Encourage effort and help your children see errors as part of the learning process.

Let them work things out

People learn, not so much by being told things, as by working things out for themselves and linking new ideas to ideas they already have. You can help by asking your children questions, letting them work out answers for themselves, and then discussing their answers and strategies with them.

Be patient

Children need time to think and time to answer. When asking your children questions or talking to them about mathematics, give them time. Be patient. Also, explain to older children that they need to give younger siblings time to answer questions, rather than always answering for them.

Talk about it

Encourage children to talk. Talking about mathematics is an effective way of learning, especially when a mathematical situation arises naturally.

Speak the language

Use mathematical words when you describe things. For example, instead of saying “the big red bucket”, you might say “the 10-litre bucket”. Instead of saying “the large packet of rice”, you might say “the 2-kilogram packet of rice”.

Don’t rush

There is no hurry. Children develop their mathematics skills gradually and there is no urgency about developing any particular skill. It’s necessary to work progressively on helping them to learn mathematics. Start now, but there is no need to accelerate your child’s development.

10 practical ideas to help your children with mathematics

Over the years, I have had the chance to facilitate parent evenings, where parents share the kinds of things they do with their children to support the learning of mathematics, and I share a few of my ideas.

Some of these ideas are more suited to younger children, and others to upper primary. As you read this, you may find you are already doing many of these things.

1. (For younger children) Count steps when you go up or down them. Ask your child to set the table, working out how many knives, forks, cups, chopsticks, etc are needed. Talk about longer and shorter, lighter and heavier. Identify shapes in the environment.

2. When you have a calculation to do, ask your child, “How would you work this out?” (67 per cent of all calculations adults do are in the home, so there are many opportunities for this.)

3. Talk to children about today’s date, find upcoming birthdays on the calendar, and ask them questions about how long till bedtime and how long until their birthday, and encourage them to read both analogue and digital clocks.

4. In the supermarket: when in line at the deli, ask how many more people until it’s your turn. Ask them to collect the 2L milk carton or the 1kg bag of rice. Encourage them to work out which has the better value out of the large and small packets of laundry detergent.

5. Use a height measurer marked in centimetres for children to keep track of their height, and encourage them to measure things at home, like spacing seedlings when planting in the garden and weighing ingredients during cooking.

6. When travelling, encourage children to be in charge of maps; calculate times and distances; and use the language of north and south-west. When out walking, notice the patterns of house numbers and predict the next house number.

7. Use jigsaw puzzles, card games, monopoly, spatial puzzles and so on. These all help to develop mathematical capability.

8. It is helpful for children to get practice at remembering numbers and other information. Encourage them to learn their address, the phone numbers of their parents, your car registration numbers, birth dates of all the family and so on.

9. Give children a pile of loose change and encourage them to count the total, discussing the different ways of doing this, and ask “How much more to make $10?”

10. At big sporting events, ask children to estimate the crowd. When travelling, estimate how much petrol will cost when filling up, or how long to get to a destination.

It’s my hope that you’ll see many of these ideas as easily implemented in everyday situations. Good luck!

Doug Clarke

Hopefully there are a few takeaways from the above article of things that maybe you are already doing or things that you could add to your routines to support your children in developing their mathematical skills and knowledge.

You can find the full article via the below weblink.

https://www.abc.net.au/education/how-to-help-your-children-with-maths/13676330

I wish Mrs Inglis a lovely break over in Europe and I look forward to taking on the Acting Principal role next term for the first 3 weeks. (Not that I’m counting)

Enjoy your break over the Winter holidays. Stay safe and warm and we look forward to seeing everyone back in Term 3.

Mr Buckingham

Office News

Melissa KolbeckOffice

SENTRAL APP

Please check the calendar for ALL important dates.

TERM 3 COMMENCES

Monday 10th July – Professional practice day. No student required at school.

Tuesday 11th July – Students return.

LIBRARY NEWS

This week we have sent home “overdue notices” for library books.

Holidays are a great time to have a good look for these lost treasures! If you cannot find your book, all you need to do is return the notice next term to your teacher with “missing” written on it. We will action this request & bring your child’s account up to date.

Thank you to the families who have donated books to the library this term, your contributions were amazing!

Enjoy your holidays.

Trish

Messages from Mrs Inglis

Heidi InglisPrincipal

Cross Country – Division

Last week saw our students compete at Division Cross Country.  They all did an amazing effort at giving their best and proudly representing our school.  We are also thankful for our parents who helped with transporting and cheering on our students and Mr Cole for organising the event for our school to attend.  Kaiyah, our sport captain, has written a recount of the event.

“Last Wednesday, the grade 3, 4, 5 and 6s represented our school at Division Cross Country and now we have an unbelievable 12 people going to the next round, Regional.  While the 3s and 4s ran 2kms around Toomuc Reserve, the 5s and 6s ran 3kms.  When watching each and every talented runner from Beacy, we could see that everyone was giving their 100% and absolutely pushing themselves to the limit.”

Kaiyah – Sports Captain

Staffing

As we approach the middle of the year and end of term 2, I want to thank our community for their support and understanding during these challenging times of staff shortages.  Whilst we have been successful in filling all our positions for 2023, we are challenged with replacing staff when away, due to leave. 

At Beaconsfield Primary School, we have a fantastic pool of casual relief teachers, who answer the call when we reach out to replace our staff.  I can report that this is a smaller pool than before the pandemic and we also only have a few people who are available for a whole week, most people can only offer us a few days a week.  When we are unable to fill a place through our pool, we reach out to an agency for support.  What I can report back, is on a few occasions, using both strategies, we have been unable to fill a position.  We then look at cancelling our tutoring program, leadership will step in and take the grade or the grade will be split amongst a number of similar aged grades.  At this stage, we have only needed to move to this option on a couple of occasions.

When our education support staff are absent (in the classroom support and office), we often do not  have the capacity to replace them but we will shift staff to where the greatest need is.  Once again, you may see leadership stepping in to answer a phone call or question at the office – I am always excited when it is a question I know the answer to but struggle with transferring calls through!

I am sure our workplace is facing the same challenges as yours and I know that we will be fine as we navigate this situation.  Once again, thank you for your support and understanding.

Student Voice and Agency

I know we have great student voice and agency when I receive letters on my desk from students at our school thinking of great ideas to make our school a better place. Last year I received a letter from a (then grade 1 student) regarding an idea for a fundraiser for our school and this week I received a letter from a grade 6 student problem solving a solution for balls rolling out from under the fence and onto the road.  What great initiative to have their voice heard!

SRC Fundraiser – Superhero Dress Up Day

On Monday the 19th of June we will be having a superhero dress up day! We came up with this idea because some students came to us asking to give back to the Royal Children’s Hospital since the staff there have helped them in the past. As the hospital workers are ‘community superheroes’, we thought a superhero dress up theme would be fun. 

Students can dress up as:

  • A well-known, famous superhero
  • Any community superhero that is important to them
  • A made-up superhero that expresses their personality

Please donate on QKR, with all money raised going to The Royal Children’s Hospital.

Thank you, 

Tilly and Noah – SRC Captains

In the classroom

We also thought you might like to hear from another of our school captains around learning at Beacy.  Here is an article from Taylah – school captain.

“Learning is one of the main parts of school, either listening or teaching someone else something.

The teachers at Beaconsfield teach us learning in an approachable way, knowing we’ll take in new information.

Our teachers engage us with a variety of different activities.  Sometimes we have hands on activities using different equipment like the MAB blocks in Maths or watching a video, taking notes and looking at an autobiography book to look for responses in English.

In my opinion, the way the teachers plan the activity so they aren’t all the same and are enjoyable, is a really great way for us to learn.

Like Mr Buckingham said ‘It’s never too late to be a learner, it doesn’t just stop at high school.”

Taylah – School Captain

In the playground

Last year, our SRC requested shop fronts for our playground. A great place to role play when outside. Trish and Pete (education support staff) were very creative to build the structure and Amelia and Blaze (Art Captains) and Mrs Gittins and Mrs Jennion (Visual Arts Teachers) came up with the design for our shop and cafe. We have installed them near the pirate ship and we can see they are a great addition to our playground.

As a cricket lover, I am very excited that we have Australia playing at the moment.  The time zones are challenging and I struggle to stay awake watching games in England, however it helps distracts me from the Melbourne wintery weather.  I hope that there are things in your life that are providing you some moments of enjoyment.

Have a great weekend and hopefully we return next week with a victory for Australia and another awesome Scott Boland performance.

Heidi Inglis

Principal

Reading with Mrs Trott

Cara TrottLearning Specialist

Have you noticed a change in the take home books that you are seeing? Maybe you are hearing the words Daily Review or Core Literacy.

If you are hearing these terms at home, that’s great!

At Beaconsfield Primary School we pride ourselves on high-quality explicit instruction, using research to guide our practice and gaining the BEST outcomes we can for our students. It is because of our passion for education that we are always seeking to learn how we can improve what we do.

Introducing Core Literacy!

Core Literacy is a structured approach to teaching the foundational skills that are required for successful, fluent reading and comprehension.

Multiple times each week our teachers provide targeted, explicit instruction on phonological awareness, phonics, decoding, reading fluency, writing fluency and opportunities for targeted guided learning in a high-impact, sequential and structured way.

These short, sharp activities support students to develop the skills of decoding and language comprehension, skills that are necessary to become successful readers, consumers and producers of text.

Each day students participate in Daily Review tasks to enable them to grasp new concepts and transfer new learning into their long-term memory. This structured review provides opportunities for multiple exposures to new concepts, revisiting of prior learning and opportunities to clarify students’ misunderstandings.

Daily review techniques minimise cognitive load as the routine is structured, predictable and sequential, therefore freeing up our students working memory to make space for important learning.

To support our Core Literacy program we have invested in bulk sets of decodable texts for use in the junior school area, you may have seen some of these books from Australian Decodables come home in your child’s satchel. They are beautifully illustrated and phonetically controlled to support the development of decoding skills in early readers.

In addition to these books, we have access to an online decodable library of fiction and non-fiction texts, providing our senior grades with access to high-quality texts to support the development of phonics knowledge and instruction across the whole school.

If you’d like to know more about Core Literacy, please ask your classroom teacher or myself.

Mrs Trott

Office News

Melissa KolbeckOffice

SENTRAL APP

Please check the calendar for ALL important dates

SPARE CLOTHES

With the change in weather, we are asking that you please pack a full set of spare clothes for child/children, including a t-shirt, pants/shorts/dress, jumper, socks and underwear. If your child slips over and gets wet and muddy, and they don’t have a change of clothes in their school bag, phone calls to parents will be made requesting dry clothing to be bought to school.