Hello Beacy families. I hope you are having a good day.
Writing at Beaconsfield Primary School
At our school, we are very passionate about ensuring that our students enjoy writing. We want them to have the skills and desire to communicate effectively their ideas and thoughts. We believe that every child has a message in them.
We use the 6 traits + 1 framework from our planning and delivery of our writing program. Many of you would be familiar with them after hearing about them in remote learning last year. The traits are:
- Ideas: develop a single topic to convey a message
- Organisation: reveal ideas in a logical order, including a beginning, middle and end
- Word choice: use the right word in the right place to convey just the right meaning
- Sentence fluency: improve the readability of a piece with complete thoughts and sentence variety
- Voice: increases a reader engagement with intentional writer feeling, attitude and emotion
- Conventions: make writing more correct by following the rules of punctuation, capitalisation and grammar
- Presentation: how the writing looks to the reader
I would like to explore ‘ideas’ a bit further. When commencing writing, you need to have an idea to write about. At school, our teachers will sometimes give our students a topic to write about. We call these ‘seeds’. The students, sometimes with the support of the teacher, will explore their idea or ‘seed’ to come up with different ideas to write about. Once the students have an idea and know what type of writing they are going to use to convey their message, they can begin.
The teachers will model with the students different ways to explore their thinking about an idea to come up with different topics to write about. Let us work through a ‘seed’. Looking at this picture, what could you write about?
- A story about a dog working on a farm.
- A persuasive piece about how everyone should own a dog as a pet.
- An informative piece about how to care for a dog.
- A research piece about working dogs in our community.
- A poem about a dog missing his family.
Once you have an idea and the message you wish to convey, let’s begin writing! The best way to support your child’s writing is by giving them experiences and talking with them, to help develop their ideas.
There is a writing competition running that students can enter in to show their craft of writing. Write4Fun is hosting this event. Click on this link to enter: www.write4fun.net
Write4fun encourages young student writers and artists with fantastic competitions, by publishing top quality books and conducting interactive, fun workshops across Australia. Get creative today for your chance to win some awesome prizes! Share your poems, short stories and artwork with other students around the world. Get writing, typing, drawing, painting, shooting (photos of course) and designing today! See how your work compares, read and rate other student entries.
Swimming Sports
This term we have run our swimming tryouts and taken a team of students to compete in the District Swimming Competition. I have asked Brooke, our Sports Captain, to share her recount. We are very proud of all our students who tried out to represent our school and for those that were successful in getting to the next level. We wish those students who have moved on to Division level, all the best and hope they achieve personal bests.
Hi I’m Brooke and I’m one of the Beacy primary sports captains.
Last week on Wednesday the 24th myself and some of the other students attended the district swimming competition. We competed against other schools in many different events and we all did our best and had lots of fun. It was held in Pakenham at the outdoor pool which was really cold. All the students behaved very well and represented their schools outstandingly.
This was a great opportunity to be active and still have fun at the same time. I would highly recommend you try out for all of your school’s sports programmes as they are loads of fun and help with your fitness.
School Council
On Monday 22nd March, we will be running our Annual General Meeting for School Council. We currently have a couple of vacancies on our council. If you are interested in being a part of this group, please contact the office. Nomination forms need to be in by 12th March.
What is a school council and what does it do?
All government schools in Victoria have a school council. They are legally constituted bodies that are given powers to set the broad direction of a school, in accordance with Ministerial Order 1280 Constitution of Government School Councils, and the Education and Training Reform Act 2006. In doing this, a school council is able to directly influence the quality of education that the school provides for its students.
Code of conduct for school councillors
School councils in Victoria are public entities as defined by the Public Administration Act 2004. School councillors must abide by the Code of Conduct for Directors of Victorian Public Entities issued by the Victorian Public Sector Commission. The Code of Conduct is based on the Victorian public sector values and requires councillors to:
- act with honesty and integrity – be truthful, open and clear about their motives and declare any real, potential or perceived conflict of interest and duty
- act in good faith in the best interests of the school
– work cooperatively with other councillors and the school community, be reasonable, and make all decisions with the best interests of students foremost in their minds - act fairly and impartially – consider all relevant facts of an issue before making a decision, seek to have a balanced view, never give special treatment to a person or group and never act from self-interest
- use information appropriately – respect confidentiality and use information for the purpose for which it was made available
- exercise due care, diligence and skill – accept responsibility for decisions and do what is best for the school
- use the position appropriately – not use the position as a councillor to gain an advantage
- act in a financially responsible manner – observe all the above principles when making financial decisions
- comply with relevant legislation and policies – know what legislation and policies are relevant for which decisions and obey the law
- demonstrate leadership and stewardship – set a good example, encourage a culture of accountability, manage risks effectively, exercise care and responsibility to keep the school strong and sustainable.
Enjoy the extra long weekend, with Tuesday being a ‘student-free’ day.
Heidi Inglis
