A Message from Hannah & Keir
Can you believe it’s not even winter yet? As the weather cools and the thermometer drops, we want to remind everyone the importance of naming clothing that may be taken off throughout the day - jumpers, jackets, scarves and gloves often end up in lost property and then the op shop. By naming your child’s clothing, we can return each article to its owner.
Inquiry
Last week was another amazing week of learning and growth, rooted in respect for ourselves, our peers and the earth. Classes continue to dig into the Inquiry concept of Sustainability and the relationship (and responsibility) each human has with (and to) the earth. This year you may notice some changes to how your children are learning through their Inquiry unit, as we refine our school’s approach and focus our attention on pacing the curriculum to the learning within each class and providing students with an opportunity to apply their developing skills in a range of authentic situations. Teaching teams are finding new opportunities to dive into the curriculum through this approach and we are excited to spend more time learning this approach at our staff conference in a few weeks time. We will be holding a community forum on our approach to Inquiry in Term 4 and we encourage you to come along as we are very excited by the new developments in this area!
Guided Play
Speaking of community forums, we have our next one on Tuesday next week, where we are unpacking the school’s approach to Guided Play. Guided Play is facilitated by our teachers in F-2 as a method of explicitly teaching personal and social learning skills, as well as introducing and unpacking key Inquiry concepts. In 2021, the Education Dept recommended that schools adopt an approach to Play as a response to the experiences our younger students missed out on due to the pandemic. At BNWPS, the benefits of Guided Play were numerous, significant and observed by teachers very early on. We will therefore continue to implement this approach in the future - let’s chalk this up to a positive coming from the pandemic!
If you have any questions about Guided Play that you would like answered in the forum, please use the following link;
If you are wanting to attend the Guided Play Forum, please use the following link;
Community Forum - Guided Play
Tuesday, May 31 · 6:00 pm
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/cmd-nhjh-aje
Visitors at School
Currently parents and carers are welcome to come on to the school grounds - playground, basketball court, woodlands and Sprout! Apart from Foundation, we ask that families avoid going inside classrooms unless an appointment has been made.
As each week passes without a COVID outbreak at school, we are grateful for each step back to the sense of normalcy. We are so happy to see parents and carers beginning to spend time on school grounds, with afternoon pick ups sometimes including a few hoops at the basketball court, families meeting on the ‘Foundie Bridge’ and with more and more people attending Sprout in the mornings.
We know parents and carers are keen to get back into classrooms and thank you all for your ongoing patience with us taking that next big step. As we continue to experience challenges in finding available CRTs (casual relief teachers) and teacher’s aides to replace staff who are away, we will gradually introduce parents and carers entering grades as classroom helpers by cohort, with our Junior cohort next in line - later this term.
If you are interested in working or training to be a paid teacher’s aide (not a volunteer classroom helper), please contact Keir or Hannah (our emails are at the bottom of this page).
Sorry Day
This Thursday is National Sorry Day, which has been recognised as a national day of importance since 1998. National Sorry Day recognises the Bringing Them Home report, which delves into the policies that caused children to be removed from their families and communities throughout the 20th century, and more recently the Uluru Statement on constitutional recognition.
While your child may not be ready for these concepts just yet, the idea of Sorry Day is an important one for all Australians and the values tied to Sorry Day can be highlighted for all ages. Saying sorry is an important social-emotional skill that takes time to unpack;
- Saying sorry is the first step to communicating with another person (or group of people) that we can see they are hurt/upset and we are not proud of that
- Saying sorry is an offering of vulnerability and can be a balancing of ‘power’
- Saying sorry is a commitment to changing behaviour in the future and taking steps to make amends
- Saying sorry (and meaning it) is a vital part of maintaining connected and respectful relationships
To see a fantastic list of books that help explain Sorry Day and other concepts related to this important day, please click here.