Solar Boats – State Champions

During the last few weeks of Term 3 and the beginning of Term 4, the Year 6’s have been looking into sustainable practices to lessen their foot print on our world. One of the main elements of this inquiry has been the Solar Boat Challenge.

The Year 6 students had their challenge day late in Term 3 to test their boats and on the weekend one team made their way to Science Works in Melbourne to compete against other school teams from across the state. While the boat didn't quite match some of the faster boats in the competition, the Buninyong team excelled with their exceptional knowledge of solar energy, buoyancy and electrical circuitry.

Izzy, Imogen, Leila and Andrew impressed with their presentation and poster to receive the Best Presentation and Poster award. They also won the Best Use of Recycled Materials award which meant 2 of the 6 state awards were collected by Buninyong PS.

This is a wonderful testament to the high level of work being developed by our Year 6 team during this unit of work.

A big thankyou to Jacqui (Imogen’s mum) who was able to transport and supervise the team while in Melbourne.

Next Thursday 31st October, we will be welcoming Mt Pleasant PS who will contest the Central Highlands Solar Boat Challenge. Action will start at 10am and will continue through until 2pm. Will our course record be broken for the third year in a row?

Come along and find out.

Young Authors - Final Celebration

This Friday the Young Authors will be heading off for their final workshop and celebration. The authors will participate in a literary tour of Ballarat, attend a workshop with published author Michael Panckridge and tour the Art Gallery of Ballarat.

This event is a culmination of workshops that the Young Authors have participated in during the year. Students have spent time with authors, listening to their stories and learning the craft of writing. Hopefully some pathways have been identified to help students see how writing can translate into a broad range of career opportunities.

Thanks to all the students for their efforts this year and we hope to see you continue excelling with your written work.

Thanks to Mrs Dekok who has been instrumental in planning the workshops and organising transport for the Buninyong students.

Public Speaking Competition

We have lots of interest in our Public Speaking competition again this year and expect the competition to be hot! This week students will be writing and testing their speeches to get feedback on how they can improve.

The topics are: Which one would you choose?

The Buninyong Public Speaking Competition will be held on Wednesday 30th October:

Multi-purpose Room at Scotsburn Campus at 11am.
Courtyard at Buninyong Campus at 1pm

BIG WRITE – TALK HOMEWORK

This week is the first Big Write for Term 4. Students will have received their Talk Homework to discuss this week at home prior to the Big Write session on Thursday.

We have now been completing Big Writes every fortnight for more than a 18 months and have found that those students who are completing Talk Homework in the days leading up to these events are:

More prepared to start writing quickly.
Showing greater creativity in their writing.
Able to talk about their writing topic in greater detail.
Demonstrating a more positive attitude to writing.

Below is a reminder about Talk Homework.

What is Talk Homework? – If you can’t say it, you can’t write it!

Your child will bring home Talk Homework in the days leading up to a Big Write session. This prompt is provided to encourage parents and children to discuss ideas for writing and strategies to use. It is designed to highlight the important role oral language plays in the development of literacy skills.

What is the parent’s role in Talk Homework?

When you receive Talk Homework we encourage parents to use some of the following strategies:

Encourage as many family members as possible to be involved in Talk Homework, maybe around the dinner table.
Switch off the TV! Try to ensure this is dedicated talking and listening time.
When giving your opinion, use the ‘because’ word to explain why you think that.
Ask others around the table to give their opinions and to use the ‘because’ word.
Ask your child his/her opinion and ask them to use the ‘because’ word.
Link the topic back to something you remember from your childhood and say why things may be different now. Project forward to how things may be different in the future.
Don’t write anything down! Not only are we improving oral language, but we are also improving memory links.
Revisit the conversation over a few nights to encourage family members to have ‘think time’ as this may change answers and opinions given.

STEM Shed

Over the weekend the STEM shed was finished at the Buninyong campus. STEM stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics and is a major department initiative to help students see the links between these areas of study. Usually, when completing a STEM related task, students are required to apply thinking from all these fields in order to successfully complete it.

At the moment the space will be used to home our Energy Breakthrough Team and Solar Boats and then expand to become a Maker Space where hands-on STEM related tasks can be undertaken. All students from both campuses will have the opportunity to use this space.

The STEM shed comes partly as a grant from IA Science and extra support from the Bendigo Bank. A huge thankyou to David and Tennille Kors from Daville Building Surveyors for their very generous support.

Story Dog – Update

After a very successful start to the Story Dog program in the Year 2 classrooms, we are pleased to welcome back Jacquie and Honey every Tuesday until the end of term.

Facts about Story Dog:

Story Dogs is based on the successful American literacy program, Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.). The R.E.A.D program was launched in 1999 in Utah, USA, as the first comprehensive literacy program built around the appealing idea of children and young adolescents reading to dogs.

Reading sessions take place in a quiet area of the school grounds, such as the library or outside the classroom. A reading session is approximately 20 minutes long, where each child is one-on-one with the dog team. Books are chosen to suit the student´s reading level.

During the session, the handler often speaks through the dog, such as; “Sam doesn't understand what is happening on this page, could you help him out?” The child becomes the teacher as they help the dog understand, and their confidence soars.

Our volunteers come with fun, interesting books that are specifically chosen for beginner readers. The students also have input into what they read. We encourage the students to write letters to the dogs between reading sessions, further encouraging literacy skills.

Attendance Notes and Unexplained Absences

In order to keep our attendance data accurate have a look at their Compass attendance notes and follow the advice below.

Submitting an Attendance Note:

There are 3 ways to submit an Attendance note for your child:

Use your Compass portal to submit a note (see video below)
Ring the Buninyong Campus office.
Send an email to the Buninyong office.

Clearing Unexplained Absences: (check out the video below)

Every time your student is absent from school without a note, an Unexplained Absence will be recorded against your child’s name. An Unexplained Absence is also recorded if you drop your child off late for school and do not accompany them to the school office.

You can add attendance notes to any Unexplained Absences by doing the following:

Go to your Compass portal.
Click on Attendance next to your child’s name.
Click on the Unexplained Absences tab
Choose the absences and click on Add Attendance Note.
Choose from the choices available.

If you have an Unexplained Absence that is in accurate, that is fine, please just contact the office at the Buninyong Campus and we will clear the entry for you.

To help with this process, please check out the video below that shows the process to follow.

This Saturday 26th October

This Saturday 26th October

Stall holders please arrive at the staff carpark on Simpson Street from 8am to set up.