Teaching & Learning

Solar Boat Challenge

Last Thursday the Year 6 students at Buninyong PS hosted Mt Pleasant PS students for the Central Highlands’ Solar Boat Challenge. The day was once again a huge success as students worked hard to maintain and improve their boats in an intense day of racing.

The morning saw teams compete in the speed trials, attempting to complete the course in the quickest time possible. Each boat was involved in 4 races, with times being combined to help identify the draw for the afternoon’s knockout competition.

In the afternoon, the knockout competition saw the tightest racing of the day and the fastest times recorded. This was a good indication of how teams had modified their boats throughout the day. The best of 3 race final was an exciting affair with The White Boat (Mt Pleasant) taking on the much improved Undertakers (Buninyong). The Undertakers were eventual winners as they recorded two of the fastest times of the day and came within .03 of beating the course record.

During the day students also had to present their projects and learning from the past 7 weeks. The presentations were impressive and highlighted the knowledge of solar energy, buoyancy and electrical circuitry. Our students are really starting to think in a sustainable way.

Please check out some of the photos from the day and we look forward to doing it all again in 2020.

Public Speaking Competition

On Wednesday and Friday last week we had students stand on their ‘soap box’ in the courtyard and present their speech for the BPS Public Speaking Competition. The standard was excellent with many all students being able to engage the audience that had gathered.

On Wednesday we had the Year 3 and 4 students present their speeches on the topic ‘The day I went into outer space and met an alien.’ It was wonderful to hear the different perspectives each student had on this topic and the way in which they used different strategies to tell their story.

On Friday it was the Year 5 and 6 competition delivering a speech on the topic ‘Do you ever read a book and imagine what it would be like to be there … in the story … as one of the characters, or as yourself alongside the other characters?’ The students all really delivered and made the judging extremely difficult.

The eventual winners were:

Year 3/4: Emily M and Lily R

Year 5/6: Quinn M and Izzy C

These students will go on to represent the school and present their speech at the Lions Club District Final.

This competition will be held at the Buninyong Bowls Club on Monday 18th November.

We really do have wonderful public speakers.

Buninyong Primary School Learning Behaviours

Some of the language you may be hearing from your children at the moment is based on our Learning Behaviours model. This model has been designed to help students and teachers really understand what is expected of them during the different learning opportunities presented at school.

We have broken our learning opportunities into 3 parts; Teacher Led learning, Guided learning and Student Led learning.

These are great discussion starters when talking to your child about their learning at school.

Specialist Homework

Every term in Week 5 we give students the opportunity to complete homework as set by our specialist teachers. This process is about valuing the important role that languages, physical health and fitness, music and visual arts plays in our learning.Your children will have brought this home with them on Friday. Please take some time to enjoy the challenges set out on the homework grid and return on Thursday as normal. Classroom teachers will be discussing the different strategies the students used to help them complete the homework.

Melbourne Renegades

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:

1. Use your Compass portal to submit a note (see video below)
2. Ring the Buninyong Campus office.
3. 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:

1. Go to your Compass portal.
2. Click on Attendance next to your child’s name.
3. Click on the Unexplained Absences tab
4. Choose the absences and click on Add Attendance Note.
5. 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.