Learning & Teaching

Ranges Music Network

Last Wednesday we had Shaun from Ranges Music Network "drum" up some business on the decking area at school. There was lots of music and jamming and budding artists in the midst!

Shaun Evans, PepperHorn Music / Ranges Events / Ranges Music Network shaun@pepperhorn.com / shaun@rangesevents.com.au / shaun@rangesmusic.net / 0449 922 425

Young Writers' Language Experience

Providing language experiences alongside explicit instruction plays an important role for our young writers. The Prep students are focusing on the letter "H" this week as well as crafting a procedural text. So it was only fitting that Miss T brought in her horse to prompt some writing! The Preps also visited The Gisborne Icecream Co to immerse themselves in "how to make ice-cream"!

Year 6 Confirmation Commitment Mass

This past weekend, our Year 6 students and their families attended the Year 6 Confirmation Commitment Mass at St Brigid's Church. In a heartfelt ceremony, the students made their commitment prior to receiving the sacrament, standing before their parish community. The event was followed by a warm and welcoming gathering at the school, strengthening our community bonds and celebrating this important milestone together.

Daniel's Digi Tech Update

Tech Savvy Preps Making Mum-a-tars

Now, some of the Prep mums may have got a very interesting card from your young person last week, as in our class last week, we talked about Avatars (not the blue things) but how we can represent ourselves online safely using digital creations.

After that, our job was to try and make an avatar for our Mum for Mother’s Day.

Here you can see some of the Avatars in action (and a very weird-looking hairy guy that I will be making into T-shirts in the coming weeks, please prepare your money orders and stamped, self addressed envelopes now)!

Coding with Grace (another example of our amazing student’s initiatives)

Grace from Grade 6 is another shining example of how St. B students like to show leadership and initiative. A keen coder, Grace has been teaching herself HTML and CSS, and asked if we would learn it in our Digital Tech lessons, so, I said, “Why don’t you run the class?”, and of course she took me up on that offer. After spending several lunchtimes working on her lesson plan, she taught the Grade 6 students how it all works last week.

It was great to sit back and work on my solitaire high score, I mean, watch with pride, one of our students being in charge.

National Reconciliation Week

During Reconciliation Week, our Education Support Officer, Mick, took the lead in organising a meaningful whole-school gathering. Together, we learned about the significance of this important week, prayed as a community, and acknowledged the achievements and contributions of key Indigenous individuals. This gathering provided an enriching experience, fostering a deeper understanding and respect for Indigenous culture and history within our school.

Creativity at St B’s: “Bricksberg”

Our students from Prep to Year 6 have been enthusiastically engaging in creative play during break times, collaboratively building the town of Bricksberg. Using pavers, trucks, diggers, and natural materials, they have created a vibrant town centre complete with car parks, homes, lakes, hotels, and more. This imaginative project showcases their strengths in collaboration, creativity, curiosity, prior knowledge, and negotiation skills. It’s wonderful to see their teamwork and ingenuity come to life in such a dynamic way.

Middles Initiatives

Middle students Indie, Zoe, Wynne, and Annalise created a Pizza Hut to raise money for their middle school project. Pizzas were a hit and all sold out with a total of $70.

Last week the Middles Students walked to the Oaks Nursing Home where we met with Lorraine, Jack and Ted who shared stories of their lives with us. We delivered some care packages for some of the residents. We then headed off around the Gisborne Botanical Gardens to conduct a clean-up through the park and along the creek. We were very proud of our students and the way they embraced each of these opportunities to support and care for our community.

The Middles are excited to hold their BBQ tomorrow afternoon with sausages, baked goods and homemade lemonade on offer. The purpose of our fundraising is to further support the Gisborne Community Care Foodbank and the St. Vincent De Paul’s Assist-A-Student Program. This initiative is part our our Catholic Social Teaching Religion unit where we are looking at our responsibility to care for those in our community and our environment. Bring your coins for a great afternoon tea.

Maths is a Cause for Celebration

Miss Petrina and the Senior crew loved their Mathematics extension session this week where they were learning about how to subtract algebraic expressions using like terms. Students were engaged and enthusiastic as they extended their problem-solving skills.

Raising Kids in a Digital World - Parent Resources

https://www.informandempower.com.au/parents

Replay (available for 30 days) - To access the webinar replay, the password is informempower
Toolkit (slides, links & resources from the session)
Blog posts
Printable family poster

Mini Vinnies Updates

Last Wednesday our small crew of Mini Vinnies travelled to Xavier College in Kew to visit the 170th Anniversary Exhibition of the St. Vincent De Paul Society. Xavier College was home to the first Mini Vinnies school chapter. The exhibition was very interactive and we were very inspired by the tremendous work of Vinnies and key contributors and innovators throughout this time.

In other Mini Vinnies news, we are so excited to announce that we are well on our way to our goal of 500 food items for our Food Drive to support the Gisborne Community Care Foodbank. We are so grateful for our community’s generosity and have collected over 200 items so far. Our drive will go for another two weeks and we would appreciate any food items you can spare for this great cause.

It was also great to see many new Mini Vinnies members at our meeting this week. We are excited to see what we can achieve together.

Emotional Literacy

Working on our emotional literacy gives us opportunities to develop our ability to understand and express different emotions. When we improve our emotional literacy, we can work towards recognising our own feelings and our ability to manage them. This allows us to cope with different life situations, such as managing conﬂict, making friends, coping in difﬁcult situations and being resilient when dealing with change.

Whole Family Activity:

Feelings Charades

• Gather together as a family, this might be around the dinner table, lounge room, around the ﬁre outside.

• Take turns to act out a feeling or emotion. Use your face and body language to act this out, For example: Make an angry face and stamp your feet or

• Other family members need to guess the feeling/emotion.

• After someone has guessed the feeling/emotion, have family members discuss a time they have felt this way before and why. If it was a negative emotion, how did they overcome it?

Family Habit Builder:

Around the dinner table, ask everyone to share a feeling they felt during that day. Discuss how they dealt with that feeling and then discuss and share strategies you could use when faced with particular feelings.

Sport Updates

Essendon Football Club Clinic

Harry Jones and Ben McKay came to visit our Year 2 students on Monday!

Senior Soccer

After many weeks of lunchtime training with Tome our Soccer teams were finally ready to take to the pitch against the other Macedon Ranges schools. St Brigids sent a Boys team and a Girls team. Both of our teams demonstrated wonderful skills and teamwork on the day with both St Brigids teams making the preliminary finals.

Thank you to Tome for all his hard work preparing the teams.

Division Cross Country

Our Cross Country stars travelled to Bacchus Marsh on the 30th of May to represent the Macedon Ranges District at the Division Cross Country. An extra big congratulations to Piper Van De Velde who finished 1st, Stephanie Sarac who placed 8th in the 9/10 girls race and to Anakin Van de Velde who came 2nd in the 12/13 boys age group. These students now progress to the Regional level.

Our other St Brigids competitors Lila Gallagher, Stephanie Sarac and Maxwell Jennings also did extremely well on the day.

The Australian Early Development Census (AEDC)