Principal's Message

Welcome to Weeks 8 and 9. It is certainly a busy time of the year, with a range of activities having occurred in the past fortnight, including extension activities in dance, music, visual arts, science, writing, debating and sport.

 

This fortnight we have dance and choir workshops in preparation for An Evening with ACoS, a UNE science incursion for Kindergarten, 3-6 athletics track events at Harris Park, the beginning of activities leading to NAIDOC Week and many other sporting, leadership and wellbeing activities.

P&C contribution to NW and NSW representatives

A reminder that our P&C kindly supports students representing Ben Venue as part of a North West Region or NSW team, through a $100 contribution to travel expenses. This applies to PSSA sporting and academic teams. A contribution request form has been added to the School Bytes Parent Portal, under the 'forms' tab. Families should utilise this form upon notification that their child has been selected for a NW or State team.

2026 Kindergarten enrolment

2026 enrolment interviews are currently underway and it has been lovely to meet with many of our future students this term. It is tremendously helpful for both school planning and provision of any required individual transition support if families approach their school for enrolment before the end of July.

If you are seeking enrolment at Ben Venue in 2026, please contact the school office to book an interview at your earliest convenience.

Digital Elders

Last week, a group of students across Years 1-6 visited the Aboriginal Cultural Centre and Keeping Place to meet with elders from within and beyond our local community. Inspired by this year's NAIDOC theme - 'The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy', our students interviewed the elders and recorded these conversations, capturing their knowledge and stories for future generations. We hope that this experience is the first of many similar opportunities for our students to engage with the stories of our local and broader community. Thank you to the elders for meeting with our students and Dave Widders for coordinating the day.

Morning supervision

We understand that each family's schedule on week mornings is different and early drop-offs are often difficult to avoid. However, please be aware that supervision is not provided until 8:40 AM. Before this time, we cannot guarantee that staff will be available to assist students if required.

Misplaced jumpers

With the very cold weather continuing, it is surprising how may jumpers and jackets are left on the playground each day. Those that are named are hung on the lost property hangers outside the library. Unnamed property is placed on the shelf beside this. Please encourage your child to check this lost property collection if they misplace an item.

Sunsafe hats

Increasingly, students are modifying their school hats in a manner rendering them no longer sunsafe. From the first day back in Term 3, students will only be allowed to play in the sun with a sunsafe school hat. This gives students time to restore their hats to an appropriate condition or, in the case of badly damaged hats, purchase a $12 replacement from the office.

Ongoing improvement

As educators, we recognise that there is always opportunity to improve our knowledge and teaching practice. Our school is constantly engaged in an ongoing improvement agenda to ensure quality practices are sustained and enhancements made where possible. Recently, all teachers have engaged in professional learning to consolidate and improve practices in mathematics instruction, in the key area of multiplicative thinking. Daniela Elford of the Mathematics Growth Team has been working alongside Ben Venue teachers in this work, which supports instructional strategies that develop students' ability to identify situations and efficiently solve problems involving multiplication, division or proportional reasoning, and communicate their thinking processes.

When discussing multiplication with your child, you may hear them reference the following, depending on their next steps in learning:

• Kindergarten - forming equal groups, sharing, continuing repeating visual and auditory patterns
• Stage 1 - ten frames, continuing repeating number patterns, odd and even numbers, rows and columns
• Stage 2 - the communicative and distributive properties, regrouping, partitioning, arrays
• Stage 3 - the area model, factorisation, decomposition, products and quotients.

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on school students with a disability

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on school students with a disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

• year of schooling
• category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
• level of adjustment provided: quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

Student names are not included and data is provided to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. 

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability. The data collection will have no direct impact on your child and will not involve any testing process. 

For further information, view the factsheet attached below or visit the NCCD website. If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school. 

Cam Pryce

Principal