Teaching and Learning

Hello Families,

It has been a smooth transition into Term 2, with students right back to school rituals and routines. As always, students will be reading and writing about different content areas to build upon their background knowledge, as well as developing word recognition skills, language comprehension, sentence level writing and the ability to write in different genres. In Maths, students will be participating in review slides to revise their knowledge in the areas of Number, Algebra, Measurement, Space, Statistics and Probability as well as engaging in fun, hands on learning tasks.

Victorian Premier's Reading Challenge

The 2025 Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge (PRC) is now open and Ballan Primary School is excited to be participating once again this year. The PRC website offers a range of exciting features including:

• access to a library catalogue (including book images and blurbs).
• a modern user-friendly interface.
• rewarding students with badges as challenge milestones are achieved.
• the option for students to mark books as a favourite, give them a star rating or complete a book review.

The Challenge is open to all Victorian children from birth to Year 10 in recognition of the importance of reading for literacy development. It is not a competition; but a personal challenge for children to read a set number of books by Friday 5th September, 2025.

Children from Prep to Year 2 are encouraged to read or ‘experience’ 30 books with their parents and teachers. Children from Year 3 to Year 10 are challenged to read 15 books.

All children who meet the challenge will receive a certificate of achievement signed by the Victorian Premier and former Premiers.

To read the Premier’s letter to parents, view the booklist and for more information about the Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge, visit: https://www.vic.gov.au/premiers-reading-challenge

If you would like to log any books read from home, simply log into the Premiers’ Reading Challenge website using the logins that will be sent home with your child/ren, enter the titles and authors of the books your child has read and the classroom teacher will verify those books before the challenge deadline.

Please note, at this stage Grade 3-6 classroom teachers will be sending home logins with their students. For P-2 students and families, if you’d like to participate in the challenge at home and log books via the website, please request your child’s login from your classroom teacher.

Inquiry student progress reports

Our Inquiry progress reports were made available to families to read via XUNO yesterday afternoon (May 8th). The focus of these reports for our P-2s was on feelings and coping strategies from their work so far this year, 2/3-4s focus was on Australia's closest neighbouring countries and the 5/6s focus was on their 'Museums in Motion' unit which is currently being taught this term. Our next progress report will be Reading report comments which will be made available to families via XUNO on May 29.

If you have any questions about the reporting comments, please get in touch with your child's classroom teacher.

Book Club - Issue 3

Scholastic Book Club is a service offered to students, parents and teachers. Brochures advertising a variety of books and computer software are sent home with each student, approximately twice a term.

Purchase of the books is not compulsory and there is no obligation. If you do wish to purchase any goods simply log into the Book Club site www.scholastic.com.au/LOOP and follow the prompts. All Book Club orders must be ordered and paid for via LOOP. Do not send order forms and cash to school. When the order arrives at school, books are sent home with students.

The School earns “Bonus Points” for each order which can be used to purchase new resources for classroom libraries and the school library.

Click here for the Scholastic Book Club Parent Log in page or to register for new users.

Issue 3 is now available for ordering via the LOOP system and you can view the catalogue online. Paper versions of the Issue 3 catalogue have been sent home. 

Issue 3 orders are due by Monday 12th May, 2025.

https://scholastic.com.au/book-club/book-club-parents/issue-preview/

How to order 

Click on ORDER in the top menu or REGISTER first to save your details for the first time.  Select Ballan PS and your child’s class.  Add your child’s name and last initial. Enter the item number from the brochure.

You can order for multiple children at once. All orders are linked directly to the school.  

Our school receives bonus points, which are redeemed for a variety of books for the children therefore we thank you for your continued support.

If parents wish to collect orders personally from the office, please let the school know.

Please go to www.scholastic.com.au/LOOP and find Ballan Primary School to order or alternatively you can download the LOOP app via the App Store or Google Play.

Happy learning!

Mr Baker