Learning Community 1

Prep - Mrs Guy

Welcome to the 2025 school year everyone and a very special welcome to our new Prep families. We hope you have a long association with our wonderful school and community.

 I am so proud of our new Preppies; they have shown so much resilience starting school for the very first time; showing one of our school values, being Resilient Racoons. In our room over the last three weeks we have already learnt so much. It has been terrific seeing our students getting to know about school routines, making new friends and trying their absolute best with all our learning activities. We have all been learning how to be Respectful Rabbits; treating others the way we would like to be treated. We have also learnt how to be Responsible Rhinos; doing the right thing and always telling the truth. Students are SO excited to shop with their tokens at our token shop. Students earn tokens when they show our school values and these tokens can be traded in for items and experiences such as time in a buddy classroom.

So far in Literacy we have learnt about many letters and their most common sounds. Your child will bring home a revision each Friday on these letters and sounds, so please discuss this work with them to reinforce the alphabet. It has been amazing seeing parents sign their child's reading diary every time the students share their take home reader. To start with you may be reading to your child, discussing favourite parts, characters, the probelm or the solution in the story. Eventually your child will read to you, but please remember to sign when your child 'reads' their take home reader as we have a home reading competition with a prize for the student who reads the most nights by the end of the year.

 In Numeracy we are learning about numbers to 10, counting forwards and back, making these numbers with counters, tally marks, ten frames, playdoh and writing the numeral 1 for example with the matching word one. Again your child will bring home a revision activity that they will share with you to reinforce their learning at school. 

A reminder to all families, my door is always open to you, should you wish to come in and say hi, discuss your child's progress or to come and help out with Reading Circles, excursions or activities in the classroom. Please show the office your current Working With Children's Check to spend time in our classrooms. Please take time to read our upcoming events in the flyer below, mark them on your calendar to celebrate special events in our room such as Mother's/ Special Person's Day, Father's/ Special Person's Day and Grandparent's/ Special Person's Day.

Your child will bring home Reading Eggs, Fast Phonics, Mathletics and Essentials- My Numeracy and My Literacy logins, so you can work on your child's learning at home together if you woukld like to. 

If your child is extremely tired or sick during the week, they can catch up with missed activities on a Friday for the first few weeks as we don't learn new ideas on a Friday; we revise learnt material.

Student Achiever Awards Prep Guy

Last week's Student Achiever was Maggie for showing huge amounts of resilience, settling into school, saying goodbye to Mum and or Dad. Well done Maggie we are so proud of you.

This week our student achievers are Billie and Jackson. Billie received her award for showing our school value of responsibility, always getting straight down to work, trying her personal best and taking on feedback. Well done Billie; you are amazing!

Jackson received his award for being so respectful, helping other students who may have hurt themselves or may be feeling sad. Well done Jackson; super duper effort!

P1A - Miss Stoll

What a fun filled, busy and super fun first 3 weeks of Prep and Grade One we have had in our classroom! We have spent lots of time getting to know one another, making friendships with our classmates, learning about BPS, our school values of Respect, Responsibility and Resilience and learning our school and classroom routines and expectations. We are learning about being a Respectful Rabbit - "Treating others the way you want to be treated", Responsible Rhino - "Doing the right thing and being trustworthy" and Resilient Racoon - "The power to bounce back". Each students collects tokens for demonstrating these values or showing respect, responsibility and/ or resilience in other ways, for example, walking around the school during learning time quietly, holding scissors in a safe way in class or being SUPER brave when we have missed our mum, dad or families. Students can save or spend these tokens at our Token Shop, students can purchase things like stickers, fidgets or other cool goodies, or save them to purchase an experience, such as sharing hot chips for lunch with a chosen friend. Between learning about Phonics and Numbers, we have also explored learning around Respectful Relationships, Developmental Play and of course, our specialist classes - Science, Visual Arts, PE, Performing Arts and Library/ Auslan. 

In English, we have learnt about letters, sounds, letter formation and drawing and/ or writing and labelling pictures about our focus sounds. Each day, we read "Milo's Birthday Surprise", where we met our main Character Milo Monkey. Milo calls a new friend each day we focus on a new sound, when he discovers they are too busy to attend his birthday, little does Milo know, his friends are secretly preparing for his surprise birthday party. We have met Mm (Milo Monkey), Ss (Sally Snake), Ff (Felix Frog), Aa (Ally Alligator), Pp (Peter Penguin), Tt (Tim Turtle), Cc (Cooper Caterpillar) and Ii (Izzy Insect). We love reading this book each day and are so excited to see how the rest of "Milo's Birthday Surprise" unfolds. Whilst learning about new sounds, we have practiced writing the letters during rainbow writing sessions, where students trace the upper (capital) and lower case focus letter, swapping colours with their peers each time, so as to end the writing session with rainbow letters and lots of letter formation practice. 

In Maths, we have begun exploring place value by investigating numbers zero (0) to five (5). We have used various materials, such as MAB blocks, Unifix coloured blocks, drawings, natural resources and number formation activities to strengthen our understanding of these numbers. We have been counting up and back from these numbers and have begun looking at our hundreds chart to explore skip counting by ten. We will continue to focus on place value and extend our number knowledge over the coming weeks and continue to revise this throughout the year. 

Over the coming weeks, students will engage in English and Maths pre-assessment, from here, we will be able to enable Reading Eggs, Mathletics and 'My Numeracy' activities on Essential Assessment. Once this assessment has been finalised, I will send students Reading Eggs, Mathletics and Essential Assessment logins home so as students can access them outside of school. For my new families, Essential Assessment is where we do most of our formal Maths assessment and is not to be used at home, instead, the 'My Numeracy' tab allows students to develop and strengthen their Maths skills based off their assessment data. I will provide more information around this when our passwords are ready to be sent home.

During Week 1 and 2, our Student Achievers were our whole class, I simply could not choose one student as we all have settled into our new class so incredibly well and I am so beyond proud of each student for so many brilliant reasons. This week (Week 3) our Student Achiever is River. River is a Prep and is chosen for being such an incredible helper, being so brave in moments when he has missed his family, for always including his classmates during learning and play times and for always being such a bright, happy and determined student who loves learning. I am so proud of you River, I can't wait to see what you will continue to achieve this year in Prep and P1 Stoll. Next week (Week 4) our Student Achiever is Zoe. Zoe is a Grade One and is chosen for being such an outstanding helper, classmate and friend during all times at school and always following our school values. Zoe's confidence is growing and we are beginning to see her bright, bubbly, funny and unique personality truly shine. I am so proud of you Zoe, thank-you for being such an amazing role model for your classmates and I can't wait to see what you will continue to achieve in Grade One and P1 Stoll this year. River and Zoe will receive their Student Achiever awards (certificates) at Assembly in Week 4. Assembly starts at 3:10pm on Friday afternoon in the hall for families who would like to attend. Assembly runs on a fortnightly basis with our newsletter being sent out on non-assembly weeks.

I have sent home lots of forms over the past 3 weeks, please ensure these are filled out and brought back to class (either given to me or taken to the office yourself). We also have a whole school incursion coming up, Kids Roar will be on Tuesday February the 25th. On Tuesday the 4th of March, we have our school photos. Towards the end of the term on Tuesday the 25th and Wednesday the 26th of March, we will hold Parent/ Teacher chats. More information about these chats will be found in the coming weeks on compass, for those unfamiliar with these chats, this is a time where you can book to see me for a short discussion about how your child is settling into their class and our school. Please check our 'Important Dates' section on our newsletter in the future so as to keep up to date with upcoming events for your child.

If you would like to discuss anything relating to your child's learning, wellbeing, growth or development, please come and see me to organise a time, alternatively, you can email me at kate.stoll@education.vic.gov.au

Thank-you,

Kate (Miss Stoll).

12A - Mrs Murphy

Welcome to Under the Sea with 1/2M, our students in 1/2M have dived straight in and settled in beautifully to class.

Being new to the school this year, all the students, families and staff have made me feel so welcome and I am looking forward to a wonderful year ahead.

Our Learning

We have been busy testing in our class, and I am blown away by what our little learners already know.

In Reading, we focus on a new book each week. Our first book was "Pig the Pug", students have learnt new vocabulary words, how to comprehend the story and express their thoughts about the text. 

In Writing we have been learning about sentence structure and for our sentences to make sense we need a capital letter, finger spaces and some form of punctuation to end our sentence being either a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark.

In Numeracy we are looking at Place Value and all about digits and what it means. We have been focusing on one's, ten's and hundred's and to make sure they go in the correct column, we have been using MAB Blocks and our whiteboards to help with our learning.

All students now have their logins for Reading Eggs, Essential Assessment and Mathletics in their reading journals, so they can access these programs from home.

Student Achiever Awards 

Last week's Student Achiever was Nellie for showing respect in the classroom, being an amazing learner and a wonderful friend to her classmates. Well done Nellie!

This week our student achiever is Joel. Joel received his award for showing our school's values of responsibility, always getting straight down to work and being respectful. Well done Joel!

What's On

We also have a whole school incursion coming up, Kids Roar will be on Tuesday, February 25th. On Tuesday the 4th of March, we have our school photos. Towards the end of the term on Tuesday the 25th and Wednesday the 26th of March, we will hold Parent/ Teacher chats. More information about these chats will be found in the coming weeks on Compass, for those unfamiliar with these chats, this is a time when you can book to see me for a short discussion about how your child is settling into their class and our school. Please check our 'Important Dates' section on our newsletter in the future to keep up to date with upcoming events for your child.

Let's Meet

We are going to be doing a new segment in 1/2M, where each fortnight we are going to be learning some favourite things about our students. Watch this space....

But we would like to introduce you to "Larry the Lobster"

Each Friday a student's name is drawn out, and they get to take Larry home for the weekend, with his special bag and book. On Monday we get to learn about all the fun things Larry got to do on his weekend.

If you would like to discuss anything relating to your child's learning, well-being, growth or development, please come and see me to organise a time, alternatively, you can email me at michelle.murphy4@education.vic.gov.au

Thank-you,

Michelle (Mrs Murphy).

2025 Upcoming Events for Junior Grades

Prep, P/1A and 1/2A