Teaching and Learning

Victorian Premier's Reading Challenge

Hello Families,

The 2026 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.

This year’s theme is ‘Stories to discover. Stories to tell’. It’s all about discovering new books, and a love of reading.

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 4th September, 2026.

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

For our P-6 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 with a XUNO message to myself.

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 teachers will verify those books before the challenge deadline.

There are 85 days left in the challenge if you'd like to participate!

Assesment & Reporting Curriculum Day

Last Friday 5th June, our staff participated in a dedicated Assessment and Reporting Curriculum Day on Semester 1 reports for student achievement and work habits. Teachers worked collaboratively in teams to moderate student work and refine progression points regarding student achievement against the Victorian Curriculum 2.0.

With the new Victorian Curriculum 2.0, particular in Mathematics, and the move to a single teacher judgement score for Maths - valuable professional dialogue took place to ensure consistency and accuracy across year levels.

In Literacy and Mathematics, classroom teachers are continuing to assess students with DIBELS, PAT and Essential Assessment testing to ensure all teacher judgements are based on up-to-date evidence of teaching and learning. Semester 1 reports will be made available to families via XUNO in the final week of Term 2. More information and updates to come in future newsletters and messages via XUNO about our Semester 1 reports and next term's 3 Way Conferences.

Mathematics and Numeracy at home

The Department of Education have released great Maths and Numeracy resources for families of junior level students (Prep to Grade 2). As your child’s first teacher, you play an important role at home in helping develop their numeracy skills from an early age. These resources and activities/videos help to build your child's skills in maths and numeracy at home.

https://www.vic.gov.au/mathematics-and-numeracy-home

Literacy and Maths Challenge

Get your brain buzzing every day with our Wordle and Numble Challenge of the Day - fun, quick puzzles to sharpen your vocabulary and number skills at home!

Wordle - https://www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/index.html

Numble - https://numble.wtf/

Book Club

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. 

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

You can have a look at the online catalogue here: 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, 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!

James Baker

Assistant Principal - Curriculum, Teaching and Learning

james.baker@education.vic.gov.au 

Ph: 5368 1072