Around The Rooms
Senior Team
This week, our 5/6 had an exciting opportunity to visit and immerse themselves in the secondary school culture of our Daylesford College (our newly zoned secondary school). Students got involved in a range of activities, including viewing a rehearsal performance. Many students were very excited to see former Ballan students flourishing in their time at Daylesford College. The staff and student leadership were very warm and welcoming to us all here at Ballan Primary School and we look forward to our future collaborations.
We have also been having a great time this past fortnight learning our Australian National Anthem using AUSLAN.
We have also introduced the Greatest Showman as a whole school performance for our upcoming concert. This is also signed using AUSLAN
We encourage students to practice and perform these with their families.
This week our 5/6 School Captains read to our prep students as part of the National Simultaneous Story Time (NSST). Our fellow senior students then conducting an animal drawing activity with a prep buddy. This was a fantastic learning and bonding experience for everyone involved.
A big congratulations on our Senior team that represented Ballan Primary School in a range of sporting activities over the last few weeks.
Our interschool AFL Football team braved some cold and wet conditions at Marty Bush Reserve and narrowly missed out on the finals on percentage. A big well done!
Our fearless cross country runners represented Ballan Primary School at the division 3km at Ballarat. The top 10 from each age and gender group progressed to to represent our district with Melanie King coming in 6th and representing the district at Warrnambool. All runners gave it their all and should be immensely proud of their efforts.
Happy learning,
Mr D, Ms Nicholls, & Mr Petersen
3/4 Team
3/4s are working hard to prepare for our end of term 1st Contact Expo. Several students have brought in their Stories About the Past Interviews and shared information with their class. It has been so interesting to hear stories/see pictures about our families’ treasured memories and heirlooms. These pictures/drawings/items and responses will form part of our exhibition. Here is a link to the interview if you have yet to complete it and need to access it.
Here are some photos of the amazing items that students have brought in (or brought pictures/drawings of) and shared information with their class which they had gathered through the interview.
In addition, students will be tasked with creating 2 artefacts – one from the convict era and 1 from 1st Nations Australia. These artefacts will be part of our display, and each artefact will include a label which tells our visitors what the item is and how it was made. Their final item for the expo is a Convict Journal (or diary entry). Please see the assessment rubric below. While some class time will be dedicated to the creation of these items, we encourage students to take the initiative and work on them at home also. We really look forward to inviting our families to view our expo and admire all our great work! Invitations will come home soon for parents to come and view the expo.
To augment the learning in our 1st Contact topic, we are busy planning an excursion to both the Polly Woodside and The Immigration Museum, to take place in Week 2 of Term 3 (Wednesday 22/07/2026). More details will follow, but please be advised that we are planning to take the train to and from the city to keep travel costs down and add to the whole expereince. This will mean a slightly longer day to fit with the train timetable and parents will be asked to drop students off at the station and collect them from there at the end of the day (arrangements for children in OSHC can be made to walk with teachers to and from the station). Please keep your eye out for excursion forms on XUNO once all the details are finalised. This will be a very exciting day and a wonderful way to round out and finish off what is already a very engaging learning cycle.
Ms. A & Mr. M
Junior Team Buzz
The Junior Team has been full of excitement as Footsteps has officially begun! Students have been enthusiastically learning new dance moves, showing fantastic energy levels, big smiles, and plenty of confidence. It has been wonderful to see everyone getting involved, encouraging one another, and having so much fun while keeping active.
In the BER, students have been busy learning about Friends of 10, addition, and subtraction through a range of engaging and hands-on activities. As part of their learning, students created a vibrant rainbow display that has added so much colour and brightness to the learning space. They also had lots of fun making subtraction penguin crafts to support their understanding of subtraction concepts. The classroom is looking bright, creative, and full of wonderful student work.
2/3 classrooms
The 2/3s have been learning about fractions in maths this fortnight. We have made these fabulous fraction robots that are on display in the classrooms. We have also been finding fractions around the room.
In English we have been reading 'Charlottes Web', we have been learning about adjectives and how we can use them to describe characters and settings as well as using extra information to expand our sentences. The children in 2/3 have been making lots of personal connections to the story, we saw lots of webs with baby spiders being carried across the oval by the wind, found beautiful webs up in the trees near our classrooms. We also witnessed a spider in 2/3Gs window bite a moth to stun it before it was going to wrap it up to drink the blood (which we knew from the story). Over the coming weeks we will try to create our own webs using a variety of materials.
This term, our Grade 2/3 students have been exploring Australian Geography through an engaging inquiry unit focused on places, people and communities. Students have been learning to identify and describe both natural features, such as rivers, mountains and deserts, and man-made features, including places like Pykes Creek Reservoir. As part of their learning, students have investigated what makes a community thrive and the important roles people play in helping communities grow and succeed. We have connected these ideas to our own local community in Ballan, exploring the places, services and people that contribute to making Ballan a wonderful place to live, learn and work. Through discussions, mapping activities, research and collaborative projects, students have been developing their geographical knowledge while also building a deeper appreciation for the connections between people and the places they call home. We are proud of the curiosity, teamwork and thoughtful questions students have brought to this inquiry journey.
