BBPS Life

Welcome to BBPS Life, our fortnightly window to the classrooms and playgrounds of BBPS. And what a wonderful start to the year we have had, with students settling in, getting to know each other, and getting excited about learning! 

Prep

We are so pleased to welcome our delightful preps for 2022. They have been having a wonderful time since they started last week. Here are some highlights from their first two weeks:

• We have started counting our first 100 days of prep (a great way to celebrate the start of school and learn about numbers and counting at the same time!).
• We have been on a sheep hunt! All around the school we have found pictures of sheep on signs near classrooms, offices, the art room, and other special and important places.
• Sheep have also been a key theme for our learning - based on Mem Fox's book Where is the Green Sheep. We have created farms and paddocks for our woolly friends and have tried our best to give them labels
• Investigations, also known as developmental play, is a great way to develop motor skills, learn about sharing and teamwork, and to explore our interests. 
• We have been learning to connect numbers with numerals and have been practising number formation. 

Grades 1 and 2

Grade 1 have been focused on getting to know each other and their new teachers. Activities this week have included surveying each other, creating and piecing together class puzzles, creating birthday charts and setting up reading processes ( and finding "just right" books).

Grade 2 have been playing indigenous games and setting up their readers' workshops. In maths, they have started to look at visual representations of numbers (creating dot patterns and collections of dots). The Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) focus for this week has been on working together and understanding emotions. 

Grades 3 and 4

The grade 3 and 4 students are part of the "3/4 Hub", working across classes and grades in their own special part of the school. This week they have been setting up the hub and have started to have hub gatherings. A key highlight last week was a celebration of the lunar new year, with students able to choose from a variety of activities to celebrate the year of the tiger!

Other highlights include:

• Setting up workbooks
• Developing a "growth mindset" in maths
• Getting to know each other through various activities 
• Sharing about holidays
• Writing to our teachers to let them know "things we think our teacher will want to know about us"
• Swimming - getting the early bus means we have to be organised!

Grades 5 and 6

Swimming, leadership roles and getting to know each other have been the highlights for 5/6 students. 

We spoke to some grade 6 students about their first 2 weeks of school:

Ava I "It has been tiresome but also enjoyable. We have been working with people from both classes so I have been able to work with my friends."

Brody "We have started swimming, which I have been enjoying. Freestyle is my favourite stroke. Today we played a game called Taboo where we had to help someone with guessing a word without saying any related words"

Mary "I'm finding grade 6 really fun. I'm finding out all the exciting things you get to do in grade 6 such as camp, hoodies, and leadership. I've really enjoyed playing taboo and swimming"

Mitchel "We've done 'I am' poems to introduce ourselves. We have leadership roles now- I'm the environment captain. We are thinking about having an avocado growing competition"

Elliot "We got started with our book club. We have been choosing our preferences for books we will be reading. It has been great getting back into specialists - PE, Art, Performing Arts. I am the Student Agency captain"