2021 Term 4 .... Issue 2
Diary Dates
Week 8 - PUPIL FREE DAY - Monday November 29th - Annual Review Day
Week 8 - Governing Council Meeting - Wednesday December 1st 5pm
Week 9 - Year 6/7 Graduation - Tuesday December 7th
Week 9 - End Term 4 - Friday December 10th - EARLY DISMISSAL 2pm
From Leadership
Dear BANB7 Community,
Sustainability at BANB7
Since BANB7 opened in 2011, teaching and learning about the concept of SUSTAINABILITY has been an important focus across all year levels at our school. We believe it is vital for our young people to develop a deeper understanding of sustainability and the positive impact that adopting sustainable practices can have on our shared future.
This year has seen us set up the BANB7 SUSTAINABILITY GROUP, with nearly 50 students from Year 2 to Year 7 involved in a range of projects and activities designed to educate and promote sustainable thinking. The students participate in 3 main initiatives:
The RAINGARDEN GROUP has been a part of planning, developing and maintaining the new Raingarden outdoor learning space. Students have been involved in every aspect of this ongoing project from meeting with Landscape Designers, learning about waste-water management, visiting existing raingardens and assisting with the upkeep of this unique environment. Our Raingarden group meets every Wednesday morning for regular working bees, information sessions and learning experiences.
The RECYCLING GROUP gets together on Tuesdays and is responsible for managing all non-landfill waste across the school. This team collects all of the mixed recycling, paper and cardboard from Neighbourhoods, the Hub, the Front Office and the Children’s Centre. This waste is then sorted by the group into various categories including soft plastics, 10 cent containers, mixed recycling and compostable material. This ensures that we are minimising the amount of waste entering landfill unnecessarily. We are in the process of adopting the BinShift waste management system which will go a long way to cutting down on litter in our yard and helping to educate our community about how to sort our waste appropriately.
The COMPOSTING GROUP works on Fridays, collecting all of the organic waste bins from around the school, including the canteen, before sorting the material into our composting bins and bays (and giving our chooks and ducks a good feed). The Composting Crew play a vital role in supporting our Kitchen Garden program through providing healthy organic compost for our garden beds.
The BANB7 Sustainability Group produces a podcast, TRASH TALK, (which can be accessed through the BANB7 YouTube Channel – ‘theBANB7’) where we discuss key issues relating to sustainability at BANB7 and in our community. We have introduced a ‘Rubbish Hot Spots’ map of our school which has led to a fortnightly whole school clean up and the team regularly presents information about sustainable practices at our Team Time assemblies. Our group produces an organic and environmentally-friendly surface spray cleaner which can be purchased for $2 and refilled for $1 when needed. The cleaner has proved to be hugely popular with our community and is a great alternative to using harsh chemicals and store-bought sprays. The team also use the BANB7 Facebook page to provide ongoing updates in relation to projects we are currently focusing on.
One new initiative this year has seen the Sustainability Group setting up an Aquaponics resource in the Kitchen Garden. The Aquaponics system involves cycling water through a series of tanks and grow beds. The main tank contains fish which provide nutrients for the plants growing in the beds. When the plants have extracted the nutrients, clean water returns to the tanks and the cycle continues. This resource will provide our students the opportunity to investigate sustainable aquacultural and agricultural practices which may be extremely important in the future, where issues of water retention and food security could become major issues.
Our Sustainability team is proud of work we do at BANB7, and all students are encouraged to be ‘Ambassadors’ for sustainability and to share their understanding with their peers and other studio members. Our group have special t-shirts with a student-designed logo which helps to identify them as mentors and ‘experts’ on how to be more sustainable both at school and at home. We are already looking forward to getting even more students involved and taking on more projects in the near future.
Sam Anderson
My New Gallery
Blue Neighbourhood
Blue 1 have been looking at ways we can lead a healthy lifestyle. So far we have explored physical fitness, healthy diet and hydration. We are enjoying making healthy food and our yummy avocado toasties were a big hit. We are thinking big numbers in maths and are enjoying the challenge of adding and regrouping. Each week we have also been focussing on an author study. We love learning about the author, reading as many of their books as we can and reviewing them.
Blue 2 is learning the vocabulary around Transport, Shape and Space this term. The children have enjoyed making limousines and buses in Craft and learning about number and 2D and 3D shapes in Numeracy.
Blue 1 and Blue 2 participate in STEM each Tuesday morning. This week STEM was held in the forest. It is a great place to explore and learn in.
Purple East
On Friday 22nd October, the students in purple east participated in BANB7’s annual sports day. The students had a great day and worked well in their teams and as a group. The LAs were extremely proud of their efforts.
Purple West
What has been happening in Purple West?
Pre-service learning advisers are working with the young people in purple to develop their knowledge on 2D and 3D shapes. Their intention is to seek the prior knowledge of the young people and extend their understanding further with hands on experiences and variety of resources.
Young people in purple have participated in variety of hands-on activities to learn about shapes. These includes exploring their school environment to find shapes, finding shapes in photos, creating characters out of shapes, and sorting different shapes. Students were engaged and loved to explore and learn more about different shapes to extend their understanding further.
Preservice learning advisers were able to engage students into the learning and follow their leads.
Yellow 6
Yellow 6 have been getting creative during Literacy this term! Students have been exploring the visual and language features of comic strips, animation and stop motion. We used online comic creator ‘Make Belief Comix’ to create some very interesting stories, something you could try at home! In week 6, the learners in Yellow South West will have the privilege of an incursion Claymation workshop. This will provide an authentic learning opportunity to showcase their new knowledge of building characters, ethical dilemmas and succinct story lines. We look forward to sharing our finished animations by the end of the term.
Inquiry has led us ‘down the garden path’ and we have been exploring the native plants we have in the school and understanding how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people used these plants. We hope to create a video that can be shared on Facebook that will take you on a tour of our awesome school.
Red 1
Hello everyone, I am hoping you are all healthy and happy! Over the next few weeks our studio will be having a combined literacy and scientific focus. Our learners are exploring the alarming rate in which many of the world’s animals are becoming endangered or extinct. The challenge is to identify these concerns, back these up with scientific research and eventually produce a written document which provides a course of action to save their chosen animal. This week we had a guest, Amber, who has several years of experience working in the jungles and beaches of Costa Rica recently. Our learners had the chance to listen and ask questions regarding how her efforts have helped increase the populations of sea turtles and jaguars.
Thanks David
Red 3 and 4
This term Red 3/4 are learning about animals.
In week 3 we drove the school bus to Monarto Zoo. It was a beautiful, sunny day and everyone was so excited to see the animals. We drove our school bus throughout the Zoo, with a Tour Guide joining us to give us information and guide us through the grounds and to open and close the gates! We were SO lucky with all the animals that came so close to our bus. We were able to take some amazing photos and videos and see the animals so clearly in their natural habitat. After our 1.5 hour safari tour, we stopped for lunch and had a much needed play on the playground! We then walked to the Chimpanzee enclosure, where again we were lucky to see the Chimpanzees so closely through the windows and watch them play and interact with each other. Such a fantastic excursion.
At school we have been writing descriptions of animals and learning to write a persuasive text, the most common being ‘Should animals live in captivity?”.
It has been great to have some preserved animals from the Nature Education Centre in the red common for provocation, thanks to LA David for organising this.
Red 1 and Red 3/4 also had a guest speaker called Amber who spoke to us about working in the Costa Rica National Park as a conservationist. The learners asked some great questions and Amber provided some great detail into her work in studying and observing the Native Fauna of Costa Rica including Green Sea Turtles, Jaguars, Puma, and Vulchers.
We have been doing lots of animal art work. On a sunny day, we took some toy animals outside and traced their shadows. After this, we coloured them in dark crayon and painted over the top with water colour paint. The end result was amazing.
Red West
Red West have had a busy start to the term with a significant focus on our Legacy Inquiry. Given that this is such a unique year with both the Year 6’s and 7’s graduating, we wanted to give learners an opportunity to leave something special behind at BANB7. The learners inquiry also ties in with History and Visual Arts as we are exploring the history of mosaics and design techniques. We won’t give too much more information as we want the final product to be a surprise for parents and community members! Our focus in Literacy this term has been on Poetry. We are learning about the different ‘tools’ that can be used in poetry and later in the term learners will be producing their own poems. As part of this learning we have also been exploring Slam/Spoken Word poetry and song lyrics. We had two poets from Spoken Word SA visit to talk to learners about the world of Spoken Poetry. In our Red West numeracy group we have explored reading and interpreting graphs and we and currently beginning some learning about measurement. Red 5 & 6 are also exploring financial maths as part of a Careers Inquiry. Learners have randomly chosen a professional are exploring income, tax, budgeting, housing and savings. The highlight of our term so far has been Sports Day. Here are some photos
