Blair Athol North B-6 School eNewsletter

Diary Dates

Term 4 begins Monday October 17th

Week 2 - Friday October 28th - SPORTS DAY

Week 4 - Monday November 4th - PUPIL FREE DAY -(Staff Annual Review Day)

Week 4 - Wednesday November 9th - Governing Council Meeting 3.30pm

Week 9 - Year 6 Graduation

Week 9 - Friday December 16th End Term 4 - EARKY DISMISSAL 2pm

From Leadership

Dear Families,

This term the Wellbeing team (Kaitlin, Kylie and Nathan) were lucky enough to extend our own thinking and learning by attending Professional Learning from the Australian Childhood Foundation- with the focus on Childhood Trauma. We listened to renowned experts in this field from all over the world. A powerful learning experience for all of us was listening to young women who had grown up within the care system and are now creating resources and opportunities for other children in care to navigate this tricky time. After listening to them and engaging in discussion we were able to extend and challenge our own thinking around:

The importance of safety, belonging, being and becoming which supports wellbeing and achievement for all learners
Understanding that behaviour is a form of communication
Listening and learning with our community
How we connect and build on our young people’s strengths

It also got us thinking about ways in which we do this already across our learning community so that we can build on and extend this learning.

So how do we develop this within BANB6?

By:

Having studio spaces that are sensory aware
Having a Reconnect room and Aboriginal Learning Studio with trusted people who have understandings and qualifications including real life lived experiences, Graduate Certificates in Developmental Trauma and Counselling Vulnerable Children
Listening and learning from all our community members
Teaching our young people about empathy, kindness, and compassion
Encouraging our young people to ask for help – seeing it as a strength and not a weakness
Practicing and developing our skills in literacy and numeracy in small and big groups
Giving opportunities to collaborate well and practice play in MATE times and our outdoor learning spaces
Team Times run and organised by our Young Leaders
Creating opportunities for our amazing young people to use their imagination in Dance and Drama
Rhythm and gross motor skills and developing our key concepts in PE and our soccer programs
Lunchtime activities to help learn skills in play and conflict resolution
Play is the Way and Berry Street learning and principles
Reflecting effectively about learning opportunities
Helping learners to take pride in learning and progress
Values Cup Cards and Team Target rewards

We know that we don’t always get it right and the only way we can get better is by robust and strong conversations with people in our community.

This term we have already seen some fantastic examples of our children Being, Becoming and Belonging to our community in real and authentic spaces. One of these being -last week’s amazing Wakikkiri performance where (brag alert) the children won 3 awards. Below are some words from Darren who along with a number of staff and parents attended on the night;

“Our children were magnificent and performed a polished piece with a strong message about coming to a new land and finding their way. Everyone in the audience were so proud and there may have been the odd tear.

At the conclusion of the evening, we were awarded ‘Best Backstage Crew’, ‘Best Public Speaking’ and ‘Wakakirri Spirit’. This achievement is unprecedented! Most schools who perform at their first Wakakirri use it as an opportunity to learn about the process and what to improve on next year. But our bunch of legends took out some big prizes; fabulous reward for all their hard work.

The BANB6 spirit shone like a bright star last night in so many ways!”

The young people involved with the help and guidance of Michelle excelled in this ‘real life experience’ and the comments from adults that were at the entertainment centre highlighted the growth and understanding of concepts, habits and attitudes that are BEING, BELONGING and BECOMING.

Below are photos of the Young Leaders lunch time programs.

Attendance - Just a reminder to let your child's LA or the office know if your child is away unwell. You can do this by phone, via seesaw or the schoolzine app.

Innovation Update

Reading and Book Club

Purple West

This term Purple West has been learning about patterns. Together we have learned patterns are something that repeats and have worked on identifying colour, shape, sound and movement patterns. Patterns are important to learn in reception because students are presented with patterns throughout their lives. Learning how to identify patterns helps students to make predictions and reason logically.

Yellow Neighbourhood

Yellow 1

Yellow 1 this term has been investigating 'my place in the universe,' looking at the world, continents, oceans, countries, states, cities and the community we live in. In numeracy we have looked at measurement using nonstandard units, and have started investigating number patterns, and 2 step worded problems.

Yellow 1 is also lucky enough to have a preservice teacher on placement for 5 weeks. Chris will be exploring sharing in numeracy, and the solar system in science.

Yellow South West

This term in YSW we have introduced Guided Reading as the core structure to our Literacy sessions.

We begin our Guided Reading sessions with a whole group explicit lesson, then move into smaller reading groups. Each group has the same text and specific learning task to improve their understanding of what they have read, the development of the characters and the authors purpose for writing. The Learning Advisor focus group also look at unfamiliar words to help extend their vocabulary. Children are given more responsibility to work independently.

Reading is not only being able to read words but understand them in context and read with fluency using punctuation to guide them.

The children in YSW have shown a high level of engagement throughout our Guided Reading sessions and are enjoying the variety of learning activities.

In week 6 the children in Yellow South West went on an excursion to the South Australian Museum.

Our children were intrigued by the collection of Aboriginal Cultural Artefacts.

This provided an important link to our current English Unit and learning.

It was a good experience because it was very educational and interesting – Vlad

I found the boomerangs and spears very interesting - Shaurya

I found the excursion fun because we were able to learn in groups with a range of people – Sayla

I liked the scavenger hunt on the iPad and the ice wall was very cold – Tyler

We all enjoyed the excursion because we were able to look at a range of displays - Abu

Yellow 3

This term in Yellow 3 the learners have been inquiring into the people and places in our community. We have welcomed guest speakers to our studio and found out, what they do to make our school community a great

place to be. In literacy learning we have been working in small groups to work on reading, writing and oral language skills. Our numeracy focus has included data collection, place value and friends to ten. We have welcomed Isabella to our studio as a Co Learning Advisor on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

We have also been learning about people and places in our local community. We enjoyed going for a community walk to the Enfield Public Library. We also talked about what an emergency is through exploring different situations and learned how best to respond. Learners were given lots of opportunities in pretend play to take on roles of different community helpers.

In literacy we have been practising sounds and blending skills to make words. Our numeracy focus has been around ordinal numbers, time, and place value.

Red Neighbourhood

Red 1, 2, 5 and 6

Earlier this term, in Literacy we have been exploring advertising in the media. We unpacked all the language features and concepts that make a good advertisement and have now begun creating our own.

We are continuing our focus on ‘What makes a powerful learner?’ as groups we came to the conclusion that being powerful comes from the inside and is a disposition that is demonstrated through actions.

The last few weeks of term in Red have been very busy!

In literacy we finished off our unit on Advertising by creating our own advertisements for new inventions. We also transferred this knowledge in an authentic way by creating labels for the BBB (BANB Barista Blend) coffee beans. We have now started our unit on News and the media and are writing our own news articles to go into our yearbook.
In numeracy we are finalising our unit on fractions, decimals, and percentages.

In visual arts, we have been exploring portraiture. To deepen our understanding, we visited the art gallery of South Australia for two exhibitions on portraiture. One was the Archibald 100, celebrating and showcasing 100 years of the Archibald portrait competition.
The second was an exhibition from the famous artist Robert Wilson called ‘Moving Portraits’. This was a modern/ contemporary take on portraiture with many of the portraits

Red 3

In Red 3 we have been inquiring about animals and how we share the planet with other living beings. We are exploring and doing research work on different animals. We are looking at writing an information report about the animals. To find the information we are doing research by using different tools likes books, internet, watching documentaries and doing quizzes

In week 6 we will be going on an excursion to the Adelaide Zoo so we can explore and can observe animals in real life. We are also learning some hard and technical animal’s words so that we can expand our vocabulary.

In numeracy we are learning times tables and multiplication. We are challenging our thinking by exploring factors, multiples, prime numbers, and composite numbers.

Beacuse we have been busy learning about animals we went aranged an excursion to the Adelaide Zoo. We had an amazing day at the Zoo. We looked at the animals in their habitats. We got a chance to look at them very closely. We wrote information reports on zoo animals. Children used their creativity in designing and making their posters on information reports. Also, they are using technology and learning to make iMovie’s for their oral presentations about the reports.

Some of the children have shown lots of leadership skills while presenting at the IELC graduation. They have also shown some of our school values like being brave, doing personal best and being resilient.

In Maths we are challenging ourselves by doing speed and mental calculations for addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

PE News

It has been a busy and successful term for BANB6 athletics in the Physical Education Program. While exposing our children to many sports we have also had the opportunity to participate in more demanding competitions around South Australia. The year 5/6 girls team had the opportunity to visit the new State Soccer Facility and compete in the Women’s Legacy Cup tournament. They played with a high level of skill and managed to win the tournament and trophy. Super effort girls. The boys team also finished up in the Statewide soccer tournament but unfortunately were eliminated in the semi finals. Was great to see the BANB Braves back into the finals. The Roma Mitchell soccer coach came to watch and invited Jalal, Ali H and Ali H to join their specialist program for high school next year. Another BANB6 student nick-named the ‘Torabi Tornado’ was selected to compete in the State Under 12 100m competition. She ended up finishing 3^rd in the final and will be exciting to watch come Sports Day next term. Well done Shayna!

Thanks, David - Physical Education.

In Term 3, the Sporting Schools After School Sports Program began. (Sporting Schools is a Government funded program encouraging students to be active and involved in different sports-based activities). The activity offered this term was basketball.

We were lucky enough to secure two experienced coaches and professional basketball players to run the after-school skills clinics for 6 weeks. Alex Starling and Jeremy Smith are NBL1 players for South Adelaide Basketball club. The children involved in the clinics loved getting to know Alex and Jeremy and learnt so many new skills and fundamentals of basketball. It was pleasing to see the development they made in such a short time, still evident as we watch them transfer their skills into their play time at lunch and recess.