2021 Term 1 .... Issue 2

From the Leadership Team ....

BANB7 has been a beacon for innovation since it opened 10 years ago. From our learning spaces to the integration of digital technologies across our site, BANB7 provides all of our young people with opportunities to develop competencies and the mastery of concepts that will allow them to flourish and thrive in the future.

We have recently invested in Virtual and Augmented Reality kits which will be an exciting addition to our digital technology resources and support our students to approach learning tasks in new, innovative and creative ways. Our STEM specialist Learning Advisor, Concetta, has started setting up a MakerSpace Hub in the Library, inviting our students to play, tinker and experiment with a range of technologies and activities designed to spark curiosity and connection to new ways of seeing and interacting with the world around us.

This term, four of our Upper Primary students (Shakila, Nadia, Setayesh and Asifah) have been participating in the Roma Mitchell Secondary College STEM pathway program. The girls travel up to RMSC for half a day each week, collaborating with students from a range of primary schools on a Computer Game creation, design and coding project. The girls take on different roles within their teams such as Art Direction and Lead Programmer with the end goal being the unveiling of their game through a ‘pitch’ to an audience and panel of judges.

‘I found coming up with the storyline for our game challenging but by taking my time and having the support of my team-members, we were really happy with the game we created’ – Setayesh

‘Being a Team Leader has been difficult but rewarding because I get to make decisions about what we are doing. I have enjoyed building connections with girls from BANB7 and the other schools as it has helped me develop my social skills. I that what I am learning now will help me a lot in the future!’ – Asifah

‘I am the Team Leader and I have to negotiate and delegate tasks with my group. It’s not always easy but I am learning about what it takes to successfully reach our goals’ – Nadia

‘My favourite part of the STEM pathway program is the coding and I have also enjoyed using Pixel Art and the Construct3 program to create our game’ – Shakila

RMSC STEM pathway program coordinator, Mina Sanatkar, recently provided the following feedback:

‘The BANB7 girls have shown their talents through roles such as the Lead Designer. In addition to designing, digital drawing and animating the characters of their team’s games, they often suggest great ideas about how the characters interact within different levels of the video game that they are developing. This gives the lead programmer and the teacher the challenge of figuring out how to code those movements!’

With their involvement in the STEM Pathway program, the girls will be able to take on STEM mentoring roles back here at BANB7, sharing their experience and expertise with Learning Advisors and their peers.

BANB7 will have students involved throughout every term in 2021 and it is great to see our learners taking on challenges and developing the knowledge, skills and dispositions that will see them embrace the future with confidence and optimism.

Sam Anderson

Senior Leader : Innovative Pedadgogies

'Yarning Mornings'

Children's Centre

Being, Becoming and Belonging at BANB7

This year the Children’s Centre has had a VERY busy start as we have welcomed 100 new families into our preschool and occasional care programs.

The focus for the Term has been and will continue to be on transitioning into the services and saying goodbye to our families, many for the first time.  As we would expect, children and families have settled in at different rates. We have been running many personalised programs and timetables to ensure all children are given the time to make positive transitions, build relationships and develop their identity outside of their family unit.

We continue to capture and build on children’s connections moments with each other, the educators and their new environment. Educators will continue to support the children during this time of change, bridging the gap between the familiar and unfamiliar. As we welcome and get to know our families we wanted to share with the school community the children’s family portraits they have been working on.

Blue 1 and 2

As part of Being, Belonging and Becoming Blue 1 and Blue 2 have been learning about what it means to be a good friend.  Our learning has involved playing games, role playing, reading stories and singing songs.

“A kind friend asks you to join in and play with them” Aiza

“Being a good friend means playing kindly, peacefully and calmly.” Shazil

“I like to be helpful to my friends.” Kainat

We couldn’t wait for the day of the Waterworld Excursion. The day was filled with fun, laughter and lots of splashing! 

“I liked the waterslide. I sat down and slid down fast.” Amer

“The frog slide was super fun”. Rijja

“The big pool was better than the little pool because the water was deeper.” Ghassan

What's been happening in Purple West?

The children in Purple West are becoming increasingly worried about the growing amount of rubbish around our school environment. During some great dialogue we discovered that this rubbish, if left on the ground not only makes our school look ‘messy’, but also impacts our environment in so many ways. We decided to go out with our buckets and tongs to help clean up our school grounds. Look at all of the rubbish we found!

As part of our Inquiry, we will be investigating how we can help our environment and the most important thing we can do to have a positive impact on sustainability.

From Purple East

Purple East had a wonderful time exploring Waterworld! 

‘It was a lot of fun swimming in the big pool - my friends were in there and it was just the right size for me!’ Shaurya

‘It was fun!’  Jason

‘it was lots of fun because there was a waterslide!’  Tina

‘It was really fun because I saw Richie and Adi and Vy.  The water slides were a bit scary but I still like it!’  Rwen

‘I liked swimming under the water- it was nice.’  Basel

‘it was really fun because I went down the slides’. Jye

Yellow 1

Yellow 1 have been writing a book together that shows some of the things we have in common and the ways that we are different.  We interviewed everyone in the studio and found that we have many things in common that unite us. We talked about our backgrounds, our interests and our likes. We also found that we don’t agree on everything, and that’s just fine.

These are a few of the pages that we have finished.

Yellow 2

Recognising emotions and learning to manage them is an important life skill. In yellow 2 we have been learning about emotions by brainstorming and discussing a range of emotions. The children have been having interesting conversations about what different emotions look like, sound like and feel like. The children have begun to create a book about their own emotions. Children are beginning to develop an understanding of their own and others emotions and  to develop their ability to recognise and manage their emotions and how to support others.

Yellow 5

We have been learning bacteria and an experiment made by Louis Pasteur and the process of pasteurisation that helps keep food from spoiling a lot longer. There are 3 different types of pasteurisation that needs different rates of heating that is used for preserving milk.

In our experiment we got 5 items ( meat, dairy, fruit/snack, vegetable). First we put the food on the plate and for 4  days observed which stayed the healthiest. We recorded the results in out books. The crackers didn’t change much except if it was close to the yoghurt it absorbed some of the moisture.The meat rotted first. The dairy and fruit slowly shrivelled and dehydrated. Most of the items lost their moisture and changed colour. The meat got very hard. We had another in an air sealed container and there was hardly any moisture lost. The experiment was not exposed to the air and not to the bacteria. The condensation in the container made fungus/mould grow and spoilt the food but it took longer.       Written by Arisha, Amir and Elsa

Every fortnight Yellow South West have a visit from Liz, the animal expert.  Liz takes a small group and shares her knowledge to a small group of learners. We learn about the needs of animals and how to look after them and how they relate in their own environment. We get to hold, pat and feed the animals. We often have a lot of questions to ask about the animals and Liz answers our questions.  We hope to have our own pet soon to be responsible for and look after.

Yellow 6

Nature Art in Yellow 6

This week in Yellow 6 the Learners explored nature at Banb7 through creating a mandala in small groups. They needed strong teamwork and communication skills to work with others and to listen to everyone’s creative ideas. For this learning activity to be successful each member of the group needed to feel valued and respected, to have the confidence to contribute to their mandala. Once they had finished their amazing creations they needed to take a photo using an iPad and follow a small brief of inclusions (photo of nature art, photo of yourselves, names, studio, “what made you successful in that learning activity?”). They used the app PicCollage to make a poster which is now displayed on our studio wall.

Red 1

Did you know that many of our buildings today have been based of the Ancient Greeks. Even philosophy, science and mathematics have been somewhat related to the ancient Greeks. We will also be involved in a major event called the Olympic Games which was first started in ancient Greece. In Red 1 we will continue to explore many aspects and the influence the ancient Greeks had on Modern society over the next few weeks. Our Year 7’s recently participated in the West Lakes Aquatics program which was a huge success with many water safety skills developed. The year 6’s will go in term 2. In Play is the Way we have been developing teamwork and communication skills and this can be seen in our YouTube documentation link below.  

Thanks David

Red 2 and Red 5

Red 2 and 5 have had a busy start to 2021! They have enjoyed getting to know each other and setting up routines that will help them to have a successful final year of primary school. Some highlights from the term so far have included Bike Ed, Water World, Play is the Way, Year 7, MATES, Aquatics and Kitchen Garden sessions. We are looking forward to our senior leadership camp this week at AFL Max. We can’t believe Term 1 is almost over!

Red 3 and 4

As part of our inquiry into “journeys to Australia” we visited the Migration museum. We learnt about the history of Aboriginal people and how they lived off the land for many thousands of years before Europeans invaded the country. 
We also learnt about ‘the stolen generations’ and some of the students tried on the clothes that were worn in the missions.
At school we watched the movie, “rabbit proof fence” which everyone was really enthralled in. 
We also had time for a quick visit to the SA museum.

Red 6

It’s been a hectic start to the year, and we’ve done our best to create a happy and safe environment where all have had the opportunity to achieve success. And all have displayed positive outcomes.

Literacy: We’ve covered common spelling rules and patterns in our contracts, and tried to incorporate grammar learning in our sentence writing. Word investigations we do as a group have been interesting, and have helped with identifying spelling patterns, sounds and base words. Understanding what type of word a word is has helped us with how to use the word, and how we add suffixes and prefixes. We’ve completed a narrative, including some maths learning, and the learners are now creating a story on their own that will showcase writing skills gained over their schooling years.

Maths: We’ve split groups for Monday – Wednesday focussing on learner needs, and the learners have demonstrated an improvement in their understanding of concepts. Number understanding has been the focus. On Thursday and Friday we have stayed as a group and solved assorted problems using the 4 operations (+, -, x). All have shown improvement and success. Division is next to close out the term.

Science: We’ve been doing astronomy and understanding the movement of the Sun, Earth and our Moon. Most have cleared up some misconceptions, and all have been engaged in what is an interesting and enjoyable subject.

History: We’ve looked at prehistoric man to the year 0. Most focus has been from 10,000BCE to the year 0, and a particular focus will be on the Ancient Greek Civilisation through to next term. The interesting this is to find that history books are mostly written based around Western Culture, which doesn’t necessarily match archeological fact. An example is that farming is said to have started around 10,000BCE, while there is evidence of vast farms and bread making in Australia, as far back as 35,000 years ago.

Inquiry: Learners have been working on a yearbook in one group, and the other is about making reconciliation real. Unpacking past injustices visited on the first Australians, and the trauma that still exists, and how we can move forward together positively.

Dance and Drama

Hip Hop Crew Auditions

We had over 100 children audition from years 3-7 this year for out BANB7 hip hop crew. Our brave learners learnt dance choreography and freestyle movements and performed a routine in two groups. Auditions went over three weeks. The crew were chosen based on their performance skills, energy, facial expressions, timing, their application form, attitude and effort. The children who were runners up have been invited to be part of our Reconciliation Dance Group starting in term 2. Congratulations to everyone who auditioned, you were all so brave!

GLEE Club

Our GLEE Club have been learning skills in singing, acting and dancing this term. We've been looking at scripts and learning about 'cold reads.' An essential part of the audition process. Our children have also been learning skills in performance with an emphasis on timing and coordination throughout the dance session. Our routine will be from the musical, Rock of Ages.

2021 Materials and Services Charge (School Fees)

School Card Assistance Scheme

Invoices for 2021 fees have been sent home and are due by the end of term 1.  If you are having difficulty paying your fees please contact the Business Manager to arrange a payment option.

If you are a holder of a CRN (Customer Reference Number) and hold a health care card, you may be eligilble for schoolcard assistance.  If you are approved for schoolcard your school fees will be covered by the scheme.  Preschool fees are not included in this scheme.

A new application is required each year.

Please check the website for further information and to see if you may be eligible.