Term 2 Wk10 2024
Diary Dates
Week 1 - Monday July 22nd - Pupil Free Day - School only (Preschool open)
Week 5 and 6 - Reception to Year 5 Swimming (to be confirmed)
Week 7 - Friday September 6th - School Closure Day
Week 8 - Monday September 9th - Pupil Free Day - School and Preschool
From the Principal
What an enormous term we have had! Thank you to all our educators for their efforts in ensuring this term was full of learning for every child. Some of the highlights included National Reconciliation Week, Mid-Year Intake transition, Preschool graduation, IELC graduation, Students as Researchers, Soccer competitions, Badminton competitions, excursions to Calvery Hospital, Kitchen Garden, Family Connections Day…the list goes on!
We have a Pupil Free Day planned for the first day of Term 3 (Monday 22nd July). Our Learning Advisors and Co-educators will be learning about strategies to support Anti-racism as well as understanding a range of behaviours and how to connect with and support children through their play interactions.
Next term we will introduce sending an SMS each day around 10am for unexplained absences. This will make it easier for families to let us know why children are absent from school. If you have any questions about this, please ask. Thank you for your patience while we have been setting this up.
We are all looking forward to a well-deserved break over the coming two weeks and know that our learners are ready for a break as well. We look forward to seeing our learners and families again on Tuesday 23rd July – for the first day of Term 3.
Thank you
Leonie
Learning Showcase - Purple West
What’s been happening in Purple West?
It’s been a busy term in Purple West, practicing lots of skills such as working together, building friendships, working as a team and overall developing our skills of becoming active learners.
The children have particularly enjoyed working in teams by learning to share, taking turns and working collaboratively. Here are a few examples.
During literacy, our studios have been working on learning their letter sounds and tricky words. Our Receptions now know 20 letter sounds and 25 tricky words! They are beginning to practice using these skills to write sentences, demonstrating the school value ‘be brave – participate to progress!’ We look forward to continuing this learning next term.
Whole School Happenings
On Monday 13th June students in our Reconciliation dance group visited Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre in Northfield. As part of our ongoing relationship with the Rehabilitation Centre we usually visit once a year around National Reconciliation Week to catch up and share with patients and staff.
This year Tom, Sonny and Michelle took 12 students to perform a special reconciliation dance and chat with patients and staff at their Reconciliation morning tea event.
We started off the proceedings with introductions, some didjeridu playing, followed by the dance performance. There were quite a large number of staff and patients in attendance and the show was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Students and staff concluded the performance with a question time and a (Something Wild) bush tucker morning tea.
The morning tea was a great opportunity for students to mingle with patients and get more of an insight about what happens at the Centre and talk about what kind of circumstances might result in patients needing assistance in recovery. The patients were very kind in sharing and the students seemed to naturally be able to relate and hold conversation. Before our entry into the Centre some students were slightly apprehensive, because hospitals sometimes can seem scary, however by the end of the visit everyone was feeling a lot more relaxed and empowered by the experience.
Before we left, we broke off into smaller groups and visited the patients on the wards. We handed out healing cards made by the students at school and got to chat with patients to wish them well and see how they were getting along.
Overall, the experience was very valuable and meaningful for all involved.
Sonny Keeler
Aboriginal Community Education Officer
Reconciliation Week
During National Reconciliation Week this year we recognised and celebrated the diversity and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures with a huge day of performance, activities and community gathering.
Our school held a morning assembly led by students that featured performances by our BANB6 children, including songs, dance and special guest singer Katie Aspell. Katie is a local Ngarrindjeri woman whose original songs share her stories of family, life and culture. Leading up to our celebration day, Katie collaborated with some of our students to co - write a song about reconciliation, which they performed together on the day.
Continuing on from our morning assembly we celebrated throughout the day with a campfire gathering and yarning circle. Community and families were invited to stay on throughout the day and share the experience with their child.
As part of the campfire experience, we had bush tucker tasting of marinated kangaroo donated by Macro Meats, pumpkin soup with salt bush and wattle seed, damper with lemon myrtle, quince jams with native limes and wattle seed. As a refreshment we had lemon myrtle and lemon verbena tea, and sweet biscuits decorated with First Nations symbols.
Other activities included weaving in the Rain Garden and making Nunga bracelets in the Aboriginal Learning Studio. The Aboriginal Learning Studio also hosted a morning tea alongside our student BANB6 Baristas.
Leading up to National Reconciliation Week, students sourced the native ingredients from our school garden and prepared the food as a part of their kitchen garden sessions, they also helped to setup and organise events, building on their awareness and ownership.
We received lots of positive feedback from the school and community on how special and relaxing the day was, and a huge positive was the excitement and wonder displayed by our students, families, and community.
Sonny Keeler
Aboriginal Community Education Officer
Dream Big
Dream Big Festival Competition News
We had over 50 children from BANB6 enter the Dream Big Festival poster competition for the 2025 theme of “I was, I am, I will be.” The Dream Big Festival, formally known as the Come-Out Festival, is a biannual event, which turns 50 in 2025. Each child who entered, created an individual design to represent the theme during Visual Arts lessons in term 1. The prize includes for the artwork to be featured on the official program for the 2025 Dream Big Festival, a $500.00 art supplies voucher and for the winner to be featured in The Advertiser and Dream Big website.
With over 39 schools participating and over 1000 entries across the state from years reception to year 12, a student from BANB6 has won the competition.
The Dream Big Festival and BANB6 would like to congratulate year 5 student, Fidak Zahra for being the 2025 poster competition Dream Big winner.
This is a huge accomplishment, and we are all so proud of you for this achievement. We can’t wait until your design is unveiled to the school and public in September!
This shows that you really do have to be “in it to win it” and that hard work really does pay off.
We also want to acknowledge all the children who submitted a design for the competition. You all worked so hard on showing your creative ideas and should be proud of the beautiful artwork that you created.
Health and Physical Education
Health and Physical Education this semester has covered teamwork, respect, fair play dispositions and covered a range of new skills from gymnastics, minor games, AFL, soccer and badminton. Our learners have also started to explore what a healthy body and lifestyle includes. The soccer specialist program has grown in skill and popularity especially with the younger years participating. Recently BANB6 took some teams to participate in the 7-a-side soccer tournament held at the new state soccer facility. Additionally we currently have both male and female teams representing our school in the state wide SAPSASA knockout tournament. The Roma Mitchell Sports Faculty was present and introduced themselves to several BANB6 players to promote their development in soccer for the future. Next term we turn our focus to a global event which is the Olympic games. Well done all!