Newsletter Term 2 Week 9

Dates for the Diary THURSDAY 28th June 2018

TAFE Taster Day for Construction

Friday 29th June 9.30am

Whole School Assembly

Friday 29th June 2.30pm

Yr 10 Careers Trip

Monday 2nd July to Friday 6th July

Primary School Assembly

Tuesday 3rd July 2.45pm

Ski Trip—Parent Information Night

Tuesday 3rd July 7.00pm

Yr 5/6 Choir Practice Jamestown

Wednesday 4th July

End of Term 2

Early Dismissal 2.20pm

Friday, 6th July

Student Free Days

10th August & 15th October

Early Closure: 2.20pm

31st July & 11th November

School Closure

Friday 7th September

Share the Positives: Congratulations to Kirby Chapman and Jane Crawford on 10

years of and 30 years of Service in Education, respectively.

From the Principal: Last week in share the positives, we congratulated Renae. Here is some more information!

Adelaide University offer Principal’s Scholarships for which Renae was nominated. Renae, as 2017 BCDS Dux, received 3 SACE Merits with her primary and secondary education being proudly public school and local. This is what she had to say....

“Hi Mrs Stringer! I hope the school is still running well and the year is yet another good one !! I would like to say thank you for nominating me for the Adelaide Uni’s Principals’ Scholarship sometime last year. It was a nice surprise to see I was the recipient of this scholarship, one I didn’t even have to apply for! So thanks again for your kindness . All the best, Renae” As I was out last week at Visible Learning with Emma Bennett and missed the opportunity to say well done to the primary students and staff on the Science Fair. It was a real privilege to talk with the students about their projects and see so many parents there! Jenny Stringer

Principal

Scarlett with her project, Jupiter was her favourite planet.

Kindy News

Last week the Kindy students went for an excursion to Melrose. After our great 'Mindful Nature Play' day at Jamestown last term, we decided to extend on this activity and explore the beautiful creek & surroundings in Melrose. We had lots of fun balancing, climbing, sliding and taking risks as we explored the creek. We found rocks that we could draw with, as well as feathers and sticks to use back at Kindy. We also enjoyed playing on the pump track and the playground at the school. This Thursday we are visiting the R/1 Class for transition.

Kindy and Rural Care Staff

Primary News

Thanks to the many families that attended our R-6 assembly last week. Congratulations to our Week 8 award winners:

R/1: Clancy J, Wyatt R, Charlie S, Peter L

2/3/4: Henley S, Makayla F, Megan A, Billy A

5/6: Claire S, Jasmine M, Eliza P, Kaden G

Student Shout Outs: Henry Z, Tess J, Bernie SD, Izzy D, Milla R, Zander S, Wyatt R, Billy A

Mathletics Certificates: Claire S, Zaiden VW, Isabelle B, Bella H, Max P, Joe P, Zander M, Ned W, Zali R, Izzy D, Eve SD

Each term the local churches of the Booleroo Centre and surrounding areas present a Christian Seminar to students from R-6. These seminars are opt-in so each student must have parental permission to attend which was in the pack at the start of the year. Thank you to Trish, Rolf and Leanne who came on Wednesday and presented a session to our primary students.

This week the 5/6 class have had Jazz Vanderbrand an Orroroo Area School student in the classroom for work experience. We have enjoyed having Jazz in the classroom and have appreciated all of her help.

The school collected 6670 Cole’s school vouchers which have been used to purchase new sports equipment for the school. Thanks to everyone who collected the vouchers, the students will certainly appreciate it.

A Few Reminders:

This Friday the 29th of June at 2.30pm at the school gym we will be having a whole school assembly in the gym to share student success and learning. Students will be dismissed from the assembly and can go home with parents.

Next Tuesday the 3rd of July, starting at 2pm parents are invited to come in and listen/read to students for the Premiers Reading challenge. We will then have our final R-6 assembly for the term starting at 2.45pm between the R/1 and 2/3/4 classroom. We hope to see you there!

Finally, next Wednesday the 4th of July our 5/6 students will travel to Jamestown for choir practice with the other schools. Students will be auditioning for compere roles. We wish all students auditioning for comperes the best of luck!

Tamara Schmidt, R-6 Primary Coordinator

Career News TAFE Taster Day

The hands on construction TAFE Taster day is fast approaching. It will be held at Booleroo on the 29th of June from 10am until 2pm with a number of our senior students participating. They are encouraged to wear work boots if possible or covered footwear.

Ella Thredgold, 7-12 Coordinator

School News

Whole School Assembly

We will holding a Whole School assembly on Friday Week 9 at 2:30pm in the Gym to celebrate the end of Semester 1. Students across the Primary, Middle and Senior Schools will receive awards, and students will share some of their learning and highlights of the semester.

NAPLAN Online – School Readiness Test (SRT)

The NAPLAN Online School Readiness Test (SRT) will be conducted nationally in Weeks 5 and 6 of Term 3 for students in Year 3, 5, 7 and 9. It’s important you understand that the SRT is not another NAPLAN nor is it an assessment of the literacy and numeracy skills of students. SRT is to check schools (BCDS) IT capacity, logistics and administration processes. It is an opportunity for us to confirm if our school can conduct test sessions under test conditions and national test protocols, troubleshoot any technical issues and manage the availability of our IT when running online test sessions, in readiness for NAPLAN Online in 2019.

I am currently in the process of preparing our ‘session planner’ and once I’ve attended a face-to-face training session in Adelaide early next term, there will be one day selected in either Week 5 or 6 which we will use to conduct our school’s readiness test. I will provide the date in the Week 2 newsletter of Term 3. A privacy notice will be issued to parents and carers of students participating in the SRT. Students only ‘sit’ two tests, a writing test and an omnibus test (which includes questions from numeracy, reading and conventions of language). This will be completed over a period of no more than two lessons, for one day only.

Emma Bennett Senior Leader

VISIBLE LEARNING

On Thursday 21st June the Flinders Partnership attended an ‘Evidence Into Action 3’ workshop at Melrose Primary School. Jenny and I attended this day, along with other site principals and leaders and visible learning impact coaches. The day allowed us to collaborate, providing us with the opportunity to explore data each site has collected, in order for us to plan actions that will make a positive difference to the outcomes for the students in our school.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Visible Learning or new to the school community, this is the second year the Flinders Partnership has been involved with Visible Learning, which is a professional development programme for teachers with the concept becoming popularised by John Hattie. Visible Learning means an enhanced role for teachers as they become evaluators of their own teaching. Visible Teaching and Learning occurs when teachers see learning through the eyes of students and help them become their own teachers.

On Thursday we used a diagnostic, evidence-based tool called ‘Visible Learning School Matrix’. From the information that the matrix gathers, it helped us to determine whether we as a school are focusing on the things that make the most difference to learners in our school. Our focus now is to create an Action Plan and align this with our Site Improvement Plan. Once the Action Plan has been finalised we hope to share some of the statements and vision with our school community.

There is a Student Free Day scheduled for Friday 10th August and this day is being used for professional

development of Visible Learning: Actions for Teachers.

Emma Bennett Senior Leader

Governing Council News

Governing Council met on Monday 18th of June. We were fortunate to have Carol Williams, Education Director join the meeting. Carol was interested in Governing Councillors thoughts about what BCDS is doing well and where improvements need to be made. She highlighted that BCDS is a high performing school in terms of education outcomes and opportunities for learning.

Carol shared with Council the results of the 2017 Wellbeing Study (survey of primary and secondary students in all DECD schools). The results for BCDS students within all areas are above the state averages which is really good news for our kids. Some of the areas surveyed include happiness, perseverance, belonging, engagement with teachers, and school belonging. This is not to say that the school and parents don’t need to continue to support our children to feel supported in these areas.

Governing Council conveyed to Carol that opportunities exist to improve communication between families, teachers and school staff to support our children.

It was recognised that parents/caregivers have very high expectations for their students learning; whilst this is a positive element it can sometimes feel to teachers that we only recognise the areas for improvement. I would encourage you all to notice the positives and take the time to feed these back to the teachers, encourage your children to also notice the good things about their school.

Governing Council would like to congratulate Gayle Bury-Dodman on her nomination for the Education Awards. Congratulations also to Kirby Chapman and Jane Crawford on their service awards, 10 and 30 years respectively. Congratulations to the Kindergarten and Rural Care on achieving 3 years accreditation.

The Biggest Morning Tea raised $440 for the Cancer Council which was a terrific effort.

Governing Council approved the following policies: mobile phone and attendance.

Please do not hesitate to contact me on 0447672173 if you would like more information about Governing Council.

Thank You

Melissa Koch, Governing Council Chairperson

CONGRAUTLATIONS

Congratulations to Year 10 student Dylan Corlett who is heading off on Saturday to McKay in Queensland to represent South Australia in the Australian National School Boy Under 15 Rugby Championships. Dylan has trained very hard to achieve this goal, which is also a try-out for the Australian U15 team.

Staff and students would like to wish Dylan all the best at the Championships, and we look

forward to hearing about it when he returns!

Kate Seidel , Senior Leader

Year 7/8 visits to Mount View Homes

As part of Year 7/8A Pathways, students have been involved in weekly visits to Mt View Homes this term. It has been fantastic for our students to develop confidence playing guitars and the piano in front of an audience as well as actively engaging in conversation. Other activities have included paper plane making and colouring in with the residents. Each week our students come away from the visits with a high level of excitement surrounding interesting conversations of how the residents used to get to school, the subjects they studied at school and other fascinating stories about their lives. Thank you to all the staff at Mt View Homes for allowing us to visit. We can’t wait to visit the residents at Mt View Homes again next week.

Photos: Year 7/8 students visiting Mrs Crittenden, Mrs Sanders & Mrs Rice at Mt View Homes

Kate Fitzgerald Year 7/8A Pathways Teacher

Year 12 AG IN ACTION: Students have got sheep dung samples from around the district, with farmers JP Carey, Jim Higgins, Brenton Koch and Kym Harvie all helping out! The skills that these students are developing are to find the level of worm infestation in sheep flocks. These samples are normally sent to a laboratory in Adelaide. Results so far are showing a low egg per gram count. This is consistent with professional testing. Next we will look at testing the effectiveness of drenches from various farms.

Andrew Geddes, Agricultural Teacher

Maths in Action: Year 11 Maths students are mixing the theory of classroom Maths and seeing if the practical is the same. Here they are using a Bushnell distance finder to get measurements of the basketball court. Andrew Geddes, Teacher

AG IN ACTION: Students are starting their practical on discovering what makes plants grow.

Students have been busy planting a variety of broad acre crops. Next term students will be able to use their plots when we study Classification of Living Organisms. Students have been busy preparing field crop area for planting next week.

Andrew Geddes, Agricultural Teacher

COMMUNITY NEWS