Another fortnight has passed and today concluded with a heart-warming concert for our special guests, and mothers, for our Mother's Day afternoon. It was a pleasure to have Jon and his Marimba and Wacky Musical Instrument Tour, visit our school. The enjoyment of music, participation, laughter and team spirit was certainly evident and a highlight of the week.

Staff have been busy developing a whole school approach to planning and documentation and working collaboratively to build a collegial approach to putting 'faces on the data' for every student. Maths has continued to be the focus and much work has gone into our lesson planning structure and including mathematical vocabulary every day to build the capacity of our students at every level.

Next week, is NAPLAN for our Year 3 and 5 students and while some students, and parents, may be anxious about this assessment, it is one test, on one day and paints a picture of their performance at this stage. It is used to show growth. The results won't be released until September and are only a snapshot of the information we gather. Please encourage 'normal' school day conversations and try to reduce any anxiety by explaining that the tests are simply an opportunity to participate in a nationwide data collection program.

This week, I met with Miriam from PlayStreet, to begin our concept design for a new nature play space to complement and enhance our new bike and scooter track. We have now received our Tas Community Fund Grant funds and are planning some fundraising opportunities for Term 3. We are so excited the funding for our new play space has hit the bank account and that it has now been ordered. We were also excited to receive a community grant from the GSBC for $1000 to engage with our local aboriginal community and update our flagpoles and to add both the Tasmanian and Aboriginal flags. Its been a great and productive week!
Enjoy Mother's Day with your loved ones.

Kristy Hay
Principal

https://premiersreadingchallenge.tas.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx

Gala Sports Day at Bicheno Primary School.

On Friday the 30^th of April 2021, Grade 3/4/5/6 students went to Bicheno Primary School as well as St Helens and St Marys, to participate in a sports day.

Firstly, everyone was split into groups and each group did three sports each. The different sports where netball, soccer, golf, bowling, football, little athletics and triathlon. Each sport was run by Tasmanian organization sports.

Everyone learnt something new about each sport.  In netball, we learnt some new passes such as chest pass, shoulder pass, bounce pass, etc.

In football we learnt to kick a football properly and how you can only hold the ball for a certain amount of seconds before having to pass it.

In golf we learnt how to hit the ball far and how to hold the golf club in the correct way. We also learnt that in golf you don’t have to swing the golf club high to make the ball go far.

Although these are not all of the sports you can try we all had a super fun and exciting day we can’t wait for the next sports when we can try the other sports.

By Millie and Ivy.

Please remember to slow down when entering and leaving the school car park

Pop Its and Arrays:

Maths in the 2/3 Class

In the Grade 2/3 class we have been exploring arrays to build our understanding of multiplication. An array is when a set of objects is organised into rows and columns, with all rows having the same amount and all columns having the same amount. This helps us to see that the same amount can be organised in different ways without changing the total.

We have been spending some time organising a set of counters into different arrays (e.g. 15 could be organised into 3 rows of 5 or 5 rows of 3, 30 counters could be organised into 5 rows of 6 or 6 rows of 5 etc.)

Thanks to Mrs. Hay we also now have a class set of Pop Its which we have been using in our Maths lessons when we are exploring multiplication (and arrays), adding, subtracting or exploring different ways of making numbers. The addition of the Pop Its has definitely increased our already high enthusiasm levels in maths.

In maths we have been working in co-operative groups to investigate how to divide a whole into equal sized pieces.  We have folded paper squares, strips and circles to make fractions and compare their sizes. The equal sized pieces are shown as the denominator or the bottom number in a written fraction.   Using plasticene we have modelled fraction problems to help us solve more challenging questions like how to equally share 3 oranges between 7 people or how much pizza would five people get if they were to share 4 pizzas equally.  We have found that making and representing thirds, fifths, sevenths and ninths is difficult because you can’t start by halving the whole.

Dollarmite Banking day is Wednesday

SCHOOL LUNCH ON FRIDAYS

Every Friday a cooking group will work with Beth to prepare and serve lunch to the whole school. All students and staff will sit down and share lunch together.
Our Sustainable Learning "Community" project and food is subsidised by Bendigo Bank and as such, there will be no charge for the food offered. Please continue to pack your child some lunch for these days as they may still be hungry or may not be keen on the menu!
Gluten free and vegetarian options are available but will only be prepared if a student is going to eat the alternative. If your child is gluten free or vegetarian, please let us know in advance if there are any dietary requirements for the menu below. A whole terms notice would be terrific for our planning preparation and grocery order. Thank you for your support of this initiative.

 Reminder

Please return all costumes borrowed for the Heritage Fete to the school office