To The School Community,
I hope that your children have had a fantastic week at school there have been many exciting moments this week.
Our Prep students and teachers, as well as many helpful parents, participated in an excursion at the Werribee Zoo. As you could imagine there was a great deal of excitement amongst the group. From all reports the students were fantastic, taking in many sights and sounds that the zoo had to offer. This made me think of the opportunities that our students experience that support the curriculum. I received an email from a parent that I am extremely grateful for, explaining the opportunities that their daughter has been able to experience during her time at this school. See below for an excerpt from the email.
“ Hi Daniel
As ……….. prepared to go to her orientation at her new school the other day, we were chatting about all the future opportunities that she will have in the years to come. This, in turn, began a reflection on the fortune she has had at BHPS. She has had a year of extraordinary opportunities, particularly in the last year. As simple as each opportunity seems on its own, the experiences tallied amount to a plethora of opportunities for comradery, teamwork, problem-solving, resilience, relationship and friendship building and all the good things that we want our kids to experience so that they can become active, contributing members of the adult community. Along with many of her peers, she has tried sports she has had little to no experience in. She learned to win and to lose and to acknowledge that neither the winning or losing was integral to what they learned during the days activities. Winning was always seen as a bonus because it meant she may get to do it all again in another competition on another day and got to feel that particularly zinging feeling, but if there was some laughs and good times losing a game here and there, the losing bit was pretty easy to shrug off.
These experiences have not only been in sport.
So thanks to the school for recognising the need for things outside the confines of a classroom and taking on the additional cost of covering teachers and subsiding activities so that no students are excluded on financial grounds. And thank you to the teachers who fill out the paper work and are enthusiastic enough to source the activities, and then staff them.
It makes a difference. If students put their hands up in Primary School then there is more of a chance that they will again when the shying teenage years come, because they have had the chance to learn to win and to lose and that that is not the important bit.
What a great school we have. So thanks”
This sort of feedback is appreciated and jogs our memory about how the students at our school have a raft of opportunities to experience.
Transition
Yesterday we held our first transition session leading into the 2019 school year. The students again made the most of the opportunity to find out a little more about what school will look like in 2019.
Part of this was the their first experiences in the composite classes that are part of our 2019 structure with enrolments at 505 :
4x Foundation ( Prep Classes)
7x Year 1/2 Classes
6x year 3/4 Classes
5 x year 5/6 classes
We also had our 2019 Foundation students attend school for their first official session that went very smoothly. It always amazes me how students adapt and engage in new situations and the new prep students were amazing.
There were also a number of new students in older year levels joining us next year who took part in the transition yesterday and as expected our students, staff and parents did an amazing job at making them feel welcome and supported.
As the transition days progress, there are 2 remaining we will tighten up and finalise the class groupings by final transition day on December 11th and officially inform you of your child’s 2019 teacher after that date. Our staffing is almost set with one classroom and a languages position still to fill.
At present the teaching teams are
Foundation – Raelee Wilding, Kelvin Harris, Cara Booth, Jessica Kearney
Year 1/2 – Aimee Blake, Lauren McManus, Ree Rogan, Teagan Houston/Jane Browne, Sarah Dodds, Kate Strong, New Teacher
Year 3/4- Ruby Campbell, Kate McIntyre, Drew Steven, Lisa Kebbell, Bridie Dix, Catherine Olsen
Year 5/6 – Sharna Renfrey, Linda Jordan, Luke Wierzbowski, Sean O’Leary, Lee Holden/TBC
We have received many pieces of information from parents about their children and hopes for teachers in 2019. A great deal of the information is extremely helpful but requests regarding specific teachers are not high on the list during the decision making process. I am very confident in the staff at the school and believe that we have the right mix of staff across the school to maximise success for the students.
Christmas Fair
The Christmas Fair is fast approaching with the organising committee in full swing with their preparations. You should have seen the signs up around Geelong and Barwon Heads advertising the Fair as well as communication via Facebook and Compass. We look forward to seeing as many families as possible at the Fair to kick off the Christmas Festivities for 2019. The funds raised at the fair will be used to support upgrades of our technological equipment in 2019 as well as bolstering our resources to provide reading intervention to a larger number of students.
There is no assembly this week!
Important Dates:
Wednesday 21st November
Grade 5 – 6 Elective Sports Sessions start
Grade 2 – National Wool Museum Excursion
Thursday 22nd November
Grade 5 Barwon Estuary Project Expo
Wednesday 28 November
School Council Meeting
Whole School Transition Day
Grade 5 -6 Elective Sports
Thursday 29th November
Prep Dinner