Welcome to Term 3
I hope everyone had a wonderful winter holiday break, with the kids recharged and ready to get into another term of learning and enjoyment.
As always, there’s quite a bit planned for the term so here’s a quick preview of what’s to come:
- School Disco is on tonight in the gym. See Compass Events post for all the details.
- Prep students are celebrating 100 Days of School on July 30. This is an exciting achievement as they remember how much they’ve learned in their first 100 days of school!
- We are learning about and celebrating the Olympic Games in Paris by having multi-age activities on Friday afternoons each fortnight. The activity next Friday is an Opening Ceremony with the kids dressing in colours of their group’s chosen country. This will be a fun and memorable event for the kids. Parents and friends are most welcome to join us for the afternoon.
- The Year 2 students are off to the MCG Sports Museum for an excursion on 6th August
- Jackson Taylor MP is visiting on 8th August to officially open the Inclusive Play Space.
- Year 6 students will have their German Celebration Day on 15th August. This is a special event just for Year 6’s where they participate in German themed activities, watch a Bavarian Oompah Band and enjoy eating some yummy German food.
- Book Week is celebrated in the week beginning 19th August. The highlight of the week is our Book Week Dress Up Parade along with the Book Fair in the Library.
- Other incursions & excursions include the Year 5 Immigration for a Better Life incursion, Year 4s have a History incursion, and the Year 1s experiencing a day out at the Melbourne Museum.
- Year 5 students are off to camp this term, visiting Sovereign Hill in Ballarat from Monday 2nd September to Wednesday 4th September.
- For those students rehearsing for the State Schools Spectacular, their big performance day is on Saturday 14th September at John Cain Arena.
- Finally, we will finish off the term on Friday 20th September with a Footy Dress Up Day. This year, the JSC are asking for donations to support the My Room Children’s Cancer Charity.
All of these events are additional to the educational experiences our kids receive every day in their classroom, which are just as significant as the extra-curricula activities that happen throughout the year.
Beanies
It’s lovely to see all the new BHPS Beanies popping up on kids heads throughout the school. These seem to be very popular uniform items and I’m pleased the community got behind the idea. We’ve certainly had some cold and wet weather recently, so anything to keep the kids warm is bound to help.
Parent Opinion Survey is Coming
Our school is conducting the annual Parent / Caregiver / Guardian Opinion Survey offered by the Department of Education and is seeking your feedback. The survey is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of families’ perceptions of school climate, student behaviour, and student engagement. The survey is optional, but we encourage and appreciate your participation.
Our school will use the survey results to assist in identifying areas for improvement and professional development needs in the school, to target school planning and improvement strategies.
The Parent / Caregiver / Guardian Opinion Survey will be open online from Monday 29 July to Friday 30 August 2024.
All families are invited to participate in the survey.
The survey will be conducted online, only takes 20 minutes to complete, and can be accessed at any convenient time on desktop computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones.
The online survey will be available in English and 10 other languages including Arabic, Greek, Hakha Chin, Hindi, Japanese, Punjabi, Simplified Chinese, Somali, Turkish, and Vietnamese. Resources are also available in additional languages to assist parents / caregivers / guardians who speak a language other than English at home. Please reach out to your child’s teacher, or the school directly for survey guides in your language.
Last year we used the survey results to assist in the School Review process, which then informs our plans for the next four years.
Please reach out to a member of the administration team if you would like more information.
Prep building and Library
Sadly, in the last week of school we had an incident in the BER Building resulting from a small electrical fire. Thankfully, the situation was handled promptly and bravely by a few staff members who were in the building at the time. It was their quick action that prevented a much larger fire from taking hold. We immediately enacted our emergency management plan, evacuated everyone to the netball court at the front of the school and contacted emergency services. The fire brigade attended and deemed the area safe within 20 minutes, allowing us to return to classrooms. Unfortunately, the building was smoke affected and couldn’t be used until it was thoroughly cleaned.
Over the holidays, cleaners have been in the building cleaning every book, pencil and Unifix block. They have scrubbed walls and doors, steam cleaned furniture and replaced permanent fixtures (carpet tiles, sections of ceiling and bench tops) that were most affected by smoke damage. As you can imagine, this is painstaking work which has taken nearly four weeks to complete.
The Preps have been working in other classrooms during this time. German and STEAM classes have taken place in home rooms, and instrumental music lessons have been run out of our meeting rooms. I’ve been listening to kids practice guitar in the room behind my office for the last two weeks, and I must say they’re pretty good too!
This has caused quite a lot of disruption to normal routines. The kids and staff have been amazingly resilient, and I appreciate their flexibility and determination. You’ll be pleased to know that things will be returning to normal very soon. The hygienist has given us the “all clear” so we can start putting furniture in rooms and making them look pretty again.
There’s a lot of work to be done to get the rooms back to the way they were, so we may put a call out on Compass asking for volunteers. If we do need some help, you are available and can offer any amount of time, we would be very appreciative.
Kind regards,
Mat Anderton
Principal