NAPLAN

Next week, our Year 3 and 5 students will be participating in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). Students will complete four assessments in the areas of Writing, Reading, Conventions of Language and Numeracy. NAPLAN tests are delivered in an online format. Our Year 3 and Year 5 students will complete the NAPLAN Reading, Conventions of Language and Mathematics assessments online. Students in Year 5 will also complete the writing assessment online, whilst our Year 3 students will complete the writing assessment on paper.

The schedule for NAPLAN at Bonbeach PS will be:

Wednesday 15^th March – Writing

Thursday 16^th March – Reading

Friday 17^th March – Conventions of Language

Monday 20^th March – Numeracy

For students who are absent on the day of a test, catch up sessions will be provided from the 21^st – 27^th March.

Any Year 3 students who are absent for the writing assessment, a catch-up session will be arranged on Monday 20^th March (cut off day for Year 3 writing).

Veggie Garden

Our School Veggie Garden is looking amazing! This is due to the hard work of staff, parent volunteers, and donations from local organisations.

Thank you to Amy D for reaching out to local companies for donations and entering the school into competitions to obtain items to support the garden program. Daisy’s Garden Supplies are donating soil to help refresh some of our garden beds that our Year 3-6 students will be planting Indigenous gardens. Our Year 3-6 students are currently researching and learning about indigenous plants, bush tucker and plants medicinal uses. Thank you also to Jodie S and Tiffany K for volunteering your time in the garden.

Amy also entered a photograph of some ‘Ugly Veg’ that was grown in our garden into a competition run by company Good and Fugly. The competition, judged by Nutrition Australia, Food Waste Australia, and Corner Smith, judged that the carrot pictured below and grown in our garden was the ugliest! The school will receive a Vegie Pod and a year of free fruit and veggies equivalent of $3,224 which will support our Wellness Wednesday, supplying fresh fruit and veggies to our students on Wednesdays.

Thank you also to one of our Grandparents (grandparent of Tamika in Year 5) who works for Oasis Nursery, for donating seedlings for the garden.

We often have produce available at the office for a gold coin donation. We currently have fresh figs, cherry tomatoes, rosemary and basil.

It is fantastic to have so much community involvement in supporting our garden program!

World’s Greatest Shave

It is always great to hear when students get involved in community events or causes. This year, we have some students who are participating in the World’s Greatest Shave to support Cancer research. We encourage you to read their stories in today’s newsletter.

School Council Elections

Congratulations to our successful School Council nominees, Jody Stack Carrodus, Rebecca Eckard and Archie Mihalopoulos!

We look forward to a very productive year with our new councillors.

School Council Annual General Meeting

The Bonbeach SC Annual General Meeting will be held at 6pm on Thursday 23^rd March in the conference room (admin building). This will be immediately followed by the 1^st meeting with our 2023 School Council.

Supporting a highly sensitive child

                                                                Rachel Samson

 Does your child cry easily? Is she prone to becoming overwhelmed in loud or busy places? Does your child seem sensitive to the moods and emotions of others? Does he tend to “meltdown” or “shutdown” when there is a lot going on? Does your child startle easily? Do you consider your child to be highly sensitive? Raising a highly sensitive child can come with a unique set of parenting challenges but it also gives you—the parent—more influence to positively shape your childʼs development! Yes, thatʼs right. Parents have even more influence on the development and wellbeing of their highly sensitive child compared to less sensitive kids. Research shows that highly sensitive children are more strongly affected by their environment, including parenting, than less sensitive children. Let me explain. Just as we all differ on temperament traits such as extroversion, agreeableness, and consciousness, we also differ on another temperament trait: sensitivity. All of us fall somewhere on the sensitivity continuum from low sensitivity to high sensitivity. Approximately 30% of us—and our kids—are highly sensitive. Highly sensitive kids tend to process information from the environment more deeply, are prone to overstimulation, have greater emotional reactivity (think more crying and more intense emotions) and higher empathy, and have a greater capacity for sensing subtleties in our environment. We can think of highly sensitive kids as living smoke detectors who are capable of detecting subtle changes in the environment that the majority of people may miss. It is thought that a finely tuned, highly reactive nervous system underpins high sensitivity. Research shows that highly sensitive kids tend to do exceptionally well in nurturing and supportive environments but are at higher risk for developing a range of physical and mental health conditions in harsh and unsupportive environments compared to children who are less sensitive. In other words, highly sensitive children are more sensitive to their environment for better and for worse. So how do we support our sensitive kids and provide them with the nurturing environment they need?

Understand and accept your childʼs sensitivity

Our temperament is biologically based, it is not something we can simply switch on and o or turn up and down. Learning more about our childʼs temperament will help us to understand them better. By seeing our childʼs temperament as an important part of who they are, we can practice accepting their sensitivity rather than seeing it as something problematic that needs to be changed or ʻfixedʼ. Your child doesnʼt need to be less sensitive. They need their sensitivity to be understood. This can feel like a relief to parents who have been thinking that perhaps they had somehow caused their child to be sensitive. While nature and nurture do interact to shape our childʼs development, your child was born with their own unique temperament, including their sensitivity.

 Provide your highly sensitive child with the nurturing relationship they need to flourish

 Highly sensitive children thrive in nurturing and supportive environments. We know that children donʼt benefit from harsh or punitive parenting, but this is especially true for our highly sensitive kids who need a more nurturing parenting approach. In healthy parent-child relationships, our kids use us as their “safe haven” to come back to for protection and nurturing when they are tired, sick, stressed, or experiencing big feelings. Often parents of highly sensitive kids will report that their child is “clingy” and tends to stay close to their parent until they feel comfortable in a situation. This is rarely cause for concern. Clinging is a childʼs way of signalling that they need their parent to help them feel OK again. Sometimes they simply need our presence, other times they may need our action and gentle words. We live in a society that has a history of discouraging children from being “too dependent” or “too clinging”. Often this view comes from a place of not understanding child development and not understanding childrenʼs attachment needs. By trusting our childʼs needs and responding to those needs with atonement and sensitivity, we can provide our kids with the support they need so that they can grow-up feeling secure in their relationship with us (knowing that we have their back), and, in turn, feeling secure in themselves and the world.

Be an emotion coach for your child

 Highly sensitive children often have big emotions and lots of them! This means that your highly sensitive child will need your help to understand and manage their emotions. From as early as you can, label your childʼs emotions to help them develop their own emotional vocabulary so that they can express their emotions as they get older. You can say things such as, “you look sad” or “I can see you are angry”. Once youʼve labelled your childʼs emotion, itʼs important to show your child that you accept their emotions—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Itʼs important that you validate your childʼs emotions and avoid dismissing their emotions, even when your adult brain might judge their emotion as an “over reaction”. Instead of saying, “donʼt be so sensitive” or “it wasnʼt a big deal, she didnʼt mean to hurt your feelings”, you can say things such as, “itʼs okay to feel angry, I get it” or “I know you feel sad, that hurt your feelings”. By accepting and validating the full range of our childʼs emotion, we not only help to soothe them in the moment, we also teach them healthy ways of responding to their own emotions—this is a lesson they will carry with them throughout their lifetime.

regards

Ken & Lisa

In week 9 of this term (Friday 31^st March), we will be holding our annual Cross Country Day. This is a whole school event that will take place between 9am-11am. The junior school (Prep-Year 2) will be running a smaller course within the school grounds. Students in Prep will be running one lap in their classes and the Grade 1/2s will be running two laps with JKB, JSB and JKH running together, and JFR and JBT running together.                             

When not running, all juniors will be watching and cheering on from the middle of the oval. Estimated time of finishing is 10am.

For the first time, Year 3-6 students will be running their cross country at Bonbeach Reserve (Shark Park). We have been given council approval and a new course is currently being mapped out. They will run in their age groups. Under 9/10 will complete a 2km course and under 11 and under 12/13 are running a 3km course. This also doubles as try outs to make the District Cross Country Team. We expect the middle/senior school to finish by 11am. 

An event will be going out on Compass ASAP for students in Years 3-6, as all students will need consent to walk to Bonbeach Reserve with their teacher. All students are encouraged to wear their house colours on the day. If you are unsure what house your child is in, please see their classroom teacher. This event will only be cancelled in extreme weather (eg: lightning and severe thunderstorms). Rain will not cause the event to be cancelled.   

All parents are encouraged to attend and cheer on the students on the day, at school or Bonbeach Reserve. Any parents of middle/senior school students that are available and willing to be a course marshal on the day, could you please see or contact myself corey.mccormack@education.vic.gov.au. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Corey McCormack

Physical Education Teacher
                        

Harmony Week is a time to celebrate Australian multiculturalism, and the successful integration of migrants into our community. Australia is one of the most multicultural countries in the world and as a country, we believe we should celebrate this and work to maintain it. The message of Harmony Week is “EVERYONE BELONGS”. It is about inclusiveness, respect and belonging for all Australians, regardless of cultural or linguistic background, united by a set of core Australian values. 

                         

Students at Bonbeach Primary will celebrate harmony on Tuesday 21st of March. They are encouraged to wear something orange or dress in their family’s national dress.  Students are asked to contribute a gold coin to raise much needed funds for State School’s Relief which ensures every Victorian student, regardless of background, is able to fully participate in education. The students will also be participating in a classroom activity and whole school picnic on the oval. Students are reminded to wear suitable clothing as per a normal day of school. 

Thanks for helping in celebrating our message that EVERYONE BELONGS. 

                                   

Hi, my name’s Luke Maher and I’m in grade 5 this year. On the 18^th March I am going to be shaving all of my hair off to raise awareness and money for the Leukaemia Foundation. The Leukaemia Foundation support people and their families who have blood cancer, and they research to try and find a treatment.

When people shave their head they can donate their hair as well. This can be used to make wigs for people who have cancer. Or if it’s not long enough to make a wig it can be used to make booms to soak up oil spills. Each boom can soak up 4L of oil!

I decided to be a part of this because my Grandma passed away 4 years ago, she had a type of blood cancer. If you would like to support me by donating some money, please see the details below. Every dollar can help and I’m very grateful for any donations.

Thank you, Luke Maher

http://my.leukaemiafoundation.org.au/lukemaher

  
My name is Maive, I am in year 6 and I have just cut my hair for the third time as part of The Worlds Greatest Shave. It took me 4 years to grow it long enough this time. My hair will be used to make medical wigs for people with cancer or alopecia.  I feel happy knowing I can help people when they may be feeling sad.

                             

DISTRICT SWIMMING CARNIVAL 2023

Last week, Bonbeach Primary School competed at the 2023 District Swimming Carnival. We had a squad of 26 girls and boys from Year 3 to 6 that represented our school at the Pines Aquatic Centre. They all did a fantastic job.

Quite a few students claimed third and second placed ribbons, and a number of students won their events and will now go on to represent Bonbeach at the Kingston Divisional Finals on Tuesday 14^th of March.

Well done to the following 14 students who came first in their event(s) at district and will now go onto compete at divisional:

Judd. H- 4x50m Freestyle relay, Medley relay

Charlie. S- 4x50m Freestyle relay, Medley relay

Leo. G- 4x50m Freestyle relay, Medley relay

Lucas. L- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Mia. C- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Miori. W- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Neve. J- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Indya. G- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Kye. M- Medley relay

Annika. L- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Victoria. B- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Susannah. A- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Erin. M- 4x50m Freestyle relay

Liam. D- Breaststroke

Parents will have to make arrangements to get students to divisional, as we are unable to provide a bus due to low numbers attending. Also a big thank you goes out to Mr Jones and Ange Lang who helped out on the day and to all the parents who were there to support and cheer on the students.

Once again, well done to the team and go BONBEACH!!!!!!

-Mr Mac.