Binalong Public School

The weeks are just flying by with students and staff involved in many wonderful learning experiences and activities. A lot of these events do not happen without our incredible SASS team, and in Week 8 we celebrate SASS Appreciation Week and invite our families and students to think about how they too can acknowledge our SASS team of Mrs Foran, Mrs Edwards, Miss Sykes and Mr MacFarlane (Tim) for the incredible contribution that they make to our school.

We've been celebrating many calendar events including Science Week, Book Week, National Action Day Against Bullying by embedding learning opportunities within our classrooms as well as celebrating with whole schools or community events. We've been learning about respecting ourselves and others, experiencing and expressing gratitude, and looking for ways to authentically acknowledge and compliment others. 

We look forward to meeting up with our pre-school friends for Book Week and inviting the community to come along and get involved in our Book Week Parade this Thursday.

It is also Road Rules Awareness Week and we continue to ask our families to support and model safe road behaviours in our busy school street by parking parallel to the school with the first car to arrive to park at the tree with arriving cars to pull in behind (this is to reduce the need to reverse park in a school zone see photo). Please don’t leave large gaps between cars and ensure that you share parking and pick up routines with other family members or carers who collect your child. We realise there are more cars at pick up, and that space for parking is limited, but we do ask that you park on the school side of the road.  Doing this helps keep our busy little road a much safer place for your children. We also encourage all of our students and families to follow road/car user rules about car seats and seatbelt safety. Let's work together to keep our kids safe.

https://quiz.towardszero.nsw.gov.au/road-rules-awareness-week-2023

There are a number of exciting upcoming P&C events and the P&C have requested volunteers at the following: Bobbara Hill Walk, Arabin Cup, BPS Movie Night, Murrumbateman Field Days, and the Spring Fair. A survey went home on SkoolBag and your help is much appreciated!

Below are some dates to add to your diary. There will be updates and more dates to add as the term progresses. 

Week 6

All Week                            - Book Week - 2023 Theme: Read, Grow, Inspire

Thursday 24 August        - Book Week Parade and Celebrations @ Pioneer Park starting at 9.05am

Week 7

Tuesday 29 August - Father's Day breakfast and Father's Day Stall

Wednesday 30 August - Father's Day Stall & Todd Woodbridge Cup for Yrs 3/4

Thursday 31 August & Friday 1 September - Small School Conference (Mrs Arabin)

Week 9

Thursday 14 September  - Assembly

Friday 15 September        - Baldry Shield @ Wallenbeen

Week 10

Thursday 21 September   - Arabin Cup

Friday 22 September         - P&C Movie Night

Term 4

Week 1

Monday 9 October             - Staff and STUDENTS return to school (no pupil free day)

Week 1 saw K-6 tackle a new instrument – bucket drumming!  The children have been having a fabulous (and very noisy!) time and we look forward to sharing more of our skills with you later in the term.  Our focus this semester is on band and performing and we are already making great progress!  Mrs Cassidy has been able to convince our G.A Tim to join our primary music sessions to share his musicianship with us.  Thanks Tim! The next newsletter will showcase our Yrs 3-6 musicians who are busily learning The Man from Snowy River and Tom Petty’s Learning to Fly.

It is starting to get very busy down in our vegie patch!  A fun afternoon was spent building teepees before popping them into our garden beds and planting peas around their base.  Our sweetpeas planted earlier have sprouted and we look forward to finding the perfect spot for them in the garden where we will be able to enjoy their beautiful scent in Spring.  We have been watching our fabulous romanesco broccoli mature and enjoyed a scrumptious feast.  It earned a big thumbs up from the kids – they even scraped the crumbs from the bottom of the container!  So far we've created a vegie slice using eggs from our gorgeous hens and vegetables from our garden – yum! A huge thank you to Tim who has been working tirelessly to mulch the paths in our vegie patch with wood chips from Bush School.  These paths will form an integral part of our garden composting cycle.  As the wood chips decompose they will then be added to our garden beds before a fresh layer of wood chips are added to our paths.

Country Kids Club BINALONG 

After School Care at the Binalong Public School will commence on Mondays from the 21st August, 2023. Please contact Julia to make your Monday booking.
The program operates from the end of school through to 6pm. 

A healthy afternoon tea and a range of fun activities are provided at each session. The Fee for the session is $34, minus Child Care Subsidy.

For bookings and further information including Fee Estimates for your family please contact Julia on:

Phone - 62368305            Email – enrolments@ccel.com.au

We want our newsletter to celebrate all things BPS!

There are 6 essential skills that need to be explicitly taught for children to learn to read.

Oral Language

Oral language is the system through which we use spoken words to express knowledge, ideas, and feelings. Oral language is often associated with vocabulary as the main component. However, oral language is comprised of much more. In the broadest definition, oral language consists of six areas: phonology, grammar, morphology, vocabulary, discourse, and pragmatics.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness refers to the specific ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is auditory and does not involve words in print it includes: blending, segmenting and deleting/manipulating sounds.

Explicit, Systematic and Cumulative Phonics Instruction

Phonics is concerned with sound-letter relationships in written words and builds upon a foundation of language and phonological awareness. Phonics instruction helps children learn the relationship between letters of the written language and the sounds of the spoken language. Research suggests a synthetic phonics approach (blending and segmenting phonemes) is the most efficient way to teach phonics. We are using the UFLI phonics program and have aligned our decodables to the scope and sequence so that students read in class and take home readers to consolidate the phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letters) that have been explicitly taught in the classroom.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary refers to words children can understand or use while speaking and listening. Oral vocabulary is closely related to reading vocabulary, which comprises the words children can recognise and use in their reading or writing. Each week your students are explicitly taught new vocabulary and these words are usually found in the rich text that they are reading in class. Students discover how to use the new vocabulary by learning multiple meanings, looking at the structure of the words, they draw pictures to show understanding, use the words in drama and use the words in their conversations and writing. You can help at home by talking about new vocabulary with your children.

Fluency

Fluent readers are able to read orally with appropriate speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Fluency is the ability to read as well as we speak and to make sense of the text without having to stop and decode each word. In our classrooms we are using fluency pairs to practice every day. Children are given a fluency focus, for example, this week we are focusing on attention to punctuation. Students are explicitly taught what this sounds like in a fluent reader. Students are taught how to give helpful feedback to their partner. One child reads a short passage whilst the partner follows along paying attention to the focus skill. The partner then provides feedback and  the first reader rereads making sure that they have listened to the partners feedback.  The process is then repeated so that the other child rereads, receives feedback and  rereads.

Comprehension

The ultimate goal of all reading instruction is for students to understand what they read. The model of The Simple View of Reading demonstrates that reading comprehension occurs only when students have both decoding/word recognition skills and language comprehension skills. Children need the essential skills to get the words off the page as well as knowledge, vocabulary, and a good understanding of how language works in order to comprehend what they read.

• Antibullying NSW
• Office of the eSafety CommissionerExternal link
• Bullying. No Way!External link
• Kids Helpline