Binalong Public School

Binalong Bulletin

Term 4, Week 3 2024

Binalong Public School

Ngunnawal Country

'Towards a Higher Place'


From the Principal

We've had an exciting couple of weeks since starting back at school hosting the Arabin Cup; having a visit from the very talented Year 7/8 ACT Instrumental Music Program; attending the Boorowa Touch Football/Netball Carnival; hosting our 2025 Kindergarten students for their transition to school visits; hosting some new sports coaches from Gecko Sports and Healthy Harold for our PDHPE program; teachers and staff attending professional learning in Canberra and Yass; hosting the UC Aspire team; running SRC events such as Bandanna Day and our Tuesday milkshakes; meeting with our local high school staff to support our Year 6's who are heading into Year 7 in 2025; and planning for all of our upcoming events, activities, end of year celebrations, preparing for student reports, and of course getting ready to embark on the Year 3-6 Small Schools Camp! In amongst all of this, we've even managed to engage in some fabulous teaching and learning which is our core business.

All of these experiences and opportunities take an incredible amount of dedication and time and our staff must be commended on their commitment to go above and beyond for our students. I would like to formally acknowledge our wonderful team of teachers and celebrate them for all that they do. It was World Teachers Day on Friday 25 October and our teachers have not had a chance to have a formal recognition of this special commemoration as we were split between school and sporting carnivals on the day and we haven't had a moment to catch our breath since. Thank you to Mrs Walsh, Miss Gerathy, Mrs Ranie and of course our wonderful casual team including Mr Godman for all that you do for our students each and every day. Please make sure that you reach out to a special teacher and share gratitude for the positive impact that they have had in yours or your child's life.

Happy World Teachers Day

Dates for the Diary!

Dates for the Diary (please note that these are subject to change)

Week 3

Tuesday 29 October - MHS Transition (Yr 6)

Wednesday 30 October - UFLI PL for staff, SPELD Dyslexia PL for teachers, GotIT Parent Meetings

Thursday 31 October - Carpet Cleaning

Friday 1 November - UC Kinder Transition, UC Aspire visit - Careers in Design

Week 4

Wednesday 7 November - Life Ed. Healthy Harold visit, Yass Network Staff PL

Thursday 8 November - Life Ed. Healthy Harold visit, preschool visit

Friday 8 November - Kinder Transition, Small Schools Chess Tournament Breadalbane (Yr 5/6) 

Week 5

Monday 11 November - Remembrance Day

Tuesday 12 November - MHS Transition Day (Yr 6)

Thursday 14 November - Pink Day

Friday 15 November - Kinder Transition, Director visit

Week 6

Monday 18 November - Jindabyne Camp

Tuesday 19 November - Jindabyne Camp

Wednesday 20 November - Jindabyne Camp

Thursday 21 November - UC on campus visit - Years 2-6, Beach to Bush Surf Lifesaver visit for K-1 and Preschool

Friday 22 November - Kinder Transition - Last day, Intensive Swimming commences (assessment day), Yass Principal Network Meeting

Week 7 - Intensive Swimming each day

Wednesday 27 November - Special Assembly - School Captain speeches and final school award presentations - 10.00am

Friday 29 November - Kinder Transition - Last day

Week 8 - Intensive Swimming each day (except Friday)

Tuesday 3 December - Gazetted Yr7 Transition Day

Thursday 5 December - Last day of Intensive Swimming

Friday 6 December - K-2 Canberra excursion to The Gruffalo

Week 9 - Reports Home

Presentation Ceremony - 5.00pm - 6.30pm

Friday 13 December -  Year 6 Farewell TBC

Week 10

Parent-Teacher Interviews 

Wednesday 18 December - Last day for students

Thursday 19 & Friday 20 December - Staff Development Days - Pupil Free Days

Road Safety

I would like to remind all school road users of the importance of attending to our school road safety requests. Road safety incidents in school zones can have catastrophic outcomes. Recent events have shown that road safety is everyone's responsibility and we cannot treat this lightly. A reminder to please keep our children safe by:

  • Sticking to or below the 40km p/h speed limit
  • Parallel parking on the school side of the road
  • 1st car to arrive to park at the end tree so any need for reversing is minimised
  • No U-Turns at any time of the day - go around the round-a-bout (AKA the end tree)
  • Avoid reverse parking 
  • Avoid driving onto the footpath or verges (especially when there are people outside of the school gates)
  • Get out of your car to meet your child and never call them across or onto the road
  • Ensure that children are seated in appropriate legal seats for their ages
  • Ensure that children wear appropriate helmets when riding or scooting to school.

Road Safety Tips

Arabin Cup

2024 Arabin Cup

We had another wonderful day hosting the Arabin Cup in its 15th year. Congratulations to all of the students who attended. There was some remarkable sportsmanship shown on the day and we were impressed with the graciousness of all teams. A big congratulations to the winning Binalong team, Gilbert! Thank you must go to the following people: Mrs Foran for all of her hard work in organising the event and draws twice! Tim and the Binalong staff for setting up (also twice!), the Arabin families for their sponsorship, the P&C and Lions Club for the catering, the wonderful helpers from Murrumburrah and Yass high schools, attending students, staff and parents, and to the Binalong Community Club for the venue.

Please enjoy Dusty and Audrey's newspaper article attached which goes into further detail about the day.

It's not 'Bin A Long' time since Binalong won!

By Audrey and Dusty
Download

Remembrance Day

On Monday 11 November at 11.00am our students will observe Remembrance Day and participate in a short Remembrance Day ceremony in our front courtyard. Families are welcome to attend.

ACT Instrumental Music Program Orchestra Visit

School Sport

Students will participate in sport on the following days this term with Gecko Sport delivering some programs for students across the week:

K/1/2 - Wednesday (dance) and Fridays (Gecko Sport)

3-6 - Monday and Wednesdays (Gecko Sport for Weeks 4-5)

Students are asked to wear their sports uniform and joggers on these days and a school bucket hat is essential for sport sessions.

Boorowa Touch Football / Netball Carnival

Breakfast Club - Can You or a Family Member Please Help?

We are enjoying Breakfast Club and have had some additional outdoor powerpoints to help improve the running of Breakfast Club outdoors, and we are enjoying cooking our own school grown eggs and vegies as well a our food donations from FoodBank, but we need your help.

Do you or a family member have the ability to help run Breakfast Club on a Monday, Thursday or Friday? If so, please get in touch with Mrs Arabin. 

2024 Presentation Ceremony

Dyslexia Awareness Month

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month https://www.speldnsw.org.au/dyslexia-awareness-month/


We are committed to providing families with information to support students and their learning and learning to read is vital to a successful education. Please take the time to read about dyslexia and reading difficulties and reach out to us if you would like any further information.

What is dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a difficulty learning to read.

Children and adults with dyslexia often have difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition and may also have difficulties with spelling, writing and reading comprehension.

Dyslexia is the most common learning difficulty impacting between 5-10 percent of people. Dyslexia also often runs in families. Dyslexia does not impact on a person’s intelligence and is not caused by vision difficulties.

Dyslexia is also known as a specific learning disorder in reading. Dyslexia is a brain-based (neurological) disorder or disability. People with dyslexia have difficulty working with the sounds in language (phonology) and the written form of language (orthography).

How is dyslexia identified?

Dyslexia is generally diagnosed by a psychologist. The psychologist will investigate learning strengths and difficulties.

Before a diagnosis of a specific learning disorder in reading (or dyslexia) is able to be made, it is essential that the child or adult being assessed has received at least six months of intervention focused on improving their reading skills.

Before seeking an assessment or diagnosis of dyslexia it is also important to check eyesight and hearing.

How do you support a person with dyslexia?

Students with dyslexia can improve their reading and spelling skills. Such students benefit from explicit and structured instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics (systematic synthetic phonics) along with the other essentials skills for reading (oral language, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension).

Students with dyslexia will generally need lots of opportunities to practise reading and spelling skills and so can benefit from working with learning support teachers, systematic synthetic phonics intervention programs or working with experienced tutors or speech pathologists. Decodable readers are an essential tool for students with dyslexia while they are learning to read.

Students and adults with dyslexia can also benefit from adjustments made to their school or work environments. Such adjustments include:

  • the use of audio books and text to speech software;
  • limits to the amount of reading and writing required;
  • assistance with spelling, writing and editing for example, predictive spelling, scaffolded writing tasks, speech to text software.

https://www.speldnsw.org.au/information/dyslexia/

Understanding Learning Difficulties - A practical guide for parents

Dyslexia Infosheets

Chess Champions in training! Preparing for the Small Schools Chess Tournament.

Congratulations to Olander who will be heading to Breadalbane on Friday to represent Binalong Public School!
Congratulations to Carter who will be heading to Breadalbane on Friday to represent Binalong Public School!

Preschool Visits = Strong Start to School

Kindy Transition

Sentral parent portal

We want to trial payments for SRC meal deals using the Sentral parent portal.  We will only use the app for advance payments for the term.  If you are interested in using the Sentral app to pay for meal deals please contact Kerry. We can invoice you for the term and deduct weekly payments when your child has a meal deal. You will be able to monitor the kitty.

There will still be the option to pay as you go by cash each week.

Stars of the Week - Week 1

Dusty Schofield - Demonstrating engagement and focus during learning activities. Piper Coble - Commendable growth in spelling achievement. Ian Spencer - Focus and engagement in all learning tasks. Gunnar Lucas - A positive start to the term and showing great engagement in learning.

Stars of the Week - Week 2

Jacob Goltz - Showing outstanding leadership on Friday during Kindy Orientation. Evie Cotter - Using flexible strategies to solve problems and communicates her thinking clearly. Nash Yates - Excellent participation in netball at the Boorowa Carnival. Cameron Deale - Excellent participation in touch football at the Boorowa Carnival (absent).

P&C News and Updates

P&C Supporting Binalong Public School

This week we helped improve Breakfast Club, SRC Meal Deals and Milkshakes, and school events and daily activities by purchasing a dishwasher for the school kitchen/staffroom. 

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