newsletter 30.8
DESCRIPTION
BCC NewsletterTRANSCRIPT
and Early Learning Centre
Email: [email protected]
2-12 Melbourne St, Ayr QLD 4807
Phone (07) 4783 5552 Fax (07) 47835926
Our new website is up and running!
www.bccollege.net.au
Wisdom &
Discipline for
Tomorrow’s Leaders
C
A
R
E
Courtesy
Attitude
Resilience
Excellence
Term 3 finishes
Friday 21st September
at 11am
Term 4
commences
Tuesday 9th October
Newsletter 12 — Thursday 30th August 2012
2013
College
enrolments now due!
From the Principal’s Desk
Andrew Evetts, Principal
The Blameshift Game Unfortunately it is part of human nature to try not to take responsibility for the nega-
tive things we do, and to ‘blameshift’ as quickly as possible when the
spotlight finds us out.
This reaction began in the Garden of Eden when God asked Adam why he had diso-
beyed God’s instruction. Adam blamed Eve (and even hinted it was God’s fault by mentioning that God had given
the woman to him!) and Eve blamed the serpent for tempting her.
Sadly neither took responsibility for the choices they had made, and their actions then led to their expulsion from
the Garden and cut the close relationship they had enjoyed with their Heavenly Father.
Over the years, I have experienced several instances where students and parents have failed to take responsibility
for their actions, and have attempted to absolve themselves of responsibility by blaming others—and the school has
been included in the blame game. If parents referred to the degree of influence a school has over a child’s life,
choices and actions, they would discover that it is less than 7%.
Of far greater influence to a child are their parent’s behaviours (they are a child’s first and most important role
models and greatly influence a child’s moral standards), their friends, and the amount and type of
televisions, gaming and dvd selections a child watches. These areas of input are of far greater significance than a
child’s input from a school.
Teachers are placed in a very difficult position where they are duty bound to report their observations of a child to
their parents. Our goal and hope is that parents will listen to our observations and act upon them in their own
home to assist their child to grow and develop into a mature, self-responsible adult.
However, without the support of parents, a teacher can do little to influence a child’s attitudes and
behaviours, other than set firm boundaries while in the classroom environment.
We hear much about school’s failing to stop bullying—the truth is that we cannot shadow and control every child
every moment of the day. When a child disobeys the school expectations, we can issue consequences and hope
that this may help train them to have a different response next time—but we can offer no
guarantees, because we do not control another's actions and choices.
We appreciate all those parents who have partnered with us to challenge, train and grow precious children into re-
sponsible adults. One vital part of that training includes teaching a child how to say sorry, to own their own behav-
iours and to challenge themselves to behave differently next time, especially when their behaviours have hurt an-
other. It is a slow process over many ears, and committed parents know that consistent boundaries and love are
the keys. May God bless you an strengthen you in the VERY IMPORTANT role of parenting.
Yours in Christ
The ELC corn is growing taller and taller! Come and check it out!
The ELC have new uniforms! Here is Ms Orchard, Mrs Wilson and
Ms Smallman in their new purple shirts.
MiniLit Program
Some of the students in grade one and two at BCC are involved in a program called MiniLit.
MiniLit stands for Meeting Initial Needs in Literacy. The MiniLit Early Literacy program has
been developed to provide a carefully sequenced and structured program of instruction for
small groups of children who may need a little extra support in the mechanics of learning to
read.
MiniLit incorporates the key elements of early reading programs including phonemic
awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development and text comprehension. Mastery of
phonemic awareness and letter-sound correspondences equips students with the skills they
need to ‘crack the code’ of the English language and build up the repertoire of words that
they can read by sight. Research shows that fluency improves when students can read a large
number of words without the need to decode each word they encounter.
The MiniLit program adopts a sound-by-sound ‘synthetic’ approach to teaching beginning
reading skills. Students are taught to convert a letter or string of letters into sounds and then
to synthesise or blend these letter-sounds into words. In Level 1 the focus is on the key
phonemic awareness skills of blending and segmenting and the most common letter-sound
correspondences for all letters of the alphabet, as well as several commonly used digraphs.
These skills enable students to decode words with three phonemes. In Level 2 the students’
knowledge of phonic word attack skills is extended by introducing words with consonant
digraphs, beginning and final consonant blends, vowel and r-controlled digraphs and words
that contain the cvc+e rule. Students move from completing simple oral blending and
segmentation exercises to manipulating and transforming letters in words to make new
words. Formal sight word instruction and reading tasks continue through both levels.
MiniLit sessions are frequent, four times a week and involve 30 minutes of intensive
instruction in groups of four. Assessment procedures and tools are used to identify students
and monitor progress.
MiniLit embraces an approach known as Positive Teaching that employs applied behavioural
reinforcement theory to “catch students being good”. Positive teaching has been shown to be
extremely successful in achieving high rates of on-task behaviour during instructional periods.
BCC has introduced the MiniLit program this year and the students involved are progressing
well and enjoy these lessons.
Sandra Saunders
Teacher’s Aide
Friday afternoon interschool sports Each Friday afternoon Year 5, 6 and 7 students play team sports against the other schools in the
district. This term the boys play basketball and the girls play touch football.
Each Wednesday afternoon from 3.15pm to 4.15pm Mr Knight runs a training session for any
students wishing to improve their sporting skills. The sessions have provided extremely popular
with the students and their practice is certainly paying off. The basketball court at school is
very popular at the moment with everyone practicing their shooting skills at lunch breaks.
On Friday 17th August, the College BCC2 team thrashed East Ayr State School’s EASS4 team with
a score of 32 to 6. The game was even played on EASS’s home turf and our boys came home the
winners.
Team members were: Joshua Kaminski, Caleb O’Shea, Joshua Magatelli, Jake Butler, Cohen Smit,
absent from the photo were Bernie Poletto, Jessi Kennedy and captain Joel McKeough.
Well done boys!!
Here are some of the Year 3, 4, and 5’s with their insects from Term 2.
Science Day at the ELC
Here we are growing crystals on a piece
of string. Please ask us how we did this
as we’d love to tell you all about it!
Star Gazing Night with Rob Black from NQ Astronomy Tuesday 18th September 2012 6.30pm to 9pm We are very fortunate to have Rob Black, from NQ Astronomy visiting the College on Tuesday 18th September to help us view the wonders of the night sky through powerful telescopes. All students, parents, friends and relatives are invited to the star gazing night. Rob is providing his services and equipment for free however we are asking for a gold coin donation to assist with the continued operation of NQ Astronomy. Rob advises the section now boasts 10 telescopes - ranging from a dedicated Hydrogen Alpha Solar scope to a 13" Dobsonian. It will start at 6.30pm and finish around 9pm and will be held on the College oval. It is on the last Tuesday of Term 3. There will be a sausage sizzle and softdrinks for sale on the night. Rob will do a quick 15 - 20 minute introduction to the night using a Green Laser Pointer (which is registered with CASA as per Government Regulations). Red light torches only please - a few layers of red cellophane over the lens of a low power torch is adequate. No DOLPHIN style torches please as they're too powerful and can cause hassles with night vision. Rob will explain all this to the students at his visit to the College the week before. Astronomy Sessions for the students with Rob Black Rob will also be visiting the College on Monday 10th September to provide an astronomy session for the students prior to the stargazing night. Rob is accredited in doing Solar Activities with students - providing safe and educational views of the Sun through NQ Astronomy’s solar telescopes. Rob will provide class talks on Astronomy and answer all the questions the students may have about Astronomy and space in general. Rob is providing these sessions for free and we are extremely grateful for this wonderful opportunity. Rob Black was recently granted the title of North Qld Ambassador for the Charlie Bates Solar Astronomy Pro-ject. The Project is based in the USA, and Rob is the only person representing it in Australia. Rob was grant-ed the title due to his work in Education Outreach and experience in Solar work.
Healthy Food Shack
Special Wednesday 5th September
Spaghetti Bolognaise $2
Dear Mums and Dads
Thank you so very much for all the help you provided with the interschool sports
canteen. I sincerely appreciate all the cooking, baking, bbq’ing, setting up,
packing up, bagging of lollies, brewing of coffee and serving our many customers,
that you all did with smiles on your faces. It was a very successful day and the
BCC have received numerous positive remarks from the community. Please
accept this as my heartfelt thanks as the day would not have happened without you.
Raelene Agius, Healthy Food Shack Convenor
Reminders
Permission Slips to be returned
1. Walkathon
2013 Enrolments Enrolment Forms for 2013 are now due. Mr Evetts is in the process of
working out class sizes and the number of teachers required for 2013.
ALL current students are required to have a new enrolment form
completed and returned to the office by the end of Term 3.
Woolies Earn and Learn
has finished!
The sticker card have all been
submitted and we reached a total
of 1731 sticker cards which means
we collected 51, 930 stickers!!
Has anyone bought a
school hat from Best and
Less recently? Can you
please let Fiona in the
office know if you have.
Coles Sports for School vouchers
The Coles vouchers have now finished
and Fiona is in the process of counting
them ready to send away for the
validation and redemption process. We
will let you know what the total is next
newsletter.
Dates for your Calendar
6th September—QCATS for Year 4 and Year 6 students
12th September—Prep Open Day—9am to 11am
13th September—QCATS for Year 4 and Year 6 students
18th September—Astronomy and Stargazing Night with Rob Black at BCC
19th September– Prep Information Night for parents—6pm to 7pm
20th September—BCC Walkathon
20th September—QCATS for Year 4 and Year 6 students
21st September—End of Term 3—School finishes at 11am
9th October—First day for students—Term 4
20th October—BCC Family Fair
26th October—Day for Daniel
2nd November—Fancy Dress Disco—ELC and BCC
12th & 13th November—Penelope Gilbert-Ng—Pastel Workshop with the students
17th October—14th November—swimming lessons
21st November—Swimming Carnival
Coles has Cokes,
Fanta,
Lemonade, etc
on special this
week
24 for $15
2 x 24’s $32
3 x 24’s for $45
Pizza Party Update Current Can Count
Prep - 2.2 cans per child
Year 1 - 3.4 cans per child
Year 2 - 3.3 cans per child
Year 3/4 - 1.4 cans per child
Year 5 - 0 cans per child
Year 6/7 - 1.7 cans per child
Inaugural B & C Schools Athletics Carnival
Last Wednesday the entire College community headed over to East Ayr State School for the first B & C
Schools Athletics Carnival. Thank you to all the parents, especially Raelene Agius, for helping out with
the catering. Those smoko plates are fast gaining a reputation and were the first things to sell out once
again!!
There were 12 schools competing and organising such a day was a mammoth task. Well done to Brooke
Stocker, Lisa Bello and our very own Ray Caine.
We have been advised that ribbons for running events were not handed out on the day so they will be
collected by Mr Knight at the District Athletics Carnival being held this Friday 31st August. They will be
distributed at school next week.
Shield Winners
Average
1st Place—Gumlu State School—17.50 points
2nd Place—Jarvisfield State School—17.11 points
3rd Place—Millaroo State School—17.00 points
Aggregate Points
1st Place—St Colman’s—740 points
2nd Place—Giru State School—731 points
3rd Place—Burdekin Christian College—651 points
Students who are going on to represent the B & C Schools at this Friday’s district sports day are:
Jake Butler—long jump, 100 metres, high jump, shot put, 200 metres
Corey Catanzaro—200 metres, long jump, high jump
Joel Catanzaro—shot put
Westley Darwen—shot put
Abigail Evetts—800 metres
Chiara Ferrando—long jump, 100 metres, high jump, shot put
Ryan Holm—shot put, long jump, 800 metres
Jessiah McIvor—high jump
Ryan Pedron—high jump, shot put
Alistair Pegg—200 metres, 800 metres
Ruby-Royal Pegg—high jump, 800 metres
Charlotte Piva—shot put
Bernie Poletto—high jump
Jenna Power—200 metres
Ben Sutherland—shot put
Well done students and Good Luck on Friday at the districts!!
Congratulations to our two age champions
Jake Butler and Chiara Ferrando!
Kindy/Pre Prep
Jayne Orchard,
Director & Group Leader
ELC Sports Day On the 9th of August we had our Sports Day. We had a great time. Mr and Mrs Christie, Drea’s Grandparents played the bagpipes for the March Past. We then we did some sporting activi-ties just like the real Olympics. We did Long Jump, Bean Bag Throw, Running Races and then Egg and Spoon Races. After that we had a Tug-O-War. That was a lot of fun. After all that we had shared some lovely food that the parents brought in and then we had a sausage sizzle. Thank you to all the children, their parents and grandparents who made this day special. I’d like to thank all the staff for their 110% input as well. A special thank you to Bill and Agnes Christie who played the bagpipes to make it an extra special day. Bill also doubled up and cooked the sausages on the BBQ. Science lessons at the ELC Last Friday we had two science experiments – making rainbows using milk, food colouring and dish soap and making crystals using water, salt and string. On the Monday we checked the crystals and guess what, crystals have formed on the string! The children looked at the crys-tals through a microscope. They described them as shiny, beautiful, sparkly and square shaped. Check out the photos later on in the newsletter. Library Our library day has been changed to Tuesday at 10.30am for the Pre-prep children. They will need a library bag. Please don’t forget to return the books each week so the children may borrow new books.
Please ….
1. Check children’s hair for head lice and treat if necessary
2. name items sent with your child’s name so that we can return them to the rightful owner.
3. provide us with your (and your child’s) CRN numbers and date of birth to put in the enrol-
ment. Without these details the Child Care Benefit (CCB) is unable to be processed
4. provide us with your child’s updated immunisation details if applicable
5. please check in the lost property box for your children’s belongings. Next Friday we are
going to donate any items left in the box St Vinnnies.
Vacancies
We can now take 24 children in the Kindy room, so we have a couple of vacancies now on Mon-
day, Tuesday and Friday.
ELC
Toni Smallman, Group Leader
Toddlers
During the last couple of weeks, we have had lots of fun. On the 17th August we had our annual Sports Day. We had a march past follow-ing Mr & Mrs Christie as they played the bagpipes. We enjoyed that. We did some running races and a bean bag toss. The most fun was the long jump into the sandpit and the tug-a-rope with our parents. We had a sausage sizzle and fruit for lunch. We went to have our sleep after lunch as we were very tired. We all had a great day. We have been busy doing our gifts for dad for Father’s Day. We hope you like what we are making for you. We have been singing and doing the actions to “Incy Wincy Spider”, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Open Shut Them”. The children are getting really good at these. Please remember to clearly name all your child’s belongings so that we can return them if they are left at the Centre. And please check your communication pocket regularly.
The ELC held their annual Sports Day on Friday 17th Au-
gust. The morning started with a march past led by Mr
& Mrs Christie who played the bagpipes and then the
children competed in running races, beanbag toss and
longjump into the sandpit. The morning was finished off
wonderfully with a sausage sizzle followed by fruit.
School Holiday Pottery Classes
The Burdekin Potters are once again running their pottery and screen printing classes in the school holidays.
The classes will have a Christmas theme.
Classes will be run at the Burdekin Potters shed at 5 Kennedy Street, Ayr on the following days:
Tuesday 25th September
Tuesday 2nd October
Thursday 27th September
Thursday 4th October
Screen Printing classes will be run on:
Wednesday 26th September
Wednesday 3rd October
Please phone Carolyn for bookings on 4783 1050 or mobile 0439 704 713.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Future Leaders Eco Challenge
On the 28th August, four BCC students and Mr Evetts joined fellow Eco Challenge
students at Maidavale State School for a day of activities based on environmental The
theme of the 2012 Future Leaders Eco Challenges is The Inshore Great Barrier Reef –
Bursting with Biodiversity. BCC is a Reef Guardian School.
Caleb O’Shea, Harper Darwen, Cohen Smit and Joshua Magatelli spent the day learning
about:
How to draw scientific drawings for Biological Courses
Creating their own worm farm from sugar can mulch
How to identify and conserve the sea turtle
Backyard biodiversity - invertebrate collection and
identification
Salvinia, weevils and water quality monitoring
Reef conservation, education and participation by
Reef HQ
Meet the Team Andrew Evetts—Principal
Jocelyn Lovelady—Prep Teacher Heather Mackay—Year 1 & Year 3/4 Teacher
Fleur Vigerzi—Year 1 Teacher Natalie Porchun—Year 2 Teacher Ezet Snyman— Year 3/4 Teacher Chris Knight —Year 6/7 Teacher
Judy Kedar—Year 5 Teacher Sandra Fowler—Year 5 Teacher Ray Caine— IT & H&PE Teacher
Wally Ford—Music Teacher Donna Higginson—Teacher/Librarian
Kim Smith—Teachers Aide & Library Assistant Leeza Goon-Chew—Teachers Aide Sandra Saunders—Teachers Aide
Ronda Downs—Prep Teachers Aide Audrey Heppell—Teachers Aide
Joanna Ford—Learning Support Teachers Aide Jayne Orchard—Director and Team Leader—ELC
Toni Smallman—Team Leader—ELC Gessie Wilson—ELC
Natasha Patterson—ELC Raywin Mayor—ELC
Jill Sutcliffe—ELC Cheryl Taylor—ELC
Rob Harper—Groundskeeper Bronson Hutchen—Groundskeeper
Jackie Gudge—Cleaner Zilya Bunakova—Cleaner