The Punchbowl Press

Enrolments for 2021

Enrolments for both the preschool and primary school are now open for 2021. Please spread the word to your family and friends and collect an enrolment form from our lovely office staff or online at https://punchbowl-p.schools.nsw.gov.au/about-our-school/enrolment.html.Please don’t wait – complete your enrolment to secure your child’s place now.

School Holidays

I’m sure you already know this but students will be on holiday from Monday 6 June and will return on Tuesday 21 July 2020.

Until then, have a wonderful holiday break with your children. We look forward to another exciting and fun filled Term 3. 

Please continue to take good care of one another.

Dace Elletson

Principal

This term we facilitated 4 different playgroups.

Monday: Mums & Bubs playgroup (playgroup for newborns to 2 years)

Tuesday: Play-to-Learn-to-Play playgroup

Wednesday: Play-to-Learn-Play playgroup

Friday: Transition to Preschool playgroup (3-4 year olds)

The children in playgroup engage in activities, rhymes and stories every day. There has been some great learning experiences for them in these 5 weeks. They are learning about about our Indigenous people, Australian native animals, sea creatures, shapes, sizes and colours. The children painted Aboriginal flags and learnt all about the different colours and what they represent : black, represents the Aboriginal people of Australia, red represents the red earth and the yellow colour represents the sun, the giver and protector of life.

The parents and the children engage in social play, group activities and especially enjoy music time. The Mums & Bubs playgroup has been one of the highlights of this term. The early childhood development of our babies is noticed every week they attend. Their language skills, cognitive, social and physical movements.

Thank you to all our participants for attending this term. Due to COVID19 restrictions and social distancing, only eight families have been allocated to each playgroup.  We know that there are some families who may have missed an opportunity to attend and we are looking at other options for Term 3.  Have a safe and relaxing holiday and we look forward seeing you in Term 3. 

Asenati Markeo - School as Community Centre Facilitator

The children in Preschool engage in indoor and outdoor activities every day (except when it rains of course!)

In the outdoor environment, we have been preparing a new bush tucker garden, with the help of Peter who is from the Botanic Gardens and Centennial Parklands. Peter donated plants which provide us with bush tucker, also known as bushfood. Bushfood is any food native to Australia and has been used by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for thousands of years. We have started to plant different bush tucker plants, and are learning about what they provide us with and how to take care of them. We are also using our senses to smell, feel and taste the plants.

In the indoor environment, the children have been engaging in social play, amongst other things. Music is always a favourite activity, and the children in Wallaby Class are particularly enjoying The Wheels on the Bus. You can see them in the photos playing in their own bus!

We were very happy to have been invited to participate in the ‘100 Days of Kindergarten’ celebration. The children thoroughly enjoyed watching a puppet show with our friends in Kindergarten. There were lots of laughs had by all!

We hope everyone has a good time during the school holidays, and we look forward to seeing everyone back at school in Term 3.

We have been having lots of fun being active learners in K6-Kookaburras and K6-Owls. We have been working hard learning our phonics sounds, and are getting so much better at using them to sound out our words to help us read and spell. We have been learning about procedural writing using the correct features. Last week we wrote our own instructions on how to make pizza, then we had a go at following these steps by making our own pizzas. It was delicious! In maths we have been learning about addition and subtraction strategies. We are able to show how we solve problems using the split strategy. The Kookaburras and Owls have also been learning about planets. The Owls drew some great pictures and the Kookaburras created their own planets. We love gardening in the Support Unit and have been hard at work collecting mulch and moving our planters around so our plants will grow big and healthy. We have made some great progress all thanks to Miss Clare and her great ideas! We hope everyone has a fantastic holiday!

On Wednesday, 4th June, we celebrated 100 days of learning! On this special day students watched the hilarious puppet show "Oh Rats" by the Sydney Puppet Theatre. We enjoyed a cupcake after lunch, danced with some bubble blowers on the field and finished our day with a special certificate to celebrate this milestone!

"This is the best mufti day ever!" - Benjamin, K Red

Since returning to school, Stage 1 students have enjoyed getting back into their daily Initial Lit lessons in their classrooms. They have been engaged in their phonics and storybook lessons and are developing a word bank of interesting words.  Students have been working on their spelling skills and spelling choices and applying this to a variety of writing tasks. 

Since returning full-time to school, Stage 2 have been busy deepening their understanding of fractions. Students have been working with paper, and physical number lines to show equal parts.

Every day students participate in number talks. The teachers are very proud of how every student has become a more efficient counter who is able to explain their thinking and demonstrate their learning.

'When you fold a piece of paper in half there are two parts.' -Abdul Rahman, 3/4 Creative

'On a number line of one and two, in middle is half.' -Taha 3/4 Creative

'Fractions are part of a whole. You can show fractions on a number line. If you fold a piece of paper in half and half again, it's a quarter. If you fold it in half again, it show eighths.' -Zuni 3/4 Creative

'The numerator shows how many parts are highlighted. The denominator shows how many parts there are.'  -Tanisha 3/4 Inspire

'If something is divided into four parts it's quarters. If it's divided into eight parts it's eighths.' - Omar 3/4 Wondrous

What a busy and creative Term 2 we have had in Stage 3! Since being back at school, we have been working really hard on writing short stories for the Kids News Short Story Competition! It has been a really collaborative few weeks planning, drafting, editing, reviewing and publishing our creative writing. There are some amazing stories in the works!

'My story is about Kevin Hart getting lost in the jungle. I think this is my best writing because I used a sizzling start and lots of adjectives.’ –Moustafa 5/6 Earth

' In my story, we meet a lonely girl with terrible circumstances.' – Sarah 5/6 Earth

5/6 Halo and 5/6 Nebula were building air powered cars! We used balloons to push our cars with air pressure. We used aerodynamic designs to make our cars faster.

'I liked how I collaborated with my friends to make an air powered car.’ Hussein 5/6 Nebula

'It was really fun because we had lots of ideas we could express our creativity into it. We had to use trial and error to rebuild it when it wasn’t right the first time.' Nour 5/6 Halo

'I learned that no matter how big the balloon is it’s not going to push gravity into the car.'  Mona 5/6 Halo

Last week, Constable Kylie and Senior Constable Nat from Campsie Police Station visited Stage 3 to talk to us about Cyber Safety. We found it very interesting as we are starting to use the internet and social media in our everyday lives.

Stage 3 students are exploring what they can do with LEGO and how coding a LEGO recycling truck can help sort recyclable waste.

Jayden: “We made a recycling truck that emptied out small pieces of LEGO. I love how we can code the truck to do certain things”.

Yasmine: “Our team would like to modify the truck by adding a movement sensor to check the size of the object then move up or down”

Ahmed, Jayden and Yasmine: “We work well as a team trying to find a way that we can code the LEGO truck to sort large and small objects. This is better than working by ourselves. It’s amazing how much fun learning with LEGO is and how much we learn about coding”.

Stage 2 are working on coding a robot to find its way through a maze. Each lesson builds on previous knowledge. It is wonderful to see students’ skills and confidence as learners grow.

Zaynab and Rina: “It was so awesome trying to code Dash (the robot) to go through the maze. It wasn’t easy because we had to keep adjusting our estimations. When we finally got it to work we felt proud of what we did.

Students are enjoying Audio Books during the library sessions. They’re finding it easier to locate books they like and listening to books read to them. Through accessing audiobooks online students are learning to become better at using computers to access different types of information.

' I like the graphics which is so bright and colourful.' Sarang

'The background music is fantastic” 

'I like Maths. Finding a book about maths is fun. I like the way the book reads to us.' Lamar

'The book is cool because it helps me to read.' Mohammed

The whole school PBL focus has been around Being Responsible. The Echidna class in early intervention preschool learned about being responsible. The teachers shared printed photos of the children being responsible in a variety of activities. Each class discussed different ways we take responsibility for one of our school environments. There was discussion about how we are responsible for ourselves and what our teachers need to do to be responsible.

After returning to school from learning at home the visual arts department decided to take the arts outside the classroom.

Stage 1 students have enjoyed creating this chalk design outside the art studio.

Students coloured different areas with warm and cool colours to create this

beautiful pattern. This is a great idea to attempt during the coming school holidays.

Parents, items required to complete this activity is chalk, masking tape and a fun attitude.

Enjoy designing chalk patterns.

During this time of constant change it is extremely important that families are regularly checking  the information provided by the NSW Department of Education, NSW Health, NSW Government and Australian Federal Government. 

Dear Parents

Re: Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

·         year of schooling

·         category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional

·         level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

·         formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools

·         consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools

·         develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy (https://www.education.gov.au/privacy-policy).

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school.