SEPTEMBER 14th

MINISTER MERLINO VISITS TBPS On Monday 11th September, James Merlino, Minister for Education & Deputy Premier, visited our school for the Turning of the Sod – a tra-ditional event to mark the start of a major building project. The Min-ister and other special guests were welcomed by our School Captains, Emily Fox and Alex Lee who did a marvellous job of greeting the offi-cial party and escorting them to the office. The special guests includ-ed Justin Butler, School Education Improvement Leader, North Eastern Victorian Region (NEVR); Michael McQueen, NEVR; Darrell Holden, School Council President; Colleen & Peter May, May Constructions; Daniel Bright, K20 Architects and Dale Goldsmith, Assistant Principal. Let the building program commence! The Minister also visited the Grade 3/4s to listen to their dreamtime story, 'Tiddalick - The Frog Who Wouldn't Laugh'. They were given the story and asked to respond to their challenge 'Learn and retell a traditional Dreamtime story'. They could respond to this in any form they wanted to and this team chose to re-enact the story and perform it as a play. They brainstormed what roles would be required within the group and delegated each person to a specific role. Next, they organ-ised a timeline for their group sessions to ensure they were on track and all aspects were covered. Over several weeks they have been re-searching, designing and rehearsing their piece. They all showed great teamwork throughout the entire process and their performance came together just how they envisaged it. Teah acknowledged the traditional owners of the land and paid respect to their elders. Alannah briefed Mr Merlino on what CBL is and how they tackled their challenge. The children who presented were:

I was very proud of how the group presented their work and the Minis-ter was very impressed with their play.

September 14th 3/4 CBL open morning 15th 5/6 round robin 2 Gr 2 sleepover 22nd Footy Day Last day of term - 2.30pm finish TERM DATES FOR 2017 TERM 3 17th July - 22nd Sept TERM 4 9th Oct - 22nd Dec

PRINCIPAL’S NEWS

Isaac - Narrator Alannah - Eel, costume designer, project manager

Tamika - Emu Ben - Wombat, sound effects

Chase - Kangaroo Teah - Lizard, research, script

Josh - Tiddalick Keaton - Lyrebird

Robe - Kookaburra, sound effects

NEW COMMUNITY HOUSE Five years ago, we joined forces with The Basin Community House to seek funds from the Victorian Gov-ernment to both upgrade our site and build a new Community House in the lower section of our grounds along Liverpool Road. The goal was to create an educational HUB in The Basin with wonderful opportunities for our students for inter-generational learning and combined projects. It is anticipated that our parents may attend courses at the Community House for return to work skills, digital literacy or health and wellbe-ing classes as well as some new early childhood programs. Together we were awarded $5.7m for The Basin Hub that included upgrade monies to the school as well as a new Community House building. Over time there was uncertainty about who received what part of the $5.7m and the result was that Minister Merlino found an additional $1.5m for the Community House with Knox Council contributing a further $500k. Minister Merlino also provided additional funds to enable us to build a competition sized Basketball Court. Our school has a long history with the Community House as they provided occasional care and Out of School Hours childcare for local families for nearly 30years. We believe this relationship will be strength-ened with the new project and future joint program planning. The Community House building is still moving through the planning stages with works commencing late this year or early next year. I want to take this opportunity to assure our school community that the Communi-ty House, in accordance with existing programming, will run between 9.30am and 3:00pm avoiding the criti-cal drop-off and pick-up times. CBL EXPO What a fantastic night and morning - so many families visited our school last night to view the great CBL work produced by our students in Grade 3&4. The opportunity to view the work was also held this morning with a great number of families visiting classrooms. It was wonderful to see how our students had inte-grated the use of our ICT devices to research and use in the production of wonderful visual presentations of their work. We were all excited to see how much the CBL program and innovation of ICT has developed at TBPS. Congratulations to our students and staff in Grades 3&4.

THANK YOU One of our parents, Andrew Roberts, is travelling to Uganda with a group of volunteers to continue with a new section of a school they built for the local children. Andrew has sought donations of pens, pencils and exercise books which he will personally take to Uganda. Our major office supplier, Maxims, rallied to the cause and donated around 2,000 pens and pencils, which was fantastic and very generous!

FOOTY THEME DAY We are all looking forward to our annual Football Theme Day on the last day of term where students, staff and parents wear their favourite team colours. I look forward to seeing plenty of brown and gold in the mix. The PFA have organised a sausage sizzle lunch for our hungry footballers. The Grade footy games and times are listed in this newsletter. Parents are most welcome to attend these games – they are great fun! CYBER AWARENESS Every now and then we hear that some of our students are using social media programs when their parents are unaware. Sometimes unfortunate comments made overflow into our school and we end up having to deal with the aftermath. I’m a bit old fashioned and don’t have a reason to use social media myself however my own children continue to point out the positives. Recently I found this useful guide for parents - 1. Stay up to date—keep up to date with how your child uses their digital devices and new apps. 2. Open lines of communication—it is important to regularly discuss cyber safety and talk about issues

your child may experience. By establishing these open and honest lines of communication your child is more likely to come to you if they experience a problem online.

3. Supervise your child—monitor and supervise your child when they are using the internet and mobile devices to ensure their safety.

4. Parental controls—it may be necessary to use parental controls on mobile devices to establish limits on how and when children can access certain sites or games. It is important to note that parental controls should only be used in conjunction with open lines of communication with your child.

5. Protect your devices—use anti-virus software and keep your operating system up to date. LAST ASSEMBLY This coming Friday will be our last whole school assembly for the term as we need every minute to fit in all grade level football games on Friday 22nd September. The schedule of games can be found In this week’s newsletter. LAST DAY OF TERM The last day of Term 3 is fast approaching and I would like to remind parents that students will be dis-missed at 2:30pm on Friday 22nd September. PLANNING WEEK Next week our specialist teachers and some relief teachers will be taking each grade to release our class-room teachers in order for them to plan for next term. Then on Friday we celebrate the end of term with our annual footy day. Graeme Russell

WALK TO SCHOOL OCTOBER

2017

Our students and families have the oppor-tunity to be a part of Walk to School Oc-tober 2017. Students who ride, scoot or skate to school are acknowledged for their active travel by being allowed to mark each trip on the grade charts. At the conclusion of October students will be awarded a certificate for their involve-ment in the program. We recommend that students walk with parents where possible. Where it is impractical for students to walk to school, alternatively they can walk 3 laps of the oval on arrival at school to register a “walk” for that morning.

September 10th Jade Van Nugteren 11th Cody Ingram Constanze Hau 12th Zander Burnside Lillee Dalton 14th Eva Wigney 15th Jack Ashman 16th Teah Smith Isaac Windsor

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