Belmore South Public School

The Team of Celia, Naomi, Ramiz and Natalie convinced not only the audience but the adjudicators that Canteens should not serve junk food.

They had a strong team line which their opposition, Strathfield South Public School found it difficult to rebut. Each of our team who had to rebut did a great job.

The Chairman, Justin and Timekeeper, Timothy ensured the debate ran smoothly.

The audience of S2/3P and S3H were attentive, informed, polite and enthusiastic in their congratulations to the debaters.

Thanks to the Coach, Mr McGuinness.

Our Principal, Ms Gail Dyer, was invited to Canberra earlier this month to be awarded with a National Quality Teaching Award for Excellence as a Principal. Here she is sharing her success with our local member the Hon. Tony Burke MHR and Minister for Agriculture.

Ms Dyer was one of 52 educators from across Australia who were recognised for their work in education. She was one of 6 principals who achieved a highly commended and one of only 2 primary principals. Along with the Certificate of Recognition presented to Ms Dyer by the Deputy Prime Minsiter, Julia Gillard, the school has received $15 000 to put towards continuing to improve our students’ learning.

Ms Dyer stressed it is the quality of Belmore South Staff who are responsible for the recognition. She may lead them in their professional learning but as she reminds people who ask they are the ones who take the ideas and incorporate them into their quality classroom teaching practices. They have also embraced and acknowledged the importance of embedding technology into all learning experiences. Every teacher in the school confidently uses Interactive Whiteboards and many are skilful users of Web 2.0 applications.

She also feels she has great support and superb role models for the younger teachers in Mrs Kim Pericles who is a world leader in the use of Web 2.0 applications in her classroom, Ms Judi Leonard who led the development of ICT confidence as an Intel: Teach to the Future Tutor. Mr Greg McGuinness who translated his excellence as a classroom teacher into our magic Mr Computer. Mrs Vanessa Jenkins who is in there always ensuring she is leading the way.

Leadership

The Year 4 and 5 Leadership Preparation Program has prepared our students for leadership roles in the school. In leadership they work in groups of 20 with 2 teachers. They learn about;

• accepting responsibility for their own behaviour
• leadership muscles and develop an understanding of which muscles are their strengths and where they can improve
• talking in front of an audience.
• the difference between a celebrity and a leader
• how to work in teams
• organise events, and
•  what the expectations of a good leader are.

This preparation has been designed to help those Year 5’s who want to apply for Year 6 Leadership positions for next year and those Year 4’s who need to support them and perhaps stand for leadership roles when they are older.

The positions available are School Captains, Student Executive, House Captains and Peer Mediators.

The process is:

1. Written application addressing criteria. Need to be approved to apply by class teacher and another staff member.

2.     Written applications reviewed by a panel of teachers, student leaders and parents. Those who meet criteria are called to interview.

3.      Interviewed by the same panel that reviewed written applications. Leadership criteria outlined in Leadership Training form the basis for interview.

4.     Year 6 leaders selected by panel

5.     Year 6 leaders for 2008 address student body who then vote for a boy and girl captain and vice captains.

All students who apply for Leadership are offered chance to lead as Peer Mediators.

Mrs Pericles (in the red hat) has been recognised by the NSW DET and Microsoft for her outstanding work with Technology.

Mrs Pericles a self avowed techno moron was recognised on November 13 at a presentation by Virginia Judge MLA in the presence of the Director General of Education Mr Michael Coutts-Trotter and other members of the State Executive Service.

Mrs Pericles has worked closley with her students as they have learned how to best use technology and Web 2.0 tools to communicate with the world. She has also led the teachers at the school to understand how to use these tools to best effect in their classrooms.

Congratulations to a very fine teacher who is rapidly developing a world wide reputation as a leading 21st century educator.

We are all so very proud of you!!!!

The end of term has been a great one for two of our talented athletes . . . sorry folks no photos as this is late breaking news.Akaati has been selected to represent the Metropolitan East Sports Region in the PSSA State Cricket Championships to be played in Dubbo. Akaati is a talented all rounder, his batting and bowling figures are excellent and his fielding is outstanding. He was selected to the final 12 from a squad of 77.

Akaati’s talents have been recognised by local cricket teams. He has also been spotted as a player of the future with his selection to attend Endeavour Sports’ High School next year.

Hafiz has blitzed competitiors at the regional Athletics Carnival. He won the discus, the shotput, the long jump, the 200m, missed the high jump (arrived too late) and came 2nd in the 100m. All of these results mean that Hafiz will be representing our region at the State Athletics Carnival.

We are proud of both boys and their achievements.

A post to wish you all the very best for the carnival on Tuesday.

Run fast, throw far and above all have fun!!!

On an earlier blog we noted that our school had enormous success in the field events at the Zone Athletics . . . well after every other event was over we had not only successfully defended our Handicap Trophy from 2006 but we had blitzed the whole Zone Athletics Carnival to actually win the overall Pointscore Cup as well!!!!!!!

We celebrate the success of 3 of our students Hafiz, Jovan and Naomi who are age champions.

We have 11 students representing the Zone at the Metro East Regional Athletics Carnival on 25 September. A number of these athletes are representing in more than one event and it is almost certain several of them will progress to the State Carnival.

On Friday 14 September we welcomed some very notable guests from the United Kingdom and Australia to our school. They wanted to see a school where Technology was part of the everyday life of most of the classrooms in the school. Interactive whiteboards were being used in all the classes the visitors went to see.

They saw Bill give a group of Stage 2 and 3 students a lesson on the IWB about the basics of using Gamemaker. They then went and had a chat with Stage 2 students who were being peer tutored in making games by some Stage 3 students. While they were in that room they saw the Brightsparks’ blog and promised they’d get students from the Uk blogging with us. We look forward to making more friends in the United Kingdom.

S2/3 P shared various projects they had been doing using: Mission maker; Scratch; Vokis and the Wii.

Down in the K to 2 building they saw: SK1 working together to make an animated story about Mr Potatohead; S1R exploring the art of Piet Mondrian and his use of primary and secondary colours; S1K playing maths games that reinforced their number learning; S1S doing reading activities that related to their investigations of the senses; and they found S1F creating Lego worlds and testing their problem solving skills by playing Lego Junkbots. 

Mr Owen Lynch, who has visited many schools and classrooms around the world, said that he had never seen the IWBs used so well as they are used in our school. He especially liked the way the students were in charge of the IWB’s. All our visitors were very impressed with the level of oral language our students used and the confidence they displayed when using technology and working in groups. 

All of our visitors were surprised to find such a warm, vibrant, exciting and fun learning environment behind the dull old buildings they first saw as they approached the school from Canterbury Road.    

We enjoyed sharing what we do in our school with Owen Lynch(consultant to the Uk Department for Children, Schools and Families, former CEO, BECTA), Jimmy Stewart (Director C2K N. Ireland), Tom McMullan (former Director C2K (N.Ireland), Gary Putland (General Manager,education.au), Greg Black (CEO, education.au) and Kellie Stephens (NSW DET Centre for Learning Innovation).

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Thursday saw our 42 strong Athletics Team compete at the first of the Zone Carnivals. The day was predominately Field Events as well as some heats for the Track Events.

We are defending the Handicap Trophy we won last year, the team was really pumped.

Included in our team is Hafiz who is the Co-Queen Elizabeth Trophy winner. He shared this title with Alex from Belmore North as they were equal Athletes of the Meet last year.

As usual all our team performed well with great results across all age groups, boys and girls;

Discus           1st places to Jovan, Hafiz,George and a 3rd to Salote

Shot Put       1st places to Jovan, Hafiz and a 3rd to Keanu and Semeatu

Long Jump  1st places to Naomi, Teraiki, Hafiz and a 3rd to Joe

We look forward to further great results when the track events are finalised next week as we have 10 individual finalists and 3 relay teams who have qualified.

Thanks to Mr Sattout who always does a great job with these kids.