Boneo Buzz: 5th August

Dear Parents and Carers,

School Review

Friday 6th August will be a Pupil Free Day. Staff will be busy working in teams to analyse data, celebrate the highlights of the last 4 years and reflect on our school’s performance in readiness for Review in Term 4 where we will set the future direction over the period of our new School Strategic Plan. Having all staff engage in this process will ensure we work collaboratively to progress with a united understanding of our school performance and set future directions from here. Staff will work in Review teams to unpack data over the past four years to reflect on the following areas:

Achievement
Engagement
Wellbeing
Engaging Community

It is an exciting time and we are very much looking forward to welcoming our reviewer Dr Robert Stephens in Term 4. Over the coming weeks, we will be seeking feedback from the children and on the days of the review we will be engaging in classroom observation with our guests to the school. Your feedback is also welcomed and I will be holding some parent forums in the term to gather your ideas on what we are doing well, how we can improve and where to next?

Finding your Anchor

In a recent edition of the Buzz, we discussed the importance of finding our ‘anchors’, those routines or hobbies that bring us joy, and the importance of planning for something to look forward to when that period of lockdown was over.

It is wonderful to see that Mr Pollet made time for his anchor, with a day of fishing.

We are inviting our school community to share with us pictures of them enjoying their own anchors.

Snapshot of Learning

4B – Author Meet

On Wednesday, as Shadow Judges for this year’s Children’s Book Council Association Book Awards, students in 4B had the thrilling opportunity to ‘meet’ Author Illustrator Leigh Hobbs (of Mr. Chicken, Horrible Harriet and Old Tom fame).

Our Zoom session consisted of learning, step-by-step, how to recreate the characters Old Tom and Mr. Chicken, to give them ‘life’ and expression and how they came into existence, then developing characters of the children’s own design. Leigh Hobbs Zoomed with us from his self-professed “messy” beach-side artist’s studio and kept the children enthralled with his anecdotes on his journey from artist to illustrator, then to author/illustrator, with Leigh explaining that he was ‘inspired to create his own characters as the ones he envisaged as illustrations for the stories other authors had written, often didn’t look like what he thought they should!’

In addition to the brilliant Illustrating workshop, students were fortunate enough to be able to question Leigh on various topics about his work. Leigh’s response to the children’s curiosity was just gorgeous, and he was very generous with his answers. We learned that he draws inspiration from his own travels (Leigh has been to London over 25 times!), that Old Tom was ‘born’ with vision from only one eye and that Mr Chicken’s size in ‘real life’ depended entirely on how confident he felt at any given time; “He can fill an entire bus when he’s feeling larger-than-life and very confident- you know the feeling of confidence don’t you kids?! Like you can do or achieve anything…well Mr chicken’s size is proportionate to his level of self-belief! Sometimes he feels quite small and insignificant too…”

While Leigh’s character ‘Old Tom’ (an orange, moth-eaten, feral monster) is his most famous creation, he is in fact allergic to cats and much prefers dogs, especially Blue Heelers. We were fortunate enough to be introduced to his two ‘Blueys’ Lulu and Snowy during our chat.

To top it all off, we had the exclusive opportunity to preview two of Leigh’s books ‘Horrible Harriet and the Terrible Tantrum’, and the top-secret location for the next instalment of ‘Mr Chicken’…

What a wonderful experience to inspire young readers and writers!

For guided workshops on how to draw some of Leigh’s lovable characters, follow the link provided.

https://www.leighhobbs.com.au/thats-me-film-series/