Inquiry Centre
Curriculum
Thank you for continued support throughout another action-packed week of remote learning. Over the last two weeks we have been making check-in calls with all of you and have very much valued your feedback and suggestions to help improve the teaching and learning. It has also been great to keep in contact and hear the positive stories coming from your households. Based on your feedback over the phone and in writing, we are working on setting up a way for the 1/2 classes to meet via a live chat to help maintain a social connection between students and teachers. We will communicate specific details via Seesaw through the week.
Our Specialist Day on Wednesday was a success, and we hope it gave you and your children the necessary “brain break” to better focus on Maths and Literacy tasks on the other days. The specialist teachers would like to reassure you that they can be contacted for support and to help you build engagement for their lessons. And while we understand that your children may not complete every activity each day (or may instead complete them later in the week), specialist teachers may reach out to follow up with you if no response is received to multiple weeks of a subject.
In our Literacy learning this week we used our understanding of fact and opinion to help understand the structure of persuasive texts. The students were guided to use their oral language skills to offer reasons for an opinion, and then moved onto planning their own persuasive text by thinking through both sides of an argument before settling on the strongest reasons. The draft persuasive texts we have seen show how deeply the students have been thinking about how to create a strong argument. We also continued our ‘Codes’ and spelling learning by investigating the silent final E, and many more have signed up to the Epic! digital library for personal reading.
In Maths this week we have begun applying last week’s place value learning by introducing strategies for adding small numbers. This includes counting on from the larger number, using friends of 10, and working with doubles and near doubles. Our aim is for the students to get comfortable with the various ways to manipulate numbers so that addition becomes quick and natural for them. We are very impressed with how capably you are supporting your children to understand these concepts and help maintain their engagement by playing games together like 4 in a Row.
In STEM, we loved seeing your children’s ideas to keep a dropped egg safe from cracks. We are very impressed with how clearly the students are able to explain their thinking behind design choices and what happened in their experiment. In Guided Inquiry we have introduced the idea of chemical and physical changes of materials, so hopefully this is helping feed the inquisitive, curious minds of your little scientists.
In Wellbeing, we started the week off by asking the students to celebrate their many achievements in Term 2 so far. There are many things for us all to be proud of about how we are managing with this new way of learning and working so we hope you enjoyed discussing this with your children. And with Mother’s Day around the corner, the students have been busy creating acrostic poems about all the different ways they appreciate the things their mums and grandmas do for them!
Thank you all for your remarkable support, patience and flexibility,
Emma Honan, Aidain O’Connor, Emma Marsh, Kathy Wang, Andy Parthenopoulos, Emily Kiefte, Simone Rock, Erin Bennetts and Andie Moffat.
Student Voice
- 'I am so proud of my love of learning because when I do maths I go straight into it because I love it' - Jude P
- 'I am proud of how many activities I posted on Seesaw' - Nathan E
- 'I feel brave for doing voice recordings' - Evelyn E
- 'I am proud of doing the school tasks all by myself' - Sakina K
- 'I was in a hurry now I’m calmer. Now I recheck my work before submitting' - Ryan R
- 'I am proud of myself because I am a good listener' - Fadel H
- 'I am proud of doing my tasks faster and faster (usually)' - Charli R
- 'Showing gratitude makes me happy' - Stewart L
Reminders
If possible, all students should reply to the check in tasks by 12:00pm. This is how we are taking attendance for the day.
There have been reports of Seesaw crashing and losing student work due to the current worldwide load on their servers. While this is regrettable, we suggest making adjustments such as saving draft versions of online work often, taking screenshots of work in progress. As suggested previously many of these activities will work on paper, and you can wait for off-peak times (after 1pm) to try again. Please let us know if this happens as we would like to minimise any frustration and stress your children might feel about losing their work.
Reading Eggs, Mathletics and Epic Books are additional items we are providing access to and can be used at any time by all students as desired (they are not mandatory).
It is normal for students' work to be messy or not perfect. At school, we talk about celebrating mistakes as they help challenge us to learn and grow.
Pupil of the Week
1/2BR: Anna R -
For showing increasing independence in completing your work. We have loved seeing what you can do and see you learning from your mistakes!
1/2E: Rohaan M -
For demonstrating perseverance and love of learning, you have done a fabulous job listening to feedback and applying it to make sure you're completing tasks to your best! Great work Rohaan!
1/2H: Sophie A -
For showing perseverance and a love of learning when learning online. You continue to put in your best effort and I have been so impressed with every activity you have completed. Keep up the superstar work Sophie!
1/2K: Jonas T -
For displaying perseverance while completing your Seesaw activities. You have adjusted to the online learning environment and continue to submit outstanding work. Your contributions to check-in’s are enjoyable to see, such as when you uploaded a video to show how you learned your name in Auslan. Super job!
1/2O: Jack K -
For displaying perseverance while solving double and near double problems. Jack you work hard in all tasks to challenge yourself. This was clear again as you solved doubles and near doubles, taking on the extra challenge task. You are an impressive young man Jack.
1/2P: Evelyn E -
For always trying your best and showing a love of learning. Your handwriting and spelling is improving very quickly, and you are always stretching your thinking in maths, STEM activities and literacy. You shared some great ideas about whether or not to have school uniforms in your persuasive text. Keep it up, Evelyn!
1/2W: Samuel S -
For demonstrating perseverance and bravery when completing your Seesaw activities. You have put in a lot of effort into your persuasive texts and have definitely provided plenty of reasons why dogs are better! You have done a wonderful job sharing and explaining your learning journey, keep the good work up!