What's happening in our learning spaces? 

FOUNDATION 

We have reached the three quarter point of our journey to ‘100 Days of Foundation’. We are exploring patterns in numbers as we learn to count backwards and forwards by 10s and even 5s as we reached 75 days this week! This week Leanne Wenckowski is attending the Year 5/6 camp near Lancefield and Mrs Louisa Dillon will be teaching Foundation LW.

As Inquirers, we tuned into finding out about the different cultural backgrounds represented in both Foundation classes. We listened to the song “Hello to all the Children of the World” and invited our parents and grandparents to assist us with finding out how to say “hello” in different languages. We found out that the cultural backgrounds of Foundation students are varied and include: Australian, Italian, Greek, Lebanese, Thai, Filipino , Assyrian, Columbian, Portuguese, Serbian, Irish, Austrian, English, American, Chinese, German, Sri Lankan, and Canadian.

Please come into our learning spaces to see our display of saying “Hello” in a variety of languages.

To continue finding out about our different cultural backgrounds, we explored and identified the different celebrations and traditions we participate in throughout the year. Together we identified many celebrations such as Christmas, Easter, birthdays, weddings and some traditions we also participate in such as having a santa photo each year, family dinners or lunches each week, even discovering that many families get their youngest child to place a star or angel on the Christmas tree. It has been such a great learning experience to find out so much more about each other and our backgrounds. This week there will be time and opportunity for some of us to share information about the different artefacts we brought into school on last Friday’s Cultural Day. Photos have been taken of the different items, and we are really looking forward to listening to our peers as they explain the significance of the artefacts as part of their cultural background.

Last Friday was an exciting day as we arrived in costumes or the colours of our cultural backgrounds to celebrate St Fidelis Cultural day 2023. It was so much fun to parade in front of the whole school community. We listened to guests who explained the significance of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations flags and we were entertained by Indigenous music. In the Hall we learnt drumming skills and had so much fun dancing to the African drums. After recess we were also entertained by an Italian artist who performed some comedy routines wearing amazing masks and who also told us so much about Italy including how to say many Italian words.

Our parent helper timetables have been placed on the entrance doors to our learning spaces. Please write your name down in a time slot that is available. Please note, new timetables will be posted on a Thursday afternoon. As always, please remember to bring back any library bags by Tuesday so that we can borrow a new book on Wednesday.

Please ensure that your child is revising their sight words each night and not just practising the new set of words. The words on the larger ring also need to be looked at on a regular basis so that everyone becomes more confident when using the words in their writing.

Have a wonderful week,

Leanne Wenckowski and Alex Phillips

Foundation Team

YEAR 1/2

This week in 1/2, we had time and opportunity to engage in lots of amazing learning opportunities. 

As learners, we tuned in to our new Inquiry on Design and Creativity. We were presented with five questions about design…

• What is design?
• Who are designers?
• How do designs help others?
• What are materials and properties?
• What wonderings do we have about design?

As thinkers, we activated our prior knowledge as we moved around the room and engaged in dialogue with one another about each of the questions. We recorded our thinking in words and illustrations. 

As self-managers, we reflected on our writing over the last few weeks, our Success Criteria and all of the feedback we have received on our different writing pieces, to set learning goals. Some of us chose to focus on correct letter formation and sizing, some of us would like to use more interesting words and some of us will be working on using different types of punctuation. We will be persistent and responsible as we work towards achieving these goals over the next few weeks. As writers, we have begun a new information report on a topic of our choice, such as Soccer, Pets, Reptiles and Food.  As thinkers, we are using mind maps to help us plan our writing piece. As communicators,  we are recording our prior knowledge, as well as the new information we are finding out as researchers through safe internet searches on the iPads, fact sheets, videos and non-fiction books. 

As readers, we continued learning how to summarise different fiction texts. Some of us identified the key characters and events at the beginning, middle and end of the story, whilst some of us were introduced to the SWBST strategy, which is an acronym used to help us remember how to summarise…Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then. As thinkers, we are focusing on including all of the important information in a few short sentences. 

But our favourite part of the week was the opportunity to engage in Cultural Day on Friday! It was a wonderful way to celebrate the end of our Inquiry into Culture, Diversity, Stories and Identity. We dressed up in different colours and costumes that represented our family’s cultural heritage, and there were lots of flags and traditional outfits! Some of us were dressed in soccer guernseys and aprons to represent our Italian culture, while others wore a traditional Spanish Flamenco dress and German Dirndls and Lederhosen. We began the day with a parade, with lots of dancing and singing before engaging in different workshops and performances with Cultural Infusion. It was an amazing experience as we learnt Indigenous songs, listened to the Yudakyi and played African Drums. The teachers even got up and had a boogie whilst shaking maracas! 

Check out some of our amazing costumes and experiences below!

A friendly reminder for students to return their library books, or re-borrow them on their library day. 1/2AM and 1/2VS go on a Tuesday and 1/2VK go on a Wednesday. Please continue to read with your child each night, and where possible, engage in any counting or spelling sent home. 

We hope everyone had a happy and safe long weekend, and we look forward to the week ahead! 

 Alycia Marsico, Vania Sparano and Vicky Karalis, 

1/2 Team

YEAR 3/4

On Thursday, the Year 4 students engaged in the Eucharist Retreat. They had the privilege of having Ian Vergeal, where he spoke to all of the Year 4 Students in our Chapel, and spoke to us about the important aspects of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Including: 

• What is Eucharist?  
• Why do we have the chalice and host? 
• Why do we have a Mass? 

Students then had the opportunity to engage in some further learning about the Eucharist, where they also had the opportunity to engage in creating their chalices, documenting some of their findings about Eucharist. 

We even had the privilege of having a hot lunch during our retreat day. We started our lunch with Hot Dogs and a juice box and we were extremely lucky to have a sweet surprise of cinnamon waffles. A big thank you to the Rocillo family for donating your valuable time and delicious sweet creations for our Year 4s to enjoy. It was definitely a highlight of the day!

The children then ended a wonderful retreat day by going over to the church to practise the mass and get familiar with what will be occurring on the day of our celebration. 

On Friday, the whole school celebrated Cultural Day. Students loved dressing up to represent their families cultural heritage with traditional colours. We began our day with a parade to show off our costumes, followed by three incursions - Rhythms and Instruments of West Indies, Indigenous Fusion and Comedia Clowning. We had such a fun and engaging day connecting what we have learnt in Inquiry with our big question ‘Australia: What’s our story?’. 

In STEM this week, we engaged in making different models using the Education Lego Sets. In 3/4BP we began creating our Welcome to Saint Fidelis Robot using the We Do 2.0. We collaborated in small groups to follow step by step instructions to build our robot. 

In 3/4BZ, we had the opportunity to engage in small groups to collaborate and build a Lego Education SPIKE, we explored the Spike Essentials platform, we were able to create different designs including mini gold and a bowling alley. We used the Lego Essentials App to code our creations to move and make sounds.

3/4BZ will be hosting assembly this Friday, we would love to see you all there!

Today the Year 3/4s received their final home learning opportunity for the term. Please return on Friday 23rd June. We are grateful for the positive feedback we have received on the reading checklist that the Year 3/4 students and teachers constructed, please also remember to tick this off weekly. A reminder that all home learning opportunities are posted on your child's google classroom.

We are in search of parent helpers who would like to assist Year 3/4 students in the learning spaces. Please pop your name on the timetable located upstairs in the Year 3/4 learning space window (use internal stairs) to share your availability (days and times). A current WWCC is required, as well as participation in the Parent Helper workshop. We look forward to welcoming you!

Have a wonderful week!

Year 3/4 Teachers

Belinda Panzarino & Bianka Zorzut