Principal's Message
Welcome to our bumper edition of the school’s newsletter. Whilst the lockdown has many of us wishing we were living in another state, we thought that bringing everyone a little laughter, joy and celebration was in order.
Let’s look through a week in remote and flexible learning and give a big shout out to our students for all their knowledge building, wonderful learning opportunities, their posted reflections and activities and their positive spirits throughout.
In Foundation students spent the week listening to some wonderful books read by their teachers such as Ish by Peter Reynolds, Welcome to Country by Aunty Joy Murphy and Lisa Kennedy and the all-time favourite, Wombat Stew by Marcia Vaughan. They were immersed in learning about rhyming words, CVC words, high-frequency words, shapes and patterns, sequencing numbers and also met one of our special Kimochi characters, Bug. They explored their happy places, completed journal writing, drew lots of wonderful pictures, baked Ms D’s crunchy oats and had a dress up Funky Friday.
In Year 1/2 students started their week by developing their personal goals and each morning were greeted with a new challenge to complete. The book, Too Loud Lily, helped them use evidence from the text to describe characters. They slowly began experimenting writing a procedural text and exploring the features of an information text. Then it was onto some Chemical Sciences by making Oobleck, which we are sure created some messy fun for all. As engineers they built structures made out of edible objects and tested some of their construction theories. They completed an array of maths fluency games such as Fraction Basket Ball and the all-time favourite, ‘Get out of my House’. They learnt about fractions, time, mass and three-dimensional shapes. Students also read fiction and nonfiction texts on Wushka and followed this up with some important writing responses that had them determining the important information located within the text they read.
In Year 3/4 students have been investigating the features of an information report, especially linking their knowledge to their new Inquiry on exploration; whether in space or around the world, they are gearing up for an exciting adventure which began with an exploration of the world’s largest cave. The information report, ‘On to Mars’, provided students with the opportunity to read and unpack structural and language features of this text, progressing to developing key concepts such as making connections, using text and visuals, main ideas and detailed information, summarising and rich vocabulary studies. They moved onto Maths at a fast speed and within the span of a week covered concepts such as Australian currency and change, equivalent fractions, addition and subtraction with regrouping and much more. Students were provided opportunities for coding, rapid writing sessions writer’s notebook and small group sessions. There were a range of wellbeing check-in points and meting as a class each morning certainly kept them all connected.
In Year 5/6 the students were investigating how to determine whether something on sale is a bargain or not by grappling with percentage discounts to establish best buys. The structural and language features of information texts were explored as students reflected on what knowledge they could share from their Australian Democracy virtual incursion. In keeping with National Reconciliation Week, students explored the Dreaming and then created their own stories using traditional symbols in place of written text. Deliberations were aplenty as the students surveyed music and dance options for the school production. As a penultimate finish to the week, the 5/6 students were challenged to make a fun movie to make their teachers laugh which they were certainly successful in.
Rita’s funny movie sketch - video link
Noah’s sportsmanship video - video link
A lot of fun was to be found in the specialist program across all years last week. In Performing Arts, Mr G invited students to sing-alongs and the 1/2s explored the power of vocals using Incredibox. Students in the upper levels also got to create their own musical palindromes which wasn’t just an ABBA lesson; musical palindromes are songs that play the same forward and backwards. Across to PE, Miss Jo had the Foundation students learning the fundamentals of kicking a soccer ball and the 1/2s were trying out some karate moves. Meanwhile, older students examined the importance of ‘Sportsmanship’ which was introduced through the inspiring actions of Spanish triathlete, Diego Méntrida, in a competition last September – a must-see if you haven’t viewed this already!
In Italian, our younger students were singing the numbers from uno to dieci and exploring yummy food. Older students analysed how storytelling in Italian becomes lively through the use of interesting adjectives and the 5/6s translated daily routines. In Visual Arts, connections were made between nature, literature and painting with Foundation students creating cute leaf people and the 1/2s making koalas from newspapers. Meanwhile the 3/4s used the story, The Dot, for inspiration while 5/6s examined Monet’s famous Water Lilies.
Year 3/4 Game Creation - video link
Year 5/6 Bootcamp - video link
Foundation Soccer Skills - video link1
Foundation Soccer Skills - video link2
Finally, to celebrate our resilience, Friday became a day of frolicking, funny faces, funky dress-ups and lots of fun as we ended the day with the RPS Dance Party. Thank you to resident DJs, Sarah and Mr Leech, for making this happen.
Watch the RPS Dance Party here:
PREMIER’S READING CHALLENGE (PRC)
For all you Rippers out there, Ms Jane and Sarah are set to go as our super PRC coordinators. They will be distributing your passwords and information via Seesaw so stay tuned to find out how you can join the challenge as we know many of you love to read and why not be recognised for your wonderful efforts by the Premier himself?
Message from the Acting Premier, James Merlino
Welcome to the 2021 Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge.
Since it began in 2005, the Premiers’ Reading Challenge has encouraged children and students to open their minds to wonderful new worlds through the joy of reading books.
Over the years it has inspired more than 3 million young Victorians to read at least 51 million books.
The Premiers’ Reading Challenge is a fun and engaging way to nurture important literacy skills that will be with our children for life.
Even more, it helps them discover the joy of reading from a young age and, hopefully, find some new favourites.
Good luck to everyone picking up a book this year, but most importantly, have fun!
The Hon James Merlino MPActing Premier of Victoria
Speaking of the Acting Premier, we are listening to his “presser” announcements as best we can and will be sure to share with you any important updates that concern our operations as a school.
Until next fortnight!
Natalie Rose Principal
Jess Grey Assistant Principal