Foundation News

Literacy

This fortnight students have been learning how to expand a sentence in Text Construction. Students are given a kernel sentence (an incomplete sentence) and students add the ‘where’ and ‘why’ details to it. We have been so impressed with how well students have worked to add in these important details and make their completed sentences. Below are some examples of where students begun with the kernel “Nan and Pop run” and they added the ‘where’ and ‘why’ details to expand the sentence. Brilliant work Foundations!

Student-Led Conferences

Congratulations to all Foundation students on their student-led conference on Friday. It was fantastic to celebrate individual students' achievements and growth that they have made at school so far and share this with families!

100 Days of School

Friday the 4th of August marks 100 Days of school for our Teesdale PS Foundation students! For such a fantastic milestone, the foundation team and students will be celebrating this day with a "100" theme dress up and activities throughout the day!

Below are some photos that might help inspire dress up ideas!

Junior School News

Junior School Content Knowledge and Text Construction

This term the Junior School is learning about Ancient Greece. Students have been using a variety of writing strategies using the information learned about the topic. We have started to write questions and exclamation sentences, as well as being able to identify if a sentence is a fragment (incomplete sentence) or sentence.

Students have also had the chance to write a persuasive piece on whether they would have rather live in Ancient Athens or Ancient Sparta! We have also written a recount on how Athens got its name.

Junior School Maths

This week we have focused on money. We have ordered the Australian currency according to its value and have explored multiple ways to make $1 using coins and $5 using all coins. On Wednesday students were given a $100 budget to come up with a wish list for our classroom library.

Middle School News

Well done to all students in the Middle School. Teachers were so impressed with your presentations and how well you spoke about what you have been learning in the classroom.

Remember to read each night, record your reading in your diary and hand your diary into the teacher each morning. Classroom libraries are available in each classroom to provide books for students to read in class and at home.

In literacy we are reading about Medieval Europe. We have learnt about the Feudal System and what life was like under this system for different groups of people such as serfs, knights and lords.We have also been studying vocabulary relating to this period and writing definitions, synonym and antonyms for these words.

In Text Construction we have been writing narratives. We have been working on writing interesting complications and more detailed orientations that describe the characters and setting in the story.

In numeracy students have been learning how to subtract with larger numbers using vertical methods which they really enjoy. This week we are moving on to multiplication and money. This would be a great time for parents to get out their coins and notes to help familiarise students with Australian currency.

Visual Art

Students have been working on watercolour cityscapes for the first two weeks of the term. The Senior Students have put a lot of detail and thought into their cityscapes, and they look fantastic. All the students have used a variety of colours and shapes to create beautiful pieces of artwork. The Junior Students are learning about Ancient Greece and the Olympics. They worked in small teams to place the correct pictogram with its sport for the modern Olympics. Well done Juniors, I was really impressed with your teamwork skills. Students will develop a design for their own Olympic medal and make it out of clay in the coming weeks. The senior and middle students have learnt about mosaics and are sketching a design that will be completed using foam paper as their mosaic tiles.

From Karen Biscan

Senior School News

Senior STEM Design Technology!

Students in the Middle and Senior School have been exploring the Design Thinking Process. Their first STEM challenge – design a tool/device to protect a raw egg from being broken when dropped from the top of the playground. Students began building their designs this week. Remember to continue to bring any recycled materials or random odds and ends from your ‘junk draw’ at home that is just collecting dust!

In Senior school the students have been learning all about Don Quixote and his quest for knighthood. The students are currently writing a persuasive essay on whether Don Quixotes good intentions justified his actions, using evidence from the text to back up their opinion. It is great to see students using persuasive devices such as rhetorical questions, emotion, exaggeration, and transition words.

In Numeracy, students have begun learning about the cartesian plane and how to correctly plot coordinates. Students were asked to reflect coordinates in each of the quadrants to create quadrilaterals. See an example of their great work below!

Kitchen Garden

In the Garden