PLC News

Professional Learning Community Foundation  (Preps)

Congratulations to our preps who are so close to finishing their very first year at school! They have accomplished so much and should all be really proud of their wonderful efforts. 

It has been a lovely term so far filled with swimming lessons, sports day and an excursion. We are all excitedly working our way towards the end of the year. Over the last week and bit we are exploring our Reading, Writing and Numeracy with little hints of Christmas. We are buzzing with energy to write procedures about fairy bread, letters to Santa and our new teacher, reading Christmas stories and play numeracy games that challenge our learning. Our preps may begin feeling a lot of different emotions in regards to moving into Grade 1 and having a new class and teacher. Please remind them that this is an exciting time and they will get to meet their teacher and new friends in the last week of school but will be able to play with all their old friends in the yard.

Just a reminder that there is lots of lost property at this time of the year and we hope to return all items to their owners, so keep an eye on lost property for any missing items.

Thank you for all the support in what has been a great year and we are looking forward to a lovely end of the school year. We wish everyone a very safe and wonderful holiday period to come!

-The 2022 Prep Team!

Professional Learning Community 1  (Grade 1 )

The Grade 1s were very busy last week with swimming. We made the short (or the kids

 said it was the biggest walk EVER) up to Shayne Reese and spend the afternoon learning how to swim and all about water safety. The kids thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to using these skills during the summer school holidays. 

As the schooling year is wrapping up someone special has been keeping an eye on the students....Can you guess? Elf on the shelf! The students have been super excited to see what spot he or she may be hiding each day. 

You may notice some extra work being sent home each day as we are cleaning up our classrooms getting ready for 2023. The students have loved looking back over their work from throughout the year and seeing their outstanding growth and reflecting on their improvement.

Don't forget to jump onto Compass and sign your student's permission form for the end of year Picnic Day. We all look forward to seeing you there and celebrating what a fabulous year it has been. 

We are also no longer checking diaries and you are not expected to sign diaries for reading each night either, however we always encourage students to continue to read and find that love for reading. 

Enjoy the lead up to christmas and I look forward to seeing you all at the Picnic Day next Friday. 

Professional Learning Community 2 (Grade 2 ) 

Well, that's a wrap on 2022. What a fantastic year of learning and experiences we have had in Grade 2. From concert to sleepover, science incursions to graphing animals at the Doug Dean lake, Sport's Day to swimming, kitchen to growing frogs in our classrooms - we have had the best time!

We encourage all of our students and their families to read the reports on Compass carefully. While we hope it is all self-explanatory, please email teachers before the end of the term with any questions or concerns. We hope any feedback given is taken into consideration as they begin their exciting journey as Grade 3s in 2023. 

The PLC2 teachers would like to thank all of our students and their families for their dedication to learning this year. Without all of you, we could not do our jobs as passionately as we do. We appreciate all of the support and enthusiasm that comes through our doors every day. We hope you all have a beautiful Christmas, New Years and summer holiday. 

Professional Learning Community 3 (Grade 3)

PLC 3 had the greatest of experiences last week, our overnight camp at the gorgeous Log Cabin Lodge in Creswick! We embarked on our journey early Monday morning and were immediately greeted by tranquil nature at its best – the great Australian bush surrounding the grounds! However, we quickly organised ourselves into groups and began our exciting arrange of activities, including the giant swing, canoeing, commando course, zipline and photo find. Camps are all about challenging ourselves and growing from our experiences. As such, it was beautiful to see our students rise to the challenge and achieve their best – I know the giant swing and zipline rattled a few nerves, but our students reframed this as excitement and were enthralled by the experience once accomplished!  

On Tuesday, we were up early and imagined ourselves in the bush with a storm edging closer. We only had nature and teamwork on our side and, as teams, collaborated to build the most sturdy and waterproof hut to withstand the ‘oncoming weather’. Seeing students’ creativity and innovativeness shine as they collected sticks, logs, bark and corrugated plastic to form their secure shelters was great. All this hut building zapped some energy but thankfully, damper baking was just around the corner! Students learned the skills of wrapping some damper around a stick and gathering around fires to bake them – we also had an array of spreads, and it was DELCIOUS, as I am sure the students of PLC 3 will agree!  

The experiences of camp lived on through the week as we began our writing topic centred on ‘The Great Australian Bush’ and students weaved what they could see, smell and hear on camp and amalgamated this with imaginings to craft tremendous descriptive pieces - be sure to ask your child/ren all about it! In Reading, we focussed on developing our summarising skills and explored texts about native fauna, including the kangaroo and koala. In Numeracy, we continued learning fractions and started generating connections to decimals, and it was fantastic to see students building on their existing schema and developing new understandings … ready to take on Grade 4!  

Jeremy C (3A) – I liked the zipline and the canoeing ... even though I fell in three times! You will have a really great time future Grade 3s – enjoying the night walk, making damper and even the pyjama dance party!  

Keagan D (3B) – I liked the zipline because we could do cool tricks, including backflips, front flips and the daredevil! Get excited for the zipline and the damper future Grade 3s!  

Indianna J (3C) – I liked camp because it was the first time I experienced going away for a night without my parents. My highlight was canoeing because we got to be in the water in little boats! 

All the best from our PLC 3 Team! 

Professional Learning Community 4 (Grade 4)

Can’t believe this will be our last newsletter. What an amazing year we have had this year! So much learning and growth from all. Looking back at the year we have had lots of amazing experiences – camp, concert, writers’ festival…

In Literacy, we have been working on solving words with Latin and Greek roots and looking at Aussie and Old English words.

In Numeracy, we have done a lot of work on telling the time to the minute on digital and analogue clocks. We also focussed on calendars and timetables. We are now looking at maps and scales including plotting points on a graph. We have put some photos of students working at piecing together a blank calendar, using public holiday dates, number of days in the months and starting day and ending day of each month as clues to solve it.

We want to say a big thank you to all the students and parents for your support throughout the year, it has been great. Also, a massive thank you to Briella and Deb for working so hard to make learning fun for all the students. We have had a good time teaching the students and wish them all the best in Grade 5. Have a safe and relaxing holiday.

Regards,

Lauren, Deb and Briella

PLC 4 Teachers

Professional Learning Community 5 (Grade 5)

As we close the year we are finishing with some a big focus on Wonder and the themes that came from it. We are watching the film and discussing key differences between the movie and book, as well as studying the techniques used by film producers to tell their story. Within Writing, we are writing persuasively about a precept (motto) that applies to life and that can impact us positively. Working with the text Wonder has been amazing this year and has demonstrated some maturity and personal growth amongst some students in the cohort. 

Numeracy has seen students enter the world of problem solving and attempt to think laterally for a range of strategies and solutions.

It has been a fantastic year in PLC 5 with some massive highlights including concert and camp. We thank the students for the effort and parents/carers for their support and wish everyone a wonderful, safe and relaxing break.

PLC 5 Staff

Professional Learning Community 6 (Grade 6)

Hello all and  welcome to Week 9…WOW at the weekend, we as a school put on a BBQ on Saturday to raise funds for our graduation night and we were not expecting the turn out! We guess it all started with our students making front cover of the courier on Saturday, from there it was an early start for our teachers and helpers (thankyou). The wind was blowing and the lines were long – great recipe for selling sausages to a hungry crowd. Not only was the BBQ a huge success but the DPS café was running hot serving coffees!

Our Reading this week – we are still making our way through the novel ‘HOLES’. We are learning about the author and why he wrote the story. We have investigated his intent, which had revealed amazing lengths a writer will go through to write a book (ask us about this!). In writing we are busy putting the finishing touches to a piece that will go into our graduation packs – they are amazing and we cannot wait to share these with you.

Numeracy this week is definitely challenging our minds - even if we are so exhausted! We are learning about the calculating and converting different measurements. If you see us on the oval with a trundle wheel, we are working!!

On a last note, the countdown to Graduation has begun. We are getting super excited about creating a special performance for the night and are busy practising at every chance (only a week and a half of practise to go!). It is super-secret, so do not ask us about it!

Over and out for now! 

PLC6