Turquoise Community
Turquoise Newsletter Our ‘Incredible’ Term 2 in Turquoise!
It has been an ‘incredibly’ long term filled with engaging lessons, personalised learning, NAPLAN, fun and team building. At the beginning of the term we welcomed a group of students from Coral to Turquoise. They have been a fabulous addition and have settled into our Community’s routines beautifully.
In Week 5, our Grade 5 students were challenged by NAPLAN where they demonstrated their ‘incredible’ overall effort and behaviour during this time. In addition, extension classes and projects got underway for some deserving students within the community for P.E, Science, Art and Robotics.
‘Incredible’ Interschool Sports
It was an absolute pleasure to have the opportunity to train and compete against other primary schools within the district in the Winter Gala day, which was a great success! Interschool Sports every Friday has been a treat, with the following sports on offer:
Softtall
Netball
AFL
Volleyball
Soccer
Book Club
Presentations began for some students and have been encouraging to see them doing an excellent job choosing books of interest during Independent Reading to present and review to the whole class. This has been great practice for their Speaking and Listening skills.
Reading
This Term in Reading we have been focusing on
the structure and features of Response Texts.
The different strategies we have been using to assist the students in comprehending texts, news articles, and ‘Behind the news’ reports are: Prediction and Prior knowledge, Visualisation and being able to ask deep and meaningful Questions.
Writing
In Writing students have been learning how to write Expositions and Response texts.
Students have discussed current world issues, generating reasons for and against a topic, describing their opinions and backing it up with evidence and ‘reasonable logic’.
Concentrating on text structures and features, including adjectives that describe the situation and giving believable reasons why they feel/think the way they do about the topic.
Numeracy
Meanwhile in Numeracy, understanding Fractions, Decimals and Percentages have been the major focus this term.
It has been wonderful to see students challenging themselves, whilst applying their foundational skills of place value and operations to assist them in problem solving.
We have been busy understanding how to use multiplication and division, understanding fractions and decimals, converting percentages and touching on measurement.
Inquiry
At the beginning of the Term we continued learning about ‘Identity & Belonging’ in Inquiry. We discovered many interesting aspects of ‘Conflict, Discrimination and Wellbeing’. Everything from ‘How Australia became the biggest multicultural Nation’ to understanding ‘Why it is important for youth to be aware of their health and wellbeing’.
Over the past 3 weeks we have begun a new topic,
Innovation, introducing the grade 5/6’s to the world of business.
Soon, students will be using their initiative, seeking new ways to improve the way we live and discovering how they can make their ideas come alive!
Mid-year Parent Teacher Interviews will be taking place within the next couple of weeks. Please don’t forget to make an appointment with the team (through Compass), as it is a great opportunity to meet with the teachers to discuss your child’s personal learning.
We look forward to seeing you all,
Turquoise Teachers,
Terry Van Zyl, Sarah McLoughlin, Steve Gray,
Tenille Roberts & Sueanne O’Connell