Achilles Community Report
May Update
The Achilles Community has been thriving in May! We are very excited to be working in our Reading, Writing and Maths groups with Ainsley, Amber, Michelle and Jagruti!
In Reading, we have been working on inferential questions about the text we read: asking before, during and after questions, drawing conclusions about characters and plot, and finding evidence to support our answers.
In Writing, we have been learning all about grammar and sentence structure, and we are beginning to look at Narrative and how we can develop and enhance our writing. Students have had great success in using descriptive devices, such as, adjectives and adverbs to improve their sentences and stories!
We have been building on our Additive Thinking knowledge in Maths, such as, creating fact families (4 + 3, 3 + 4, 12 - 3, 12- 4) and working on steps and strategies to solve worded problems. We have been learning strategies, such as, the jump strategy, partitioning, and the split strategy to solve addition and subtraction problems.
Our Inquiry lessons have been full of fun! We designed, built and tested parachutes, made from plastic bags, string and other reused materials! We also experimented with magnets: how magnets attract and repel. Students created some beautiful scenes and made objects and characters in their scenes move, using paper clips and magnets. Overall, we have had some very excited and curious learners in Achilles this month.
Students are also planning to build obstacle courses that demonstrate different forces and movement. Thank you to the students who have already brought in so many materials to use for this project! Any boxes, empty cartons, plastic bottles, etc. are most welcome - many thanks!
We encourage students to read for at least 15 minutes each night, and to choose from a range of different texts, such as, the many genres of fiction (realistic, fantasy, Sci-Fi, mystery, comics, etc.) non-fiction, books, websites, and other media.
We provide students with a new dictation every Monday, pasted in their school diaries. These dictations include their spelling focus of the week, and also encourage punctuation skills, grammar and sentence structure.
We also encourage all students to bring an iPad to school. We will be issuing a list of suggested Apps for your iPad. To connect to our internet, it is just a few easy steps. Please come to see us for assistance.
The winter weather has certainly set in, and our days are very cold! The children enjoy playing outside, so please make sure your child comes to school rugged up and dressed in layers: with at least long sleeves, a jumper, a winter jacket, and a beanie!
Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any queries. We recommend making a note in your child’s diary for us to read or using Sentral’s Parent Portal.
Kind Regards,
Ainsley, Amber, Michelle and Jagruti.