From the Classroom

News from The Seniors

Students in the senior area have made a fantastic start to the year, settling in well and getting to know each other by sharing their interests and working together in their new grades. It has been wonderful to see everyone embracing the new school year with enthusiasm and settling into routines with ease.

We have begun our class novel, Wonder by R.J. Palacio. Through this text, we will explore narrative structure, themes, character development, and key events while also making connections to real-life experiences.

In Maths, students enjoyed engaging in fun games and an ‘About Me’ maths activity, where they measured their height and foot size and completed various challenges, such as balancing, throwing bean bags into a hoop, and skipping. They will repeat these tasks at the end of the year to compare their results and track their progress. Over the next fortnight, students will be revisiting place value, including decimals, as well as the four operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. This essential revision will strengthen their understanding before tackling more complex mathematical concepts later in the term.

We have been so pleased to see students demonstrating our school values of inclusivity, responsibility, and respect. We have already met as a whole senior unit a few of times, including for a session of sport, and each time students have listened attentively, spoken respectfully, and encouraged their peers with positivity and enthusiasm.

We are looking forward to an exciting and productive term ahead!

Middle School News

It has been such a positive first week back at school with our Middle School students! It has been lovely learning all about our students and seeing them form new friendships inside the classroom and outside in the playground. Everyone has started the year with kindness, patience and empathy towards each other and have continued to utilise our school values of being respectful, responsible and inclusive.

This term students will be diving into the awesome world of 'Fantastic Mr Fox' during our novel study of this Roald Dahl favourite. Alongside this book, we will be revising our spelling codes and rules, reading fluency and handwriting. This book also lends beautifully into our first writing genre, narratives.

In week one, students have immersed themselves in a variety of place value and number games and time activities. One game that resulted in a lot of laughs was 'greedy pig'. We also created collaborative class displays using their birthdays and graphed the data. We will be continuing to develop our place value knowledge and delve deeper into the various elements of time (years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, etc).

Later in the term, we will be creating 3D creatures for a Numeracy project. If students could start bring in empty cereal boxes, tissue boxes, paper towel cylinders and small cardboard boxes, we would really appreciate it. Each student will receive 5,000 house points for each item they bring in.

Our inquiry topic for this term is Wellbeing and Respectful Relationships, where we will begin by identifying what it means to be ready to learn, and create our own ready to learn plans. Our discussions will involve how we feel at the beginning of each lesson and strategies we can use to support ourselves moving into a feeling or 'zone' to allow us to be ready to learn.

Juniors Tell All

Junior School have had a 'buzzing' start to the year! We have been so impressed with how well the 1/2 students have settled in. They have shown wonderful inclusiveness, involving their peers in games and sharing what they have been up to over the summer break.

We are starting the year focusing on the Marlborough agreements- Mutual Respect, Personal Best, Appreciations, Right to Pass, Safety First and Attentive Listening. The students have been engaged in various activities that highlight each of our agreements.

It has also been wonderful to invite our prep students in for their interviews over the last week. We can tell all of the preps are eager and ready to start school on Thursday, as are we!

Moving forwards the Juniors will be learning about concepts of time, including, time of day, days of the week, months and years. So each morning you can have discussions about the date with your child, to help reinforce this learning.

We will also be beginning our inquiry topic 'All About Me', where we will be diving deeper into what makes us, us! During this topic we will be discussing what makes us unique, our family trees, what we need to do to look after our bodies and how to keep ourselves healthy too!

A few reminders for the start of the year:

remember to bring in a labelled art smock and school hat. These will be kept at school each day.
we also ask for a tissue box donation from each family to keep us well-stocked into the year!

Performing Arts

We are so excited to be starting Performing Arts this week! It has been wonderful to see students looking forward to their first lesson. This year, Performing Arts will have four focus areas: Drama, Music, Dance and Media Arts.

This term, each class will learn confidence, collaboration, communication skills and problem solving as they step into characters for our Drama Unit. Performing Arts will be on Thursdays and Friday's this term. I look forward to seeing everyone shine in class this year!

P.E

Welcome back to Physical Education. (P.E. )

Get ready students to move your bodies, have some fun and challenge yourselves this term.

PE will be on days Tuesdays for Junior A, Junior B, Middle A and Middle B classes

Wednesdays will be Senior A and Senior B classes.

Please come prepared with correct footwear, sunsmart hats and positive energy.

Lets make this year a healthy , fun and an active one.

Check out our new Specialist Hub Indoor Area

PMP

•Perceptual Motor Program – linking perceptual/sensory skills to motor skills. Helps students perform a variety of movements and interact confidently with the environment.

Locomotion

•Moving from one place to another e.g. walking, rolling, crawling....

FMS

Fundamental Movement Skills form the building blocks for movement e.g. hopping, jumping, running… and are the foundation of the specific motor skills required for sport and leisure activities.

Direction

•Successfully moving the body e.g. forward, backward, up, down, left, right, sideways…

Speed

•Varying the speed of movements e.g. fast, slow, snail pace, bull at a gate, like a sloth…

Space

•Knowing where your body is in space e.g. behind, in front, under, over, beside…

PMP – What is it?

• PMP is a movement program that aims to connect the brain, (perceptual and sensory skills) to the body (motor skills).

• Perceptual motor skills – teaching movement in relation to time, (fast/slow), direction, (forwards/backwards/to the side), and spatial awareness (crossing the mid-line).

• PMP builds a foundation of cognition and perception that is vital if we want our students to lead physically active lives.

PMP is starting with our Junior A class. These lessons will be on Wednesdays, weekly during lesson two, 10 am to 11 am.

I am in need of parent helpers who can assist with the program in manning an exercise station.

If you are able to assist in PMP and have a current working with children's check please contact me via email at bonny.chisholm@education.vic.gov.au

The first lesson will be on Wednesday 12th February.

Thank you in advance

Bonny Chisholm

PE Specialist

Indonesian

Selamat Datang Term 1, 2025 – Welcome to 2025!

It is great to see the enthusiasm shown by our students as they start a new year!

This year, Indonesian classes will be held in the Art room – it is such a flexible space for our students to learn in and I have been able to display traditional Indonesian instruments, masks and puppets.

I will be working at Marlborough PS on Wednesdays and Thursdays this year.

This term the main theme is "Bagian badan” (body parts). The junior students will learn new vocabulary through games and songs. A particular favourite with the younger students is playing “Simon berkata” (Simon says).

Students in the middle and upper school are focusing on basic Indonesian sentence structure and grammar. The students will also develop their language skills through role playing and putting their language skills into practice.

This term, our senior students will attend Heathmont College with other local primary schools to take part in Indonesian Day. It is a fabulous day to meet new friends, try Indonesian dancing, games, pencak silat and mask making. The highlight is always eating “nasi goreng” for lunch – enak (delicious)!

Words to practise at home:

kepala – head, leher – neck, bahu – shoulders, perut – stomach, kaki – legs, lengan – arms, mata – eyes, hidung – nose, mulut – mouth, pipi – cheeks, telinga – ears.

If students have access to the internet at home, they might like to explore or revise their vocabulary at the Indonesian section of Languages Online at: http://www.education.vic.gov.au/languagesonline/indonesian/indonesian.htm

Terima kasih (Thank- you),

(Bu) Mary-Ellen Dowling