Uraidla Primary School newsletter

Round the classes 

Reception class: Jess

Hands on maths in our class

We love learning maths in our class. Students have been learning maths games and having lots of fun playing with their peers.  Playing maths games promotes wonderful lasting skills for students to use in everyday life. 

some include: 

  • Student engagement: students learn through having fun
  • low-risk competition: combining risk and luck 
  • Reduce fear of making mistakes: students feel safer in and are more comfortable in small group settings 
  • Building maths vocabulary and communication skills: students use maths vocabulary and discuss solutions and problem-solve. 
  • Reinforce and strengthen maths skills: giving students the opportunity to use the maths skills that have been taught. 
  • Learning from and teaching peers: a great way for students to instil their understanding by teaching other students in the class. 

Games help foster excitement about maths and build a love of maths. Games are fun and engaging for students. The greatest learning happens when our students are having fun and are engaged in the learning process. 

 

Reception class: Kelly

This past fortnight I, Emma the PE teacher, have had the pleasure of taking Kelly’s class! We have incorporated so much learning during this time and it was wonderful to see how articulate they have become during class discussions and how in tune they are with their routines and learning practices.

 

During maths we have completed our part-part-whole unit with numbers 0-10. Students have focused on numbers 6-8 and practised ways of representing these with concrete materials and writing maths equations.

 

Moving onto literacy we have looked at the steps used to write a successful recount. Having visual cues during this step process is useful for students, including words and pictures associated with the who, what, where, when and how of a recount. 

 

Another highlight was spending time with Stephen’s year 3 class for HASS and learning about mapping, in particular, a bird’s eye view. As a group, we envisaged what our classroom would look like if we were looking down from above. Students then placed all the classroom furniture and other features in a sketched drawing. When complete we explored Google Earth and tried to find our homes which was exciting. It opened our eyes to how sophisticated technology has become!

 

Lastly, during mindfulness each day we looked at the array of colours that surround us in nature. We had a colour focus each day which involved looking at various natural objects, then taking a nature walk outside and observing where this colour could be. On return from our walk, we drew what we had seen. This process allowed students to practise mindfulness/ being present and appreciate the beauty surrounding us in this school.

 

The wonderful world of counting....

 

Year 1 class: Jaya

Following on from the school's Olympic-themed casual day, the Year 1s completed their first Big Write for the term, titled “The Day I Became an Olympian!”. The class were very excited for this Big Write and used the opportunity to showcase their creativity and huge writing growth. Their grit and persistence were wonderful to witness. Gaining feedback from each other and re-reading our work to check for spelling and punctuation helped us to reflect on our writing and set goals for our next Big Write. As a class, our writing goal was to ensure that our narrative had an engaging complication or problem. Please have a read of some of our wonderful stories below. 

 

Year 2 class: Samantha

In Year 2, we’ve been learning about the morpheme '-est.' This tiny but powerful group of letters is what we add to the end of a word to show that something is the most or the greatest.

When we see words like 'fastest', 'biggest', or 'happiest', the '-est' at the end tells us that the person or thing is the most of that quality. For example, 'fastest' means the one who is the fastest out of everyone, and 'happiest' means the one who is the most happy.

To put our learning into practice, we read the book Every Night At Midnight by Chris Alosio. 

 

After enjoying the story, we imagined what animal we would turn into if we could change at midnight. Using our knowledge of '-est', we came up with words to describe our chosen animals, like 'fiercest' for a lion or 'swiftest' for a cheetah.

Please listen to the examples below by scanning the QR code to see and hear some of our artwork and learning:

  

  

Learning about the '-est' morpheme has been a fantastic way to expand our vocabulary and improve our reading skills. We encourage you to ask your child about the words they’ve learned and see if they can find examples in their reading at home! 

  

 

Year 3 class: Stephen and Troy

The Year 3s have been learning about mapping skills for HASS.  They combine with the Reception students from Kelly’s class to do this. The tasks so far have involved developing an understanding of what it means to be “looking from above” and having a “bird’s eye view” of things.  This week we used iPad apps to draw maps of our classrooms, ensuring we labelled them and added appropriate colours for items where needed. We have also been learning about information report writing.  This has involved learning about main headings and sub-headings to organise information and to ensure we write facts alone and not opinions. 

 

 

Year 4/5 class: Alex

This fortnight students have been continuing their HASS economics unit of learning. They have been looking at their needs and wants and the difference between what a need and a want is. They had fun participating in an auction, bidding for resources their particular community group needed most. 

 

They have been exploring what resources are and defining the difference between natural, human and capital resources. They have been thinking about how these resources are used to produce goods and services. 

 

Students have investigated which types of resources are needed to cater to their individual top needs and wants. We have also looked into mineral resources, what they are, how they are formed and extracted and what they are used to make. They have also begun to consider how long it takes for minerals to form. They are currently pondering how we need to use mineral resources more sustainably after looking at just how much we have taken out of the ground in such a short span of time. 

 

Year 5/6 class: Sallie

The students enjoyed doing the persuasive Big Write in the last fortnight. Spending time marking it themselves has made it easier to define their goals and work towards improving the persuasive writing genre and writing in general.  The candles always add ambiance and set the tone. 

 

In Maths, we have nearly finished our unit of work on decimals and fractions. Friday's problem-solving days always spark lots of conversation with sharing ideas and explaining strategies used.  In HASS we have been looking at the journeys of refugees with particular focus on those people forced to leave Vietnam. 

 

Indonesian: Ibu Susan

In Indonesian lessons we have continued learning about food. The older students have started writing descriptions, focusing on using the adjective after the noun. The year 5/6 students are also busy researching traditional Indonesian food to create their own restaurant menus. They are getting familiar with using Rupiah instead of Australian dollars!

 

The younger classes have begun learning an animal rap song which is fun but quite tricky. They have also used our food words to label different meals and to express what they suka/tidak suka (like/don’t like).

 

PE: Troy & Emma

Over the last two weeks, students have been learning tee-ball through match play. Students have been playing modified versions of the game while focusing on the fundamental movement skills required to be successful. Rules have been adjusted including limits on outs to make it more inclusive, so all students get to bat. There has been an increase in the number of fielders and modifications to the equipment used for different ages. Our goals are running effectively between bases and being able to identify where the ball can be thrown to get out. We are looking forward to showcasing our skills in our staff vs student game in week 6.  - Troy

 

During PE this fortnight we have been fine-tuning our paddle bat skills with balancing, hitting towards a target and pivoting our feet when weaving balls between cones with our bats. During each skill focus we have been working on our spatial awareness and teamwork. Students focused on encouraging each other and achieving their personal best. - Emma

 

Science: Philippa

The Science Week 2024 topic is 'Species Survival'. We are celebrating with lessons about seahorses and the plucky migratory bird, the Bar-tailed Godwit. 

In Week 6, older students will run some lunchtime activities about flight.

 

Gardening: Jo

This term Sam’s Year 2 class are learning about mushrooms. We’ve been given a mushroom kit from Mushrooms in Schools. The students helped put together the kit and are waiting patiently for the mushrooms to appear through the peat moss. The students brainstormed all they knew about mushrooms. They’ve observed them in the wild (veggie patch), discussed their merits, parts and also why we should only eat those bought at the supermarket. 

Last week group one made (nut-free) pesto and mushroom pinwheels. 

 

Girls Basketball Tuesday 13/8/24

Edith, Ada, Ivy, Chloe, Ellie, Nilah, Eloise and Sophie drove to St Francis School on Tuesday, 13/8/24. We got there at 8:30 and got back to school at 3:00. We had 5 games of basketball against  Crafers, St Michael’s, Aldgate, Mt Barker and Hahndorf. We won 1 game and lost 4. We were thrilled to win our last game and felt victorious. Because we played 5 games in total, at the end of the day end we were all exhausted. We all had so much fun throughout the day even though we lost the majority of the games.

Thanks Phil for coaching and thanks Prue for scoring. By Ivy. 

 

Knockout Basketball

The knockout basketball was held on the 13 of August at St Francis de Sales. We got there at 8:45 and had warm-ups till our first game. Our first game was against Handorf at 10:18, it was a close game but, in the end, we lost by 6 points. Our second game was against Crafers at 11:30 and we beat them by 27 points. Our third game was against Mount Barker Waldorf, and it was extremely close but, in the end, we won by 6 points, and we got into the finals against Nairne. If we won against Nairne, our team would’ve gotten into state basketball tournament. It would’ve been played later in the season. We got the first points of the game and in the first half, we were winning. Then they caught up to us and beat us by fourteen points in the end. After the games, we were all exhausted and aching. It was a great experience for people if you haven’t played basketball before.  Innes.