Focus Newsletter

What's happening?

Foundation

Oh my goodness—our lovely Foundation students have been very busy with all of our school activities and special event days! We had our first school photo (the students looked fabulous!), and we absolutely loved welcoming all our mums and special people into the classrooms last Friday. It was such a warm and joyful celebration!

 

A big thank you to our amazing helpers with corridor reading! Your support makes a real difference in building our young learners’ confidence with reading and writing. There are still some gaps in the roster, so if you’re available, please feel free to add your name—we truly appreciate the extra help.

 

Literacy:

This week in Literacy, we have been focusing on CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) sentences. Next week, we will begin learning about the plural ‘s’. Students have also been introduced to more digraphs, including ph and ed, and even some trigraphs, including dge and tch.  

It’s common for young learners to reverse ‘b’ and ‘d’ in both reading and writing. We teach a range of strategies to help them with this, and we encourage you to gently remind your child if they mix them up. It takes time, exposure, and practice, but we’re already seeing wonderful progress. We continue to be so impressed with their developing writing skills—it’s lovely to see their confidence growing!

 

Maths:

Last week, we wrapped up our Place Value unit in Maths Groups. This is a key concept and will be revisited in Terms 3 and 4, as well as in our daily Maths Warm-ups. We’ve now moved on to exploring 2-Dimensional (2D) shapes, and students are enjoying identifying and working with familiar shapes in their environment.

 

Inquiry – Healthy Habits: As part of our ‘Healthy Habits’ topic, students participated in a healthy eating experience this week. They explored the benefits of fruits and vegetables and learned about the essential nutrients our bodies need to stay strong and healthy. Students also had the opportunity to taste a variety of fruits and vegetables, making meaningful connections between the nutrients they provide and the ways they support different parts of the body.

 

Show and Tell: This week’s Show and Tell is linked to our inquiry unit, ‘Healthy Habits’. A dinner plate worksheet has been sent home for students to complete and use during their presentations. Students are encouraged to draw and label the different parts of their dinner. Please take a moment to talk with your child about the foods they are eating and how these foods help their bodies grow and stay healthy.

 

Reminders:

As the weather gets wetter and colder, we encourage you to pack spare pants and socks, and a warm (named) navy jacket. It is also a good idea to keep a spare change of underwear, pants, and socks in your child's bag at all times, as accidents can occur at school.

Grade 1

It has been a wonderful week in the Grade 1 classrooms with plenty of exciting learning happening across all areas!

 

This week, students have been introduced to Poetry using their 5 Senses. They especially enjoyed creating seasonal poems using a rich variety of adjectives they brainstormed as a class. Next week, we will be moving on to Procedural Writing—learning how to write clear, step-by-step instructions.

 

For Word Study, our spelling focus has been the “AR” pattern, which makes the /ar/ sound as in car and star. You can help your child review this code at home by; saying words with “AR” aloud and emphasising the “ar” sound or by playing rhyming games to see if your child can come up with other words containing the /ar/ code. You can also encourage them to look for “AR” words while reading books together or by completing the new Word Study Practise Page, which was placed in Homework Folders on Thursday. Next week the codes we are learning are au/aw, of which a new homework page will be placed in their folder in Week 5.

 

In Reading, students are developing their fluency—reading with expression and sounding more like they are talking, instead of reading like a robot! Please continue supporting your child by reading together as much as you can! This regular practise really helps consolidate their learning from class.

 

You may have noticed a DIBELS reading assessment score included in the feedback section of your child’s reader folder. The DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) reading fluency tracker is a tool we use to monitor your child’s development in reading fluency. These short, timed reading assessments will be conducted every 4 weeks this term to provide valuable insight into your child’s progress in reading fluency over time. Factors such as fatigue, illness, or even the difficulty of a particular passage can affect performance, so you may find that your child’s scores fluctuate throughout the term. A single low score does not necessarily mean there is a problem. Instead, the trend over time—along with other important factors such as classroom observations, comprehension discussions, and reading group participation—gives us the most accurate picture of your child’s reading development.

 

In Maths groups, we have continued our unit on Measurement, focusing on capacity and mass. Students have been exploring vocabulary like hefting, heavy, heavier, lighter, the same, full, empty, half full, and quarter full. They have loved the hands-on activities, and we encourage them to use their skills at home—especially when helping in the kitchen!

 

This week’s Wellbeing focus was Empathy. We had thoughtful discussions about what it means to be empathetic and how we can show kindness to others. Next week, we will explore the qualities of being a good friend and will have the opportunity to review some of the problem-solving concepts covered in last terms URStrong Friendship Incursion. 

 

Thank you to everyone who has made prompt payment for the Weather Incursion. If you have not had the chance yet, the payment information is available on Compass.

 

Thank you for your continued support!

Grade 2

Literacy: This fortnight, we have really enjoyed integrating our Inquiry topic, ‘All Mixed Up’ and our learning within the ‘English’ strands of the curriculum. Students have explored a range of procedural texts and their features, and are developing their skills with writing their own procedures. Students have written a procedure titled ‘How to Make Bubble Mixture’ and then had a ball making and blowing bubbles. This week we have written a ‘How to Play Snakes and Ladders’ procedure.

 

During our PhOrMes/Word Study lessons, students have been learning to read and spell words with the schwa sound and words with the ti,ci and si codes.

 

Students have also been learning to apply their knowledge from our ‘Grammar Project’ lessons by identifying adjectives and creating sentences using interesting adjectives.   

 

Inquiry/Core Knowledge: We continue to read a whole class text which focuses on building students' understanding of our “All Mixed Up’ Science/inquiry topic. We are focusing on developing their ability to identify information within a text, discuss and answer questions during and after reading. Students have been learning about the states of matter (solids, liquids, gases) and how matter is anything that takes up space. 

 

Maths: In Maths groups over the last fortnight students have been investigating ‘length’ as part of our measurement topic. They are learning to compare, order and measure objects using appropriate informal units, and some familiar metric units. As always, opportunities to explore length in everyday situations at home will be a wonderful way to consolidate and build on your child’s knowledge.

 

Wellbeing: Over the last fortnight our wellbeing and social skills focus has been centred around ‘strengths’. This includes how we can identify some personal strengths we use at school as well as how we can use our strengths to be a good friend or family member.

 

Rotations: We continued our rotations activities which allow students and teachers from the four grades to mix and work together. The activities aim to develop students' cooperation skills as well as some mindfulness and art opportunities. 

 

Homework: Thank you for your support with homework: Regular reading aloud and a weekly Word Study/PhOrMeS worksheet. Optional online extras: ‘Nessy Reading and Spelling’ and ‘Sunset/Jetpack Maths’ (Essential Assessment).

Grade 3

Core Knowledge: As part of our unit, ‘We Are One’, this fortnight we have explored how ‘The Dreaming’ may help First Nations Australians make sense of their world, as well as First Nation Peoples’ languages and how they have changed over time and place. We enjoyed a visit from ‘Aboriginal Incursions’ who delivered a fun, engaging and educational workshop to help our students build a deeper understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures through storytelling, performances, and hands-on activities. The workshop was led by experienced cultural leaders and entertainers, and blended traditional and contemporary experiences to foster respect and awareness.

 

Writing: Students are learning more about information reports, with a focus this fortnight on introduction and conclusion paragraphs, as well as expanding simple sentences by using a coordinating conjunction to form compound sentences.

 

Word Study: Students have really enjoyed finding about the history of the English language this week, learning that English is not the same language it was when it started hundreds of years ago. English has borrowed lots of words from other languages, and when it borrowed words from other languages, it also borrowed the spellings from those languages too. So, English spelling now has the spelling patterns from lots of languages.

 

Maths: We completed our ‘Fractions’ topic last week. As always, we encourage opportunities to continue exploring these concepts further at home. This week we began our ‘Data representation’ topic. Students have been learning to identify categorical and discrete numerical data, and write survey questions for a given purpose.

 

Wellbeing: Our wellbeing sessions this fortnight continued teaching students important strategies for building and maintaining positive relationships using the URStrong Friendology program. We explored four strategies for making new friends, as well as the ‘truths’ of friendship, which aim to help students have realistic expectations in their friendships. 

 

Homework: Thank you for your support with homework. We have reminded all students to ask a grown-up to check their homework with them and fix errors or make changes as needed, before submitting. We encourage you to support your child with completing tasks as needed.

We will continue to collect diaries every Friday to monitor and reward home reading and remind parents to please check and sign your child's diary each week.

Grade 4

Wonderful learning continues to happen in Grade 4 and watching our chickens hatch and grow over the past week has been a highlight. Many of our students are showing wonderful curiosity as we delve further into our science unit, ‘Friends or Foes?’. They have been asking terrific, thought-provoking questions as they continue to participate in hands-on activities as well as reading and writing tasks that centre around building their background knowledge and making meaningful connections with their world. 

 

Reading & Science: The students have been immersed in reading about plants and different animal life cycles. Many in depth discussions have been taking place across all classes which have centred around our big questions such as: How do the parts of a flower contribute to pollination? How do different types of animals change throughout their lives? What is the lifecycle of a bee? As our learning is science based, the students have been developing their observation skills. They have planted grass seeds in glass jars and will be monitoring the growth of these in the next couple of weeks. Students have begun writing & drawing what they see & describing the stages of growth using the vocabulary that they have been learning through their reading. They have also looked more closely at flowers using magnifying glasses and learning about the different parts that are responsible for pollination. 

 

Explanation writing: After the completion of a pre-assessment writing task by the students, we identified specific areas of explanation texts to direct our explicit teaching towards. Our focus has been on learning particular language features such as sequencing words (eg. first of all, next, following on, eventually, finally) which are used to indicate the stages or process within an explanation. We have also looked at what adverbs are & how they can be classified eg. adverbs of manner, time, frequency and place. The students will be conducting research in class on a chosen animal or plant life cycle in preparation to write their own explanation text.

 

Numeracy: Time has been our Math’s focus in Grade 4. Students have been practising telling the time to and past in 1-minute intervals, calculating periods of elapsed time, converting units of time as well as learning to read 24-hour clock times.  ‘Daily Review’ tasks at the beginning of every Maths lesson have given our students the opportunity to review their learning and work with multiplication, decimals, fractions and time.

 

Homework: 

  • Reading 5 x week. Students should be recording their reading in their diary and we ask if you could please sign these at the end of the week.

  • Word study + morphology

  • Essential Assessment task - addition and subtraction

  • Multiplication fact practice

Reminders:

  • Healesville Excursion is on Friday 23rd May.  Permission & payment is due by Monday 19th May.

  •  “Nude Food” on a Tuesday continues this term. We encourage our students to try and bring their snacks and lunch in plastic free wrapping with the incentive to not only reduce the amount of disposable rubbish to help our environment, but to be the recipients of the ‘golden lunchbox’ which recognises the class with the highest percentage of students who have ‘nude food’ for the week!

Grade 5

We’ve had another engaging and thoughtful week of learning across all areas!

 

In Reading, students have finished the first three chapters of Rabbit Proof Fence. Much of our focus has been on the historical context of the Swan River Colony and the role of Captain James Stirling.

 

In Inquiry, we’ve continued exploring the stories of the Stolen Generations, including learning about Murray Harrison’s story and examining our local history in relation to this important topic.

 

In Writing, students wrote thoughtful responses to Ruth Hegarty’s story, focusing on emotive and evaluative language. We’ve also been strengthening our grammar skills through this lens.

 

Our Word Study this week focused on the morphemes TEND/TENT/TENSE, exploring their meaning – “to stretch” or “strain” – and how they appear in everyday language.

 

In Maths, we have been working on comparing, ordering, adding, and subtracting fractions with like and related denominators. Students are building confidence and fluency with these important number concepts.

 

A big congratulations to all students in Grade 5 who participated in Cross Country this week! We’re proud of everyone’s efforts and wish those moving on to the next round the very best of luck.

 

Reminders:

  • Camp preparation is well underway – please continue referring to the packing list to make sure everything is ready.

  • Additional details regarding medications and the Monday morning departure will be shared with families shortly.

We’re looking forward to another great week ahead!

Grade 6

Literacy

Students have continued their work on information reports this week, researching, planning and writing a text based on a famous person of their choice. Next week, students will research, plan, and write an information report on the solar system, which will be linked to our reading/inquiry topic.

In Reading, we have continued working on our ‘Astronomy: Space Systems’ unit. This week, students have considered the question ‘How can I model the relationship between the sun, earth and moon?’.

 

Mathematics

In Mathematics, we will be completing our unit on Fractions this week. Students will be revising their work in class before completing a BAR Modelling task on Friday. In week 5, students will commence our next concept on ‘Decimals’.

 

RRRR

Students participated in their second lesson from topic seven of the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships program this week, with our topic being ‘Born or Made? The Intergenerational Gender Machine’.

 

Interschool Sport

Students will continue their Term 2 Interschool Sport this Friday 16th May. This week’s round will be at home against Kingswood. Good luck to all our teams.

 

Term 2 Dates

Please check Compass and Focus for further information regarding Term 2 dates relating to Grade 6 students.