CLASSROOM NEWS!
News from the Prep/1 Room!
It’s been a hands-on week of thinking, trying, and celebrating progress! We welcomed our new little learners on Monday, so exciting for everyone. It was wonderful to see how quickly they joined in at play time and how excited they were to be at school, already mixing beautifully with the rest of the cohort.
In Numeracy we balanced some light testing across Number, Measurement, Algebra, Statistics and Space, then dived into rich lessons on grouping, patterns and fair sharing. Highlights included our “Walking on All Fours” animal-leg investigation (connecting 2s and 4s), spotting beautiful skip-counting patterns on number charts and personal number lines (2s, 5s, 10s), and using real objects to model division (“fair shares”), from M&M stories to a “Paperbag Princess” dragon challenge. Students are getting confident explaining how they know with pictures, number sentences and math talk.
During Writing we completed cold-write assessments in both recounts and creative narratives (toys coming alive!), and kept building sentence power with subordinating conjunctions, before/after in Foundation and if/when in Year 1. Lots of focus on capitals, spaces, full stops and clear sequencing.
While in InitiaLit we’ve been revising sounds and tricky words, practising text reading and spelling with CVC/CVCC patterns and the suffix –s, plus “rainbow writing” to stretch our segmenting and blending. We’ve also begun wrapping up the last round of program assessments.
In Science we investigated push and pull in sports, testing how different forces move different balls and representing our results with simple graphs. For Genius Hour, students designed and built A4 kites with skewers and tails, then headed outside to test and tweak, real engineers in action!
A big shout-out to our 4/5/6s, who represented the school brilliantly at the Blast Cricket competition at CMC Junortoun, super teamwork, boundaries, wickets and sunshine all round!
What's Happening in 2/3?
Another fortnight has already passed us by! We have been completing lots of assessments over the past couple of weeks to start presenting our learning from across the year. The 2/3s have been bursting at the seams to observe Melbourne's Collins Stre peregrine falcon babies leave the nest this week. We are still waiting, but most believe it will happen in the coming day or two!
In Literacy, we have been learning about the phoneme /j/ made with the trigraph 'dge' or digraph 'ge'. We learnt that 'dge' is used after short vowel sounds such as bridge, but 'ge' is used for all other sounds ie. 'change' or 'page'. We have been consolidating our knowledge of comprehension strategies (predicting, summarising, monitoring, questioning, connecting and inferring) on a range of texts, to set us up for a successful year of reading in grades 3/4. In writing, we have continued to learn about our selected animals; finding out some gruesome facts about predators and their varied methods of hunting...
In Maths, our group have been revisiting place value, to better understand numbers beyond 10,000. We have been practising reciting numbers correctly, and using place value to add or subtract (ie. adding 1 to the thousands column in 845,631 would make 846,631, and one more would make 847,631, and so on).
We cannot wait to participate in the Colour Fun Run too - fingers crossed the weather really shows off for us on Friday!
4/5/6 Class News
Miss Childs’/Mrs Wilson’s Class
Wow, where did this past fortnight go? It’s been another busy fortnight.
In the senior room, I'm finding that a lot of our students are coming to school really tired. As this year is quickly coming to a close, it is important to remember that we all need the right amount of sleep function at our best.
In Literacy, we started our end of year testing. We are about a third of the way through our class novel – reading 2-3 chapters a day. Our biographies on our chosen convicts, are coming along nicely. We also made comparisons of ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day, drawing on our prior knowledge and new research, creating a Venn Diagram.
In Math, we started our end of year testing. Just know that your children have been working really hard to get this done in a timely manner. We appreciate how well they are working, but we can't expect them to do well, if they aren't getting the sleep their bodies require are this age, your help is greatly appreciated.
Mrs. Clarke's Maths and Literacy
We have begun revising our learning from this year in the last couple of weeks.
In literacy, we have been revising the different spelling patterns we have been learning, the rules for adding suffixes to words and homophones.
As the weather gets warmer we have been studying snakes! We have looked at where snakes like to live- lots of places kids are drawn to play! We've read information about snake first aide and researched our favourite snakes to write an information report.
We have also started our last book for the year 'The One and Only Ivan.' by Katherine Applegate. It is a narrative story about a gorilla named Ivan who lives in a cage, along with a few other animals, in a shopping plaza. The animals have begun reflecting on their lives before captivity. Our prediction is that the animals may plan an escape!
In maths, we have been working on multiplying decimals and long multiplication- lots of new learning in this area! We have begun assessments. Students have been discussing their assessments with their teachers. This allows our students to keep track of the their learning and take some responsibility for their own progress.
Cooking
This fortnight's cooking lesson was based on our supply of delicious bananas donated from food share.
Cheese, bacon and caramelised onion filo swirl
https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/cheese-bacon-caramelised-onion-filo-swirl-recipe/ynksaaif
Banana bread scones
https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/banana-bread-scones-recipe/u21n0f3y
Banana smoothie
https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/banana-smoothie/c6d0786b-7e53-4246-ad22-a98739f37a46
Banana and chocolate muffins
https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/banana-chocolate-muffins/c51512ae-c3ab-4167-95bc-2c28048a3666
