It’s been a busy and positive start to the term as students have settled back into their classrooms. Across the school, classes have been revisiting the strong routines and expectations established during our Great Start program earlier in the year. It’s been great to see students reconnecting with their learning and peers.

This term, our Integrated Studies focus is Australian History. This is always an exciting unit for students as they explore what life was like in the past and begin to make connections between then and now.

Our Prep students have been learning all about NAIDOC Week. They've been talking about why it's important and learning more about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. As part of their learning, they explored the different flags of Australia and created their own colourful artwork. These ‘hands’ are now proudly displayed alongside their class Acknowledgement of Country.

Our Year 1/2 students have been learning about Aboriginal history, check out some of the texts they have been sharing together over the first two weeks.

Our Year 3/4 students have begun exploring the role of historians and the important distinction between primary and secondary sources. To support their inquiry based learning, they’ve created “Wondering and Word Walls” in their classrooms. These are interactive spaces where they can record and revisit their questions as they uncover new information throughout the term. This fosters curiosity, critical thinking and a deeper connection to historical inquiry.

Our Year 5/6 students have been engaging with the historical novel Surviving Sydney Cove, using it as a powerful tool to explore and understand the contrasting perspectives of early British settlers and Aboriginal Australians. Through rich discussions and critical thinking tasks, students are deepening their understanding of the impact of colonisation and developing empathy for the experiences of both groups during this significant period in Australian history.

If you're looking for a fantastic way to extend your child's learning at home, we recommend exploring the My Place website. This rich and engaging resource offers video reenactments that follow a timeline of Australian history, helping students connect with the past through the eyes of children from different eras. It’s an excellent way to deepen their understanding of the historical concepts explored in class. As always, we encourage parent supervision when using online resources.

https://myplace.edu.au/

Don’t forget to keep an eye on Seesaw for regular updates and snapshots of your child’s learning journey in the classroom!

PLC Newsletters are now available on Compass.

These newsletters provide an overview of the term ahead, including key dates, curriculum focuses and upcoming events. We encourage all families to take a moment to read through their child’s PLC newsletter to stay informed and up to date.

Numeracy:

We have a very exciting term ahead of us in Numeracy at Lucas Primary School! As a staff, we’ve been fortunate to begin our partnership with Mathematics Consultant Michael Minas—an exceptional maths educator and the founder of the Love Maths website. Michael will return to LPS in Weeks 7 and 8 to model lessons and support teachers with Numeracy instruction, including differentiating learning and adapting to students’ understanding in the moment.

In Week 8, we will be holding our first Maths Mania Day—a whole day dedicated to Numeracy learning and games! Students will have the opportunity to earn points for their house by demonstrating a growth mindset and participating in a range of engaging Numeracy tasks. Watch this space for more information!

Then, in Week 9, we’ll host an Open Afternoon where parents are invited into classrooms to learn some fun and educational Numeracy games. Families will receive resources to take home so the learning (and fun!) can continue beyond the classroom.

We’re looking forward to a Numeracy-filled Term 3!

In Prep, students have been learning about place value in two-digit numbers. They have been identifying how many tens and ones a number has and understanding the value of each digit (for example, the 7 in 78 represents 70).

In Grade 1/2, students have been exploring data collection and representation. One engaging task involved graphing the totals of rolling two dice—sparking wonderful discussions about why no one rolled a 1 or a 13!

Our Year 3/4 students have been diving into their learning about money! They’ve been exploring Australian coins and notes, and developing strategies to calculate totals and solve real-life money problems. Next time you’re out shopping, encourage your child to help add up the total—or even practise paying at the checkout.

And finally, in Grade 5/6, students have been investigating decimals, including ordering decimals to the thousandths (and beyond) and placing them on a number line. We are so impressed with the depth of understanding these wonderful learners are developing!

Literacy:

Next week we are excited for the return of the LPS Book Fair! You will see us set up in the bottom floor of the new portable buildings on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8.30am and at 3.30pm til 4pm. We are also opening during lunchtime on Thursday before our Grandparents & Special Guests join us for the afternoon. All classes will also have a chance to visit the Book Fair on Tuesday and create a wish list for any books that they might like. A portion of all sales will go towards the installation of our new playground!

High abilities:

It has been wonderful to see our students proudly representing Lucas Primary School at events to extend their learning in Literacy and STEM in the last few weeks.

In the last week of Term 2, Miss Moran and Mrs Reid accompanied our Young Authors to their first workshop at the Ballarat Library, where they were wowed by illustrators and authors galore! The Ballarat Library is a spectacular venue, with its beautiful central space and lots of breakout rooms for workshops, which some of our Young Authors hadn’t visited before. Students listened to talks and took part in workshops by author Ben Sanders, Gary Fay, Tamara Sheward and Anthony Kearle. They worked on sizzling starts, writing the hero and even got a sneak-peek of a not-yet-published book! Keep your eyes peeled for more information about what our students learnt at their Young Author workshops over the coming weeks!

We also had some of our Grade 6 girls, accompanied by Mrs Cooper, participating in the GALS in STEM program, which took place at Federation University, with a number of other Ballarat primary schools. Students worked on skills which they will require to create their prototype product in the next session. I was shown an impressive laser-cut tree which students had created on their return to Lucas! Encouraging girls to explore areas of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) in the future is a primary purpose of these

sessions.

This term, our Integrated Studies focus is Australian History. This is always an exciting unit for students as they explore what life was like in the past and begin to make connections between then and now.

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