Achilles Community Report

Welcome Back to a Year of Exciting Learning Adventures!

Greetings and a warm welcome to the start of a brand-new school year! We hope this message finds you well-rested and filled with enthusiasm for the exciting journey that lies ahead. Our classrooms are buzzing with energy and creativity as we prepare to engage, inspire, and empower our students. 

We look forward to celebrating our learning and achievements with families throughout the year ahead!

Reading

We're excited to share with you some of the fantastic progress our young readers have been making this year! In our reading sessions, we've been developing skills such as predicting before we read, using clues from the front covers. We've delved into various reading strategies that are equipping our children to become skilled readers, empowering them to navigate texts with confidence. Additionally, we've been identifying connections between texts, encouraging students to identify similarities from one story to another. Through 'right there' questions, we're ensuring comprehension by locating direct answers within the text, and we're practicing sequencing main events in time order.  

Our students have been exposed to many picture story books, sparking their imaginations and nurturing their love for reading. We encourage you to ask them about their favourite. 

Writing 

In Writing we have all been such amazing authors! We have been learning about the writing process and the steps we need to follow - which is to plan, draft, revise, edit and publish. During our recount writing unit, we have engaged with the books I Went Walking and The Tiger Who Came To Tea. This allowed us to make the connection between entertaining recount storybooks and how to become creative writers. We toured outside of our school to plan what we saw while walking, writing sentences about what we saw. Additionally, we made tiger masks and role played being the Tiger who came to tea. We cannot wait to see what everybody writes next. 

Maths 

In Maths the children have been working on their knowledge of numbers from 0 to 120. They have started to use a variety of maths resources, such as counters, tens frames, hundreds charts, dice and many others, to show what they know about numbers. They have been practising counting by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s. The Achilles kids have been also busy studying this year's calendar to learn more about days, weeks, months and years. Their explorations have led them to make connections between the months and the seasons and celebrations that happen in different months. 

Inquiry

This term in inquiry we will be exploring history with a focus on how things have changed and what has stayed the same. Students have started their inquiry process by using images and items from the past and now to begin asking their own questions, which we hope to answer throughout the term.

SEL 

In SEL we have reintroduced students to our school wide behaviour matrix. Students have identified ways to show how they can care for our school, our learning, others and themselves. We have had a strong start to showing our cares both in the classroom and when in the play areas. Our next focus will be on student shaving a growth

Things to Remember

• Community doors open at 8:40 AM.
• Dismissal is at 3:20 PM.
• Please bring a hat to school each day in Terms 1 and 4.
• Please have some food packed in your child’s lunchbox that will be suitable for fruit or vegetable snack, for example, pieces of fruit, vegetables or yoghurt.
• Ensure your child’s belongings are clearly labelled. This includes clothing, drink bottles, hats and lunchboxes (lids too). 
• Students are to come to school with a water bottle each day with their name on it.
• If you need to speak to your child’s mentor teacher, please contact the office to pass on the message or organise this before or after school. You can also email them through Compass.
• If your child is absent, please provide a reason through Compass.
• Return your child's reader bag to school for their teacher to get it ready.

What you can do with your child at home

• Encourage your child to develop more independence. Let them help pack/unpack their school bag/lunch box and get their uniform ready.

• You could read a book with your child or encourage them to read to you, and ask them questions about the book.
• Encourage your child to take increased responsibility for their own belongings.
• Establishing a regular routine helps students develop a positive approach to learning and will benefit them as they progress through their schooling.  
• Encourage your child to practise tying their own shoelaces.
• Encourage an early bedtime to ensure all students have a minimum of 10 hours sleep a night.  
• Encourage your child to tell you about their day at school.