Literacy and Numeracy

Supporting Mathematics Fluency at Home

Building fluency in mathematics is all about developing confidence and quick recall of basic number facts. At home, families can help strengthen these skills through fun and simple activities that make maths part of everyday life.

Here are a few easy ideas:

• Card Games: Use a deck of cards to play games like "Snap" for number bonds or "War" to practise comparing numbers.
• Baking Together: Involve your child in measuring ingredients or doubling/halving recipes to reinforce concepts like fractions and multiplication.
• Shopping Maths: Ask your child to estimate totals, calculate change, or compare prices while shopping.
• Times Tables Challenges: Make it a game to see how many times tables they can answer correctly in one minute.

Just a few minutes of practice each day can make a big difference. Most importantly, have fun with maths and celebrate effort and progress!

Victorian Premiers' Reading Challenge

The Premiers' Reading Challenge has officially started and everyone at St James is invited to participate!  The goal of the Challenge is to foster a love of reading of quality literature.

It is not a competition; it is a personal challenge for children to read a set number of books by 5 September 2025. Children from Prep to Year 2 are encouraged to read or ‘experience’ 30 books with their parents and teachers. Children from Year 3 to Year 6 are challenged to read 15 books. All children who meet the Challenge will receive a certificate of achievement signed by the Victorian Premier and former Premiers.

Student logins have been distributed; Prep-2 students have a sticker in their Reading log books and Year 3-6 student details can be found in their school diary or are available from classroom teachers.

To log into the Challenge go to https://vprc.eduweb.vic.gov.au/home

Go to Student login, then VPRC login and follow the prompts.

Happy Reading!

Book Covering

Thank you to those parents who have been helping with book covering.  We still have a number of new books to be covered; including take home decodable books for junior students, decodables for older readers and class sets for teachers to use with small groups.  If any parents are able to help with covering these books we would really appreciate it.  Please see Louise Matthews or Jo Matarazzo, in the Library. 

louise.matthews@sjvermont.catholic.edu.au (Literacy Leader)