Specialist News

OLA! SPANISH@CSPS

At CSPS our students (Foundation – Year 6) engage in Spanish learning to create learners who grow into responsible, happy, resilient and socially fulfilled individuals. All students actively participate in language other than English (LOTE) studies through learning the Spanish language such as greetings, colors, numbers and discovering cultural traditions, special events and customs.  Each week, students participate in a Spanish lesson that is facilitated by their classroom teacher.

Year 3 – 6 students also have the opportunity to participate in an online learning platform to further their Spanish language development. Education Perfect (EP) is an online language learning platform which provides lessons to practise all the key skills involved in language learning: listening, reading, writing, speaking, grammar and vocabulary.

Students Spanish work is displayed in the area outside the First Aid room.  

In Term 1 students in the Lower School learnt about Spanish festivals. The Foundation students celebrated Easter with carscarones (confetti eggs).

What is a Picasso Cow?

For over 10 years, Picasso Cows has been teaching students about the Australian dairy industry.

This interactive educational program teaches primary school aged about dairy products, its health and nutrition benefits, farming practices and manufacturing processes.

All while decorating a life-size fibreglass cow!

CSPS has received a blank fibreglass cow, to be designed and decorated, while learning about the Australian dairy industry through our specialist lessons.

The program is supported by curriculum linked resources on the Discover Dairy website, across two key themes of Farm to Plate and Health & Nutrition.

During Term 2, CSPS students will create a Picasso Cows learning journal, documenting and showcasing students' learning and engagement with their chosen theme- Health and Nutrition.

PLUS there's a chance to win some amazing prizes!

It has been a busy start to term 2 in P.E with lots of different sporting opportunities provided across all year levels.

Junior School:

Students have been focusing on following instructions whilst completing different movement challenges and minor games. One of their favourite games has Fire and Ice - in this game there are two taggers (Ice Monsters) who try and tag players. When players are tagged they have to freeze and can only be unfrozen when someone with a fire ball (red ball) unfreezes them. 

Middle School:

Students have been working on skill based activities and modified games to introduce them to Netball. Some of the concepts covered include different passes, catching techniques, moving into space and simple defensive techniques. A lot of the students had lightbulb moments when they realised that the skills used could we carried across multiple sports. Some comments included 'this is the same way we defend in footy" and "we have to pivot in basketball too". 

Senior School:

Students have been learning the rules of netball by playing mini games in which they explore the different positions. They have worked within a team to discuss game play with a focus on creating space and maintaining possession of the ball. 

District Cross Country

On Wednesday 24th of April we had 49 students from year 4, 5 and 6 represent the school at District Cross Country. The event took place at Casey Fields. We had four seasons in one day but that did not stop the students trying their best. We are very proud of how the students conducted themselves. It was great to see so many family members cheering them on. Congratulations to the following students who have qualified for Division.

Sophie A, Amyralyna R, Chase V, Maddix H, Zayne A, Madalee W, Ava T, Emily N, Elliot F & Lachlan S.

Casey Basketball Clinics

In week 2 we were fortunate enough to have NBL1 player player Stephanie from Casey Cavaliers come and conduct free clinics with year 6, year 3 and year 4 classes. These clinics are always well received by the students and cater for all abilities. 

All students took home a free family pass to attend one the Cavs home games. 

If you child is interested in playing basketball check out the Casey Basketball website for links to local team contacts and further free clinics.

https://www.caseybasketball.com.au/

Hockey Clinics

We were fortunate enough to be one of the schools selected to be part of the Hockey Roadshow. This allowed us to have a hockey coach come and conduct clinics with year 3 and 4 students during their P.E class in week 3.

Term 2 important dates:

There are lots of sporting events coming up in term 2, information will be posted to Compass prior to each event.

• Tuesday 7th May - Aus Bike Roadshow Clinics (Year 4, 5 and 6 students only)
• Wednesday 8th May - District Athletics (qualifying students only)
• Monday 13th May to Friday 17th May - Year 3 and Year 4 Swimming program
• Wednesday 29th May - Division Cross Country (qualifying students only)
• Wednesday 12th June - Regional Cross Country (qualifying students only)
• Tuesday 18th June - Winter Lightning Premier Sports (Year 5 and 6 students)

Welcome back to Social Wellbeing in Term 2 with of exciting things happening.

Foundation

The foundations have continued on discussing emotions. They are looking at the Zones of Regulation now that we have gotten settled in and learnt everyone's names and the routines at school. We began with our Green Zone, which is the zone we are in when we are feeling happy, calm or proud. It is the zone we are in a lot of the time, but it is not necessary to always be in this zone. We headed outside and traced around our bodies and then drew all the things that make us feel happy and loved. There were a lot of mentions of cuddles with mum.

Years 1-6

The rest of the school has begun talking about diet and nutrition, to link in with the Picasso cow program. The students have been discussing the different types of energy , vitamins and nutrients we can get from all the different foods we eat. The junior and middle schools have been sorting foods into the food groups, while the senior school have begun reading the nutrition labels on the food to make their own informed choices about the foods they put into their bodies.

Phoenix Soar

The year 5 and 6 students have started their Phoenix Soar program. This program runs for 4 weeks on Mental Health and Wellbeing. The students will learn to recognise, regulate and articulate their emotions. It combines classroom and on court learning, along with digital content from players from the South East Melbourne Phoenix.

Term 2 is all about Music and Dance!

Foundation

Students have been introduced to music and dance through a variety of songs and movement activities. They have played lots of percussion instruments including claves (rhythm sticks), cymbols, bells and drums. It was impressive to see them treating our instruments and music space with respect and encourgaing others to do the same. 

We have danced with scarves, tapped our sticks to music and played Old McDonald Had a Band with numerous different instruments. 

They are developing their understanding of beat by stomping and jumping and tapping to the beat.

Junior School

We have been learning about Tempo and using our bodies to demonstrate Largo (slow), Moderato (moderate) and Allegro (fast). The photos show students being largo like turtles, moderato like flamingos and allegro like rabbits.

Middle School

Students have been developing their internal beat by singing well know songs and replacing some words with silence. This way they are 'feeling' the beat rather than singing. 

The following song is sung to the rhythm of Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

There are no bananas in the sky, in the sky There are no bananas in the sky, in the sky There’s a sun, and a moon and a coconut cream pie 

There are no bananas in the sky, in the sky'

We had a go at singing without the word 'sky' and then without the word 'no' which was even harder!

The Grade 3 and 4's have also been composing and performing their own clapping rhythms and moved on to adding more body percussion techniques. Performing in sync with a partner prooved challenging! They learnt some strategies to help with this such as; one person counting them in, using visual cues for a silent beat (rest) and having someone point to the place on their sheet so they could keep up with each other. 

Senior School

This term we are working towards creating our own rap song to link with our Picasso Cow Program. Students have been practising reading short lines of text and experimenting with how to adjust the way you say a word to ensure it fits into a 4 beat bar of music. The photos show the students working in pairs to turn a simple childrens book into a rap. 

You can listen to our inspiration rap - The Lorax.

In the first few weeks of Term 2 we are working on collecting and displaying data in digital form. 

Foundation - Junior School

We have tried different ways to survey the class but voting for one item only proved difficult in some situations. To solve this we voted by moving our bodies into the space to represent the answer. For example- If you travel to school by car stand near the door, if you travel by bike stand near the table. We had to use our critical thinking skills to figure out what to do if our answers fit into multiple categories.

We created a tally sheet and learnt about pictographs and bar graphs through the games.

• Fruit-fall
• Fishing

Year 1 and 2 completed the above as well as learning how to create their own pictograph and bar graph as per below. They learnt how to drag and duplicate objects in Google Slides and how to colour squares to match the tally sheet and create a bar graph.  

Middle and Senior School

The first two weeks of Digitech we have been looking at data, what it is it and how can we display it. Students collected data about football teams and then created a data table. They were then give the opportunity to explore google sheets to try and display their data.

Look at what they came up with.....

We were all surprised at how easy it was to display data using digital technology, we learnt that using the chart function allows us to show our data in many different ways. We also learnt how to customize our tables 

Nature Play

The Year 2 students enjoyed the sunshine last week with an exploration over at Sonny's. This was our first excursion for the year and our focus was living and non living things. We were on the lookout for fungi which we found numerous examples, we spoke about how important mushrooms are to the environment and how we should not pick or eat wild mushrooms. 

Foundation and Year 1 students have been exploring the school grounds focussing on the features of creatures! We had lots of fun with the magnifying glasses trying to find and identify different types of insects.

Kitchen Garden

Year 3 students had their first lesson in the kitchen last week, a big thank you to Mrs Halket who stepped in and took this lesson.

In the garden we are preparing the soil for winter planting, students have been rejuvenating the soil which has required lots of hard work. Well done to the Year 4's who never disappoint in the garden!

Environmental Science

The senior school have finished off their electrical circuits projects and successfully managed to create a plan and then build a model house containing two lights running on different circuits. This was a great task and highly engaging to the students. We have some budding electricians in our midst.

Senior school students are now moving on to the study of biological science with a focus on adaptations. They took part in a very funny experiment to see if human thumbs were important.