Ulysses Community Report

Term 4 2023

We would like to say a big welcome back to all of our families of the Ulysses community. We all hope you had an enjoyable break, enjoyed some sunshine and enormous amounts of fun with your child/ren. The teachers and students are well rested and ready for another fun filled term.

Our students have started off the term extremely well and we are very excited to continue our learning journey together.

We look forward to celebrating all of our successes, achievements and learnings with you throughout the term. 

Our Learning

Reading:

To start off the term in Reading, we have been exploring the structure of biographies. Students have explored some really engaging and informative texts about Muhammed Ali, Frida Kahlo, Ned Kelly, Neil Armstrong, Lional Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Ronald Dahl, Cathy Freeman and many more. Students continued to add to their already extensive knowledge of reading strategies. When reading we asked the students to demonstrate their understanding of the texts via the following: the difference between facts and opinions, identifying Biography features (such as subheadings, paragraphs, images, and captions to name a few), building on vocabulary, ordering timelines in chronological order, summarising and many more. These were fun and engaging for all students and they had lots of fun learning new and exciting facts about famous people and their greatest achievements. We will be exploring biographies and autobiographies in the coming weeks and look forward to sharing what other information our students have learnt about famous people. 

Student quotes based on the synthesising reading strategy:

“First I thought it was going to be about the boat sinking, but as I was reading it was about a family leaving on a boat from a war”. - Hamza 

Writing:

To start off the term in writing, we have been exploring how to write biographies. Students have been exploring online texts and a range of biographies based on famous people such as: Muhammed Ali, Frida Kahlo, Ned Kelly, Neil Armstrong, Lional Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Ronald Dahl, Cathy Freeman, and Stephen Curry. Students watched videos and read biography texts whilst collecting information to then use to assist in writing their own Biography text. They loved learning about famous people and who they are, where and when they were born, what their greatest achievements were and other fun facts that contributed to their lives. They continued to grow their knowledge on the structure of a biography text, were able to successfully collect information using a planner and write a biography highlighting the most informative facts about their chosen person to share with our school community.

Student quote:

"I have a beautiful family made up of two members. We celebrate Christmas, Easter, Birthday's and New years eve". 

Maths: 

This term, students enthusiastically participated in exploring australian money, its value and use in our daily lives. Students were provided with fake money to identify the features of different coins, calculate the total amount and use that money to buy things from the class shop. When learning about Mass and Capacity, students used balancing scales to compare things with different masses. Students estimated the mass of various stationary items and then they checked their estimates by using the balancing scales. They used mathematical vocabulary to compare e.g. heavier than, lighter than, same as etc.

SEL:

To start the term off in Social Emotional Learning, we have been exploring how to develop our growth mindset. Students have been discussing how to ensure that we are using a positive mindset and how to overcome negative thoughts. They were able to identify a challenge they have been faced with once before and what strategies they used to overcome this challenge such as: taking deep breaths, telling themself to keep trying, giving it their best shot, learning from mistakes and understanding that mistakes is how we learn best to name a few. Students were able to use this positive mindset and link it to the school values successfully. They developed their understanding of what stress is and constructed an extensive set of strategies to utilise when faced with a stressful situation. Students role played and shared a range of ways they can overcome stressful situations and shared their thoughts and discoveries as a class.

Inquiry:

To start the term off in Inquiry, we have been exploring our new topic of ‘What makes our Community special?’ Students explored each other's cultures and how they are different. We have been exploring different cultural groups that make up our community. Students placed where they belong on a world map and shared some differences and similarities. Students brought in cultural food and we explored where the food came from and the different tastes.