Year 2

Welcome to Week 6

Can you believe that the halfway point of the year is only a stone's throw away?

As we embark on Week 6, our classroom continues to thrive through teamwork. Despite recent changes to our specialist timetables and the need to revisit routines, the children have remained calm and engaged in their learning. Their consistent effort in following our daily routines has been pleasing for both Mrs Lister, Mrs Robinson and Myself. 

We look forward to the weeks ahead, eager to explore new concepts and celebrate our achievements together.

Yesterday we celebrated the rain with a rain dance! We don't mind staying inside to have a bit of fun, especially when it means that our farms and the animals are getting some much needed rain. 

We pray for all our farming families and those that rely on the heavens opening up.

School Photos

By now you should have received school photos. Don't we all look tremendous in the class snap? If you are missing your photos, pop into school, they are probably hiding in the dark depths of your child's locker!

InitiaLit

Our recent Story book are: Collecting Colour by Kylie Dunstan; Chooks in Dinner Suits by Diane Jackson Hill; and Turtles Song by Kim Michelle Toft & Alan Brown. We read each book over a two- week cycle and explore the vocabulary, themes, purpose, and delve into the books with eagle eyes.

Collecting Colour-tells the story of a day spent collecting colour in the Top End of the Northern Territory, narrated by a white Australian girl, Rose.

Rose’s best friend Olive’s mother, Karrang, makes beautiful coloured baskets, mats and bags from leaves from the pandanus palm a tall, thin tree with very long, spiky leaves.

Chooks in Dinner Suits- On a tiny island lives a waddle of Little Penguins. But their numbers are dwindling. Swampy Marsh knows what to do, but no one will listen. Soon he can count the last few penguins on the fingers of one hand. The desperate townsfolk give Swampy, and his friends Max and Mimi, one chance. Will his solution work? This story is based on events that took place on Middle Island, Warrnambool and have become well known to the public. This true story, which features both human and animal heroes, has been written as a heartwarming tale by Diane Jackson Hill. Craig Smith’s lively illustrations capture all the drama and humour of the predicament and the characters involved.

Turtles Song- This is our book for week 6&7

The book follows the life cycle of the sea turtle, from hatchling to elderly ocean veteran, and author Brown takes us on a harrowing journey as our turtle navigates the perilous sea – from the fraught trip of the hatchling across the gull-swooping, crab crunching sand, to the terrifying travails of shark and fish avoidance in the surf – it’s a wonder a single turtle makes it to open water, let alone old age!

It would be wonderful to share these stories at home and ask your child what they have learnt through the stories. 

Some of our recent writing efforts:

After completing Chooks in Dinner Suits, the children created their own stories involving dogs and/or penguins. Pop in and see our display of work in our classroom sometime! 

Grammar

We are focusing on adjectives and noun groups and moving onto verbs over the next few weeks. We hope to improve our writing pieces by choosing more interesting verbs and adjectives that draw you in! 

Spelling

Please see the picture below of the phonemes and spelling patterns that we have covered and continue to work through over the term. Spelling takes up a significant amount of our InitiaLit lessons over the week and we work on our tricky words and practise the spelling patterns each day. We are at the halfway point for the term around lesson 37.

If you are able to throw in an extra practise at home, please look at the previous week's 'tricky words' as these are often the most incorrectly spelt in the students' writing.

Numeracy

Please see the attached Scope and Sequence. We have worked so hard of late to grasp number lines and place value into the thousands. This week we begin addition and subtraction before returning to another unit of measurement to round out the final weeks of the term.

Check out our fantastic Numeracy learning. We were exploring empty number lines with thousands numbers, when Mrs Stewart popped in to see us. We have also been measuring our classroom with informal units and comparing measurements to grasp the concepts of 'less than' and 'greater than'.

Religion

Since the beginning of Term 2, we have finished the Easter Story, focusing on Jesus' Resurrection, followed by the Pentecost Story. Pentecost is a significant event in Christianity, celebrated 50 days after Easter. It commemorates the day when, according to Christian tradition, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus' disciples in Jerusalem. This event empowered them to spread Jesus' teachings, marking the beginning of the Christian Church's mission. We will look then delve into Christian Baptism in the coming weeks.

Inquiry Learning

This Term we focus on Geography as our Humanities unit of work. Students use geographical tools (atlas, globe, map or a digital application such as Google Earth) to locate and name the continents, oceans, Equator, North and South Poles, Northern and Southern Hemispheres. They describe Australia’s location in relation to the world. Through interactive slides and hands on activities, students learn about the world and how we, as Euroans are just a tiny part of a very vast land mass. The subject specific vocabulary student are exposed to, opens up a much bigger understanding of our planet.

Choose a few to ask your child at home, what they have learnt about so far!

• Africa
• Antarctica
• Arctic
• Asia
• Atlantic
• Australia
• continent
• country
• direction
• Equator
• Europe
• globe
• hemisphere
• Indian
• map
• north
• North America
• North Pole
• ocean
• Pacific
• south
• South America
• South Pole
• Southern
• suburb
• world

The Resilience Project

Our next few topics are around Listening with Care and Kindness, Personal Strengths, Mindfulness and Emotions.

GEM chats are a great way to have a conversation with your child without them giving you a yes/no response. Here's another one to share at home.

If you have any concerns, questions or stories to share, please feel free to email me rtimperley@sjeuroa.catholic.edu.au or Fiona frobinson@sjeuroa.catholic.edu.au. We are available before school 8-8.30 Monday to Thursday. Please keep in mind that we have staff meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.

Until next time,

Rachel, Fiona and Lisa.