5-8 Community News

Welcome back to what is a very busy Term. It has been a pleasure to resume work with the students as we start to navigate cooler changes to weather, which can generally invite the nasties! Take care of yourselves!

A big thank you to Milla, Emily and Sienna who have described their start to Year 8.

Currently, I'm in Year 8 and we are studying a book called Animal Farm in our English class. This book is an allegory of the Russian Revolution and our teachers make it enjoyable for us. In Maths, we are learning about data collection methods, types of data, and completing tasks with data. We recently worked on creating a poster that included data graphs about some key data sets that were taken by the class. In Science, we are studying the digestive system and its key organs. Our Humanities class is focused on teaching us about the separation of powers, the five freedoms, and everything related to democracy and parliament. In our RE classes, we are learning about different religions, their customs, and beliefs. We are currently studying Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. All of these religions are unique and fascinating. These are just a few of the things we are learning about in Year 8 at the moment.

Additionally and across our year levels, the high expectations for learning, both academically and socially continue to drive our Community.

Year 5/6

The Year 5/6 students have hit the ground running in Term 2. All students have settled back into routine quickly and continued their good work from Term 1. Both groups have continued their comprehension and word recognition work by exploring the novels of Boy and Wonder. These novels will be finished midway through the Term. This term in Maths both the Year 5 and Year 6 students have explored fractions, decimals and money and are about to move on to a measurement unit. 

Year 7

The Year 7s have continued their comprehension and word recognition work by exploring the novel Inside Out & Back Again. This novel will be finished midway through the Term. This term in Maths the Year 7 students have explored fractions and decimals and have moved into Statistics & Probability where students will look to investigate the Experimental & Theoretical Probability through a 1000m horse race.

Year 8

Coming into Term 2, students have taken the opportunity to refresh their memories on SOLE and the Year 8 classroom expectations. The Year 8 students have continued their learning on Animal Farm, which will wrap up in the coming weeks. It has been interesting to connect the animals in the text to the real world humans present during the Russian Revolution. They have moved into data sets and statistics in Maths. Science has seen the students looking at the human body and the way all of the body systems work on their own and together to keep us alive! The RE unit is exploring how different religions live their lives according to their own customs. HUMS has been an interesting insight into politics and political systems. PE is a year level favourite, seeing students battle it out in Volleyball, Basketball and Touch Football. 

Partnerships for the Future

So far this Term, the students have commenced with their text called ‘Cop and Robber’, written by Tristan Bancks.  The book itself is set around Broken Hill. The students continue to read the text in the whole group to help continue to develop their reading and fluency skills. Some of the words the students have explored so far include:

We continue to promote the importance of reading, writing and spelling each and every day. On Wednesday, the students visited the Old Melbourne Gaol. The purpose of this visit was to connect some of the themes from the text to real life examples and experiences. 

SOLE

We continue to promote and teach individual behaviours and skills to students in 5-8 by using an approach that supports the student in a positive way.  This fortnight for example, our focus is to work with students on the skill: ‘remaining on task by managing my distractions and managing my space’.  It continues to remain imperative that we provide the children with opportunities to practice these skills where possible and the use of these visual tools are a good example of teachable moments.

We also feel that it's important that we continue to recognise when the children are displaying these skills whereby the use of our weekly and termly SOLE stars are good examples of positive recognition.

Lunchtime activities

This Term, we have access to the following lunchtime activities:

Monday - Indoor Netball

Tuesday - Indoor activities

Wednesday - Soup, Slippers and Silence 

Whilst the days are still very nice, we continue to promote and allow for the students to visit the Rec Reserve for their sports. The space itself provides students with the chance to play more of a competitive and friendly sporting activity.

The Resilience Project - TA

At the moment, we have identified that our students are coming to school with some complexities and we are working to support them to have their ‘batteries’ charged for school (hence the diagram).  At the moment, we are unpacking to the students the importance for sleep and removing sleep deprivation. Sleep is a vital component when it comes to feeling recharged for designated activities and without it, it makes it very difficult to engage and learn at school. Working with the students to identify how sleep can: 

• Improve memory
• Sharpen attention
• Lower stress
• Increase energy
• Repair muscles
• Improve mood
• Improve creativity
• Better decision-making
• Improve physical health
• Stronger immune system
• Boost in brain power
• Better mental health

Without sleep, it makes it difficult for students to be able to actively participate in any designated activity and we strongly recommend that the students aim for 8-10 hours of sleep, recommended by the Australian Government Health Guidelines.

With that in mind, over the next few weeks, we are working in conjunction with the ‘connect’ element in the battery. Social connection is hugely important in any aspect and what's more prominent at the moment for students is fostering and continuing that connect online.

At the moment, we are seeing a slight increase in the number of students using certain applications online to connect with their friends. These applications have a recommended age requirement of 13 but what worries Mr Poppa the most is that the students can connect with any person online in these platforms. At the moment, we are spending some time with students to identify positives and negatives associated with Social Media use by teaching the students how to manage their device use.

Corey Carver and Anthony Poppa

5-8 Community Leaders