Preps

Hi Prep Families,

A big welcome back to Term 4! We hope everyone had a fun and relaxing time during the holidays. We have been so impressed with the way students have began the first week of this term with a sense of maturity.

This term in English, one of our main focus will be on writing stories. We will look at the different language used in writing stories and identity and us nouns and adjectives. Students will be encouraged to use their imagination to create characters and settings. They will have opportunities individual and in partners to write a short story.

In Maths, this fortnight, we are going over number. Looking at the order of numbers, making numbers and identifying numbers before and after. We will also be learning about location and positional language. Students will use language such as forward, backward, behind, under etc and will give instructions to the BeeBots to move them from one location to another.

During Religion, our focus is on Rituals and Traditions and how these are related to celebrations. We will look at the Bible Stories of the Wedding of Cana and Jesus Baptism.

This term we are again focusing on independence. We would ask if brain food could be in a small container that students could bring into the homeroom in the morning and leave it with their drink bottles to access easily throughout the day.

We are excited to have started our new Inquiry learning on ‘Cultures’. This week we have a cultural day on Friday where students will be immersed in a variety of activities that highlight different aspects of some of the cultures around the world.

We are looking forward to a productive term ahead.

Have a great week.

Amanda, Hayley and Jane.

Juniors

Welcome back to Term 4! We hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing break and are full of energy for Term 4- How time flies when you’re having fun! We have a busy term ahead of us, as always!

In Maths this term we will begin looking at volume and capacity. Students will have the opportunity to discover what is capacity? What is volume? How these two concepts relate to one another? Students will explore these concepts through a variety of hands on tasks. We will also be continuing our math workshops, starting the term with money. Students will be faced with everyday money/financial problems to solve and begin to grasp the concept of the value money has.

In English we are focusing on different strategies that help us to become better readers. More specially this includes being able to summarise by focusing on the key points of the story. We are also moving on to fairytale/narrative writing. Students will have the opportunity to explore the different messages, features and characters in many different types of fairytales and use this information to write their own in the coming weeks.

In Religion we are beginning a unit on the Bible and the many different stories and parts that make it up. Students sat a pre-test on this unit this week and we look forward to discovering more about what is in the Bible throughout the term.

In Inquiry this term we are focusing on our world. Our unit is called “Up, down and all around.” Students will be able to understand their world, learn about different continents, countries as well as looking at our own place in the world.

For Visual Art this term we will be completing paper mache and would appreciate if students could bring old newspapers in to help with their creations. Also, for our mathematics unit on money we would love any old catalogues you have to be reused within our classrooms.

As you can see we are in for a busy term and have hit the ground running in the first week already! We look forward to a successful and fun term to end what has been a great year of learning so far. As always, thanks for your continued support and help throughout the year.

Many thanks,

Jason, Naomi, Tracey, Renee, Tania and Bethany

Middles

Welcome back to Term 4! Can you believe the year is going by so quickly!? We hope that everyone had an exciting and restful break.

The students have settled back into the school routine well and we are looking forward to a productive term. Don’t forget we are a SunSmart school at St Mary’s, so starting next week students will need to wear their hats when playing outside at school - (remember school rules: no hat, no play).

Literacy

We have started the term with an author study of Oliver Jeffers. Oliver is a ‘quirky’ author from Brooklyn who illustrates many of his own stories. We have been talking about the messages behind his stories, as well as the process of creating his picture story books.

Kids News writing

As you would be aware, the students are planning, drafting and publishing their own short stories. With your permission, we will enter these stories into the KidsNews Writing Competition. There has been a link to the Kids Writing Competition website emailed to all students and parents. On this website you can download, sign and return the permission form to your child’s homeroom teacher if you allow your child to have their story submitted. If you need to have a permission form printed for you, please let us know as soon as possible and we can print this for you. We have been talking about the purpose behind our writing and how stories are often written to entertain the audience.

Maths

We are beginning two new units of Maths: Area and Fractions. In the Area unit students will focus on calculating area and perimeter of 2D shapes and spaces. We will also focus on converting different units of measurements. In the Fractions unit we will focus mainly on halves, quarters, fifths and tenths and look to apply this learning to real life situations and problems.

Inquiry

Animal design

To conclude our unit from Term 3, students will create their own animal using PixelArt. This new species of animal will then be written about, given a habitat, a position in the food chain and features to help it adapt to its environment.

Religion

We have started the term introducing students to Jesus world through images and Maps. Students were very engaged with looking at images/photos from Ms Carla’s trip to Jerusalem last year and they could place stories from the Bible to places. Students explored some of the places in the Bible via Google Earth. This was a great activity as many had not used it before.

Thursday Morning Mass

3/4TM are at Mass on Thursday morning in Week 2 (17th Oct) at 9:15am. 3/4C will attend mass the following Thursday (24th Oct). Please come along and celebrate with us if you are available.

And finally we have to say good-bye and good luck to Miss Pitcher (Molly) at the end of Week 2. Molly finishes up her final round of teacher training and next year will have her own class! We thank Molly for all her hard work and dedication and look forward to hearing great things about her in the future!

All the best,

Tania, Carla, Jarrod and Molly

Senior

Welcome back, hopefully everyone enjoyed the holidays and the sunny weather.

In Maths the students will complete the unit on Money this week and will have the post test on Monday 14th October. Students have shown great collaboration skills, sharing how they solve problems and working through the problem to get an answer together. Our next unit will be on angles.

In Religion the students have really enjoyed creating props to retell Sacred Scripture Stories and Parables. They hope to present these sacred stories to other students in the school. Once completed these will go up on seesaw. Students are close to beginning the personalising phase in Inquiry and we will share more about this with you in the coming weeks.

The regional athletics will be on Wednesday 16th October, we wish the students, who are competing, the best of luck and hope they have a great day.

We would like to ask families if they have any newspaper that they no longer need if they could please donate it to the school to be used for Art lessons.

Have a lovely week,

The Senior Team,

Anne-Marie, Louise, Stephen and Sally

St Mary's School

Issue 16 · 10 Oct 2019

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