Achilles Community Report

Welcome to The Achilles Community Newsletter, we have successfully gotten back into the school routine in Term 4. Our students are mature and seem to be more excited to learn after the school holidays. We are now at the stage that children have gained a sense of schedule and have now fully adapted to the ways of primary school. We have also seen substantial progress in most of the children at all areas of the curriculum.

Reading 📚

In Reading we are currently focusing on non-fiction texts. This includes distinguishing between different features of the book and summarising the book. We have seen adequate success as they are able to recognise the process and structure of a non-fiction book. Each week, we are focusing on a distinguished non-fiction book and together break down the structure of that book and categorise things like index, title, glossary, etc. Children are designated a reading level and choose books categorised into their reading group and break down the structure of the non-fictional book and identify key properties of the book. We will continue to build on the understanding of non-fictional books for another 2 weeks. We have continued doing CVC and CVCC words and have examined plentiful success.

Writing ✏️

We are presently working on information reports; we designate different features of an information report including an introduction, body, and conclusion. Students have been given different topics each week to write an information report on. We have commenced teaching students to create sentences and children are now learning how to create a sentence structure (capitalisation, spacing, and punctuation). Our focus is writing an information report and have linked components of reading into writing. The process that your child/ren are partaking in includes them to choose a picture and they will then incorporate a handful of sentences to describe their drawing. Students have understood the structure of an information report and the sub sections of those sections (such as in the introduction, body, and conclusion and a report will be established). They have also understood the order of these sections and are somewhat capable of writing a simple information report. We are expecting great results in the coming weeks and will try and get a decent written information reports out of each student by the end of this unit.

Maths ➕✖️➗➖

We are currently working on money. Students are exploring different Australian coins and their value. To support our student’s understanding about this topic, we are providing our students an opportunity to use money in different set ups like supermarkets, cafes, and toy shops. Students are using a variety of strategies to make $1 and $2 using different coins. We are encouraging our students to learn about the use of money in our day-to-day life and how they can make any amount of money with coins and notes. Students are encouraged to participate in a pretend play in which they use fake money to buy different items each week. We have been working on this unit for 3 weeks and will continue to work on it for another 2 weeks. Along with money we have started the concept of time, students are learning about the difference between the activities that require short and long duration of time. We have just had a couple sessions on this concept, and it will take some time before the children understands this concept to the best of their abilities.

Diwali  🪔

We celebrated Diwali on the 23rd of October. The Achillies community participated in activities like making Rangoli (a colourful pattern using dry colours). Children seemed to be excited about the event, and they were sharing their experiences.