What's Happening in Upper Division

Welcome back for Semester 2! 

The year is well underway with some exciting and motivating events and experiences that will showcase our student’s knowledge and talents. A big congratulations to Harrison C who will be attending the ‘Let’s Hang It’ awards night at NERAM and Anna, Abby, Annabelle, Sam, Cailey, Mackenzie, Phoebe and Harrison C who will be attending the PSSA Athletics in Armidale. The school staff and students would like to thank Matt Peterson for his time and effort towards training and supporting our kids before the main event on July 28.

Informative texts will be at the core of our learning in literacy, with attentiveness centred on the writing process and self-editing. Our focus text for this term will be ‘Dingo,’ by Claire Saxby. We will be looking at spoken, written and visual texts that complement our unit as well as informative language devices to craft our writing. 

Mr Hunt will be completing modelled reading with the help of Alex Rider…we will continue with our novel ‘Stormbreaker,’ which is book one in the number one bestselling series, where the main character, fourteen-year-old Alex is forcibly recruited into MI6. Armed with secret gadgets, he is sent to investigate Herod Sayle, a man who is offering state-of-the-art Stormbreaker computers to every school in the country but the teenage spy soon finds himself in mortal danger.

In Mathematics students will be covering the sub strands of whole-number, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, patterns and algebra, fractions and decimals, data, position, area and volume and capacity.

How and why are places similar and different? What would it be like to live in a neighbouring country? These are the Key Inquiry questions that will be navigating our Geography unit this term. Students will be examining natural and human features of Australia and the diverse characteristics of Australia’s neighbouring countries. They will explore the different climates, settlement patterns and demographic characteristics of places and use this information to imagine what it would be like to live in different places. 

Congregating inspiration from our Sydney excursion… in Creative Arts we will be looking at Sydney Artists. Our first learning experience will feature work by Bronte Goodieson, her vibrant colours and interpretation of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. From high flow acrylic paint to water colour, paint markers and spray paint, Bronte is a mixed media artist who has studied both illustration and graphic design. We will be looking at blending styles to create some unique artwork.

In Science with Ms Hahn, we will focus on Data and Digital Systems where we will learn how digital systems represent and transmit data, plus how they connect together to form networks.  

In Personal Development and health, students will develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to foster their health, safety and wellbeing, while navigating transition and change in their lives. They will explore emotions and how these affect their decisions, behaviours and relationships. Using role-play we will practise positive behaviours to enhance relationships, learn strategies to deal with conflict and/or bullying, and implement actions to maintain and improve the quality of an active lifestyle.

Physical Education will embrace the strand Movement Skill and Performance. Students will focus on active participation in a broad range of movement contexts to develop skill and enhance action. Students will develop confidence and competence to engage in physical activity. They will develop an understanding of movement concepts and the features of movement composition as they engage in a variety of planned and improvised movement experiences. 

Finally, our music lessons have bee moved to Thursday afternoons with Jess Suann from NECOM. We are currently learning the music for BushFest, a choral festival for schools in the NECOM classroom/choral program on Wednesday 6 September at the New England Conservatorium of Music.  We will also be completing a unit about the instruments of the orchestra and have already begun discussing the four families of instruments (strings, brass, woodwind and percussion).  Students will continue to learn about new instruments and how they work, and develop an appreciation for each instrument's unique sound.

Leah Miller

Classroom Teacher