5/6 News 

The senior school have continued their fantastic start to the school year. Students should be commended for the way they have bounced back into school life with such a positive attitude, after the interruption over the last 2 years. The students have been working on a number of different group projects, such as Stations of the Cross and Closing the Gap, as well as continuing with their reading and math catch groups. We have a very busy end to our term with  bike education, Melbourne Museum excursion to look at aboriginal history and our Station of the Cross performance for the whole school in the last week of term. We look forward to a great finish to term 1 as we lead up Easter.

Mathematics 

Students have moved into different groups according to what they need to know. It has been awesome to see the growth of the students across the 4 operations. The students are using the tools they need to succeed across the 5 different groups that are running, which is great as they are intended to target their needs. We are continuing our strong focus on timetables  and encouraging the students to work on it every night, like they would their reading. The students are testing themselves using rocket maths and hit the button to show their progress which has been brilliant to see! 

Memorising times tables makes it far quicker and easier for children to work out maths problems in their heads. Moving beyond using their fingers to work out answers, they’ll be able to use their knowledge to quickly solve any multiplication questions.

By memorising their times tables, children will also become more accustomed to using their head to visualise answers for questions. This will help them to solve questions involving multiplication, addition, subtraction and division in their head, making the act of memorising multiplications a very worthwhile cause! 

English

This week in writing we have continued our work on persuasive texts. Students will be writing their final piece next week using the skills they have learnt over the last few weeks. We look forward to seeing them use the persuasive language and techniques they have have been learning about. In our reading lessons we have continued our work on inferences. Good readers make inferences while reading, which supports their ability to comprehend the text. 

An inference is an educated guess that we make based on what we see or, while reading, the information provided in the text combined with our own experiences.

Respectful Relationships

The students this fortnight have been looking at character strengths and the 24 different characters which make up as human beings. The classes have worked on noticing strengths in others, fictional characters and themselves and which strengths they admire.  

Teaching the students about character strengths is a great for their wellbeing as they notice their strengths and identify what they need to improve on. It is important that we teach students that we all have both and its normal to have things to work on.

Using Saints players as inspiration, Play To Your Strengths (introduces students to Values in Action  Character Strengths in a fun and engaging manner. Through interactive exercises, students learn about the 24 universal strengths, explore their top strengths and ways they can flex these in all aspects of life as well as gain an insight into the strengths of others. Knowing your character strengths isn’t just interesting information. When skilfully applied, character strengths can have a significant positive impact on your life. 

Closing the Gap 

This fortnight we have been exploring the history of our relationship with our first nations people. The students have worked across the whole year level on a decade and key moments that happened. They then added it to a whole timeline and presented their findings to the rest of the year level.

St Patrick's Day 

The Grade 5/6s celebrated a St Patrick's Day with a touch of green dress up and a liturgy. 

All 5/6 students had a liturgy  at 9am on St Patrick's Day. Students learned about the music, culture and what it was like for Mr Blake when he grew up in Ireland. Students completed activities on Ireland, completed a map where they picked out 5 locations in Ireland and drew  a map. Some students shared stories on St Patrick and talked about their Irish heritage. Kate H ran  a lunchtime Irish dancing class which  had  a huge turn out.