The Learning Zone
"Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere." - Chinese Proverb
"Coming together is the beginning, staying together is progress,
and working together is success." - Henry Ford
Holiday Reading Challenge
We all know how important it is for children to be active readers so, to encourage them to continue reading over the school holiday break, why not encourage them to complete the Holiday Reading Challenge. There is a PDF attached below, just click the link and print it out. When a challenge is complete, children just need to write the date in the relevant box and then write the name of the books on the back of the sheet.
If your child is also completing the Premier's Reading Challenge (see the Library page of this newsletter), any books read can also be added to the PRC Reading Log.
There will be a small prize for all students who complete the challenge, just hand the completed sheet to Mrs Holland after the holiday break. Happy reading!
New K-2 Syllabus Parent Guides
Please find links to the new NESA parent/carer guides for Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 below. These guides explain the main focus areas for English and Maths and offer practical ways parents/carers can help their child/ren at home. The focus areas presented in these guides are linked directly to the new K-2 English and Maths syllabus documents and are the areas that are reported on in the Semester 1 reports.
Armidale Diocesan Mathematics Initiative (MaST)
What is happening in the world of mathematics at St Joseph's? Let's take a look!
Please see the information below to assist your child at home.
Maths At Home:
Kindergarten - Data
Kindergarten are having fun with Data.
Play games such as ‘paper, scissors, rock’ and record wins and losses.
Data Activity:
Below is an example of some data collected on pets.
Discuss and answer the questions below using the pictures to show how many pets each teacher has at school. Each picture is counted as being 1. So if you counted 5 dog pictures, then you can say that there are 5 dogs as pets.
How many pictures are in each group?
Which is the biggest group?
Which is the smallest group?
Which group has 4 in it?
Which group has 8 in it?
How many pets are there altogether?
Stage 1 - Chance
Talk about plans for family outings and the chances of the weather being favourable. Include possible, impossible, likely and unlikely scenarios in the discussion (e.g. Will there be a snow storm when we are having our picnic?)
Discuss other chance happenings that might occur (e.g. Do you think it is possible that Grandma will visit us tomorrow? What could happen at football today?) as well as how likely this is (e.g. Grandma might come to visit, but as she lives in Perth this is pretty unlikely).
Talk about chance when playing games (e.g. It’s possible that I will roll a six but not certain).
Has your child played 'The Slushy Sludger' in class yet?
Stage 2 - Area
Stage 2 are working on the concept of area. They are learning to measure, record, compare and estimate areas using square centimetres and square metres.
Stage 3 - Length
Our Stage 3 students will discuss and use appropriate units and devices to measure length and calculate perimeters.
Have a great week of learning and fun!
Maree Holland & Greg O'Toole