Cumberland

                   Ms Karen McArdle

Welcome to Term 4! This is a very busy term and the last before students move into the next year level. This year has really flown! The students have been encouraged to work hard and, just like good athletes, they should aim to peak in this term and end the year with their best results.

Year 6 Celebration

Plans are underway for the Year 6 Celebration evening where we celebrate the students’ time in the primary years before they leave us and move to high school. This is a special time for our Year 6 students and parents often celebrate with private events planned for the students.

The Year 6 Celebration Evening is the only school sanctioned and arranged event. While parents can arrange for private functions, it must be noted that these events are not organised nor are they sanctioned by the school. The school does not have any input into these events and, as such, students are not covered by the school’s insurance.

A Glimpse Into General Classroom Activities In One Morning In Cumberland

Every day, Cumberland students participate in a range of planned learning experiences. The comprehensive curriculum offered at Aitken College provides opportunities for students to learn in many environments and to participate in a wide range of learning experiences. Here is a glimpse into the first two lessons of a typical day across Year 3 to Year 6.

As is the case today, most classes are engaged in literacy work. Some of the activities showcased here are: using connectives to join sentences, comprehension, review of characteristics of poetry, reciprocal reading strategies, improving sentence structure, reading…

What you will notice is the iPads in the classroom.  The use of iPads benefits the learning experience for students in a number of ways:

• iPad presentations are highly visual – appealing to the learning style of many students at this age.
• studies have shown that student engagement levels are much higher when using iPads in the learning process.
• iPads show - they do not tell.
• students can learn in a virtual reality – they can visit places, see through microscopes, dive to great depths or soar to great heights, visit the past, present and future, listen to experts, read historical logs… all without leaving the classroom.
• they are highly interactive with immediate response and feedback to students.