What's happening in our learning spaces?

Students of the Week

CLASS	NAME	REASON
FLW	Alessandro Masini	For being such a welcoming and enthusiastic member of Foundation LW. You always show care and kindness to everyone you encounter throughout the day. Well done Alessandro!
1/2SC	Tess Nihill	For being an enthusiastic mathematician who is always eager to challenge herself. Keep up the amazing work, Tess!
1/2AP	Ariana Koutivas	For always trying her best and being resilient in all learning tasks. You listen respectfully and follow directions, you are a fantastic example for those in 1/2AP. Thank you Ariana.
1/2AM	Hazel Munafo	For having such a positive attitude to learning. You always persist, try your best and give everything a go! Well done Hazel!
3/4BP	Xena Tsangaris	For creating a well-structured and detailed persuasive text convincing her reader that dogs are most definitely better than cats. You’re a wonderful writer Xena!
3/4GT	Anthony Tonna	For finding the keywords in the text when inferring meaning and for his kindness, understanding and support towards others.
3/4KD	Dannte Culosi Thiagu	For working collaboratively to measure length in millimetres, centimetres and metres. What a star!
5/6OS	Nakita Gertos	For challenging herself to write from a different point of view and creating an interesting and engaging persuasive text titled “Whythe 39 Clues Would be the World's Worst Movie” Keep up the amazing work Nakita!
5/6VC	Hunter Fitzgerald	For writing a very comprehensive persuasive text on the importance of not littering. Great effort Hunter!
5/6CG	Giselle Campisi	For demonstrating a positive and mature attitude towards her learning and always taking great pride in completing her work. Well done Giselle.
Maths	Elizabeth Francione, Xavier Carr, Chloe Portelli, Gisele Sciglitano, Giselle Campisi	For your amazing work with your home learning in Maths. You are such a keen mathematician. Keep up the great work. For your perfect score in our first Maths Olympiad. Amazing result. Keep up the great work

Foundation - Year 1/2

What a wonderful week it has been in the Foundation to Year Two learning spaces! We embraced the continued opportunities to be risk-takers, explorers and collaborative learners.

This week, we were very excited about Walk to School Day! There was an amazing turnout of families as we met at Shore Reserve for a shared walk back to St Fidelis. The weather was beautiful and there were many smiling faces! Once we all arrived at school, we joined our peers and teachers for a big breakfast. We had a fantastic morning!

As mathematicians, those of us in Foundation tuned in to collecting data and recording our findings in a graph. We posed simple questions with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer and recorded our responses using a peg on the graph. We demonstrated that we could formulate statements to gather data and arrived at the understanding that graphs tell us information.

In Year 1/2 we are learning to give and follow directions to familiar locations. As collaborators, we worked together to code our bee-bots around a grid map and wrote down the directions using our prior knowledge about location language. As thinkers, we observed a variety of different maps from some of our favourite places like the Melbourne Zoo, Scienceworks and Melbourne Aquarium. We located the key features of these maps and used this information to create our own maps of familiar places such as our homes and our classrooms.

As thinkers, we continued going further in our understandings of art around us and began thinking of some opportunities to engage in some research about the kinds of art in Coburg. We brainstormed ideas of examples of landmarks around us such as Pentridge, Coburg Lake and Sydney Road. We posed the question to our friends: ‘Is this art?’ ‘What makes you say that?’. As communicators, we shared our theories on how some art is created to serve a purpose. As explorers, we took our thinking further and engaged in the experience of identifying key information of the art pieces around us and locating the information that we felt was important to our learning. We look forward to the time and opportunity to make our interpretation of the wonderful pieces of art around us!

We engaged in Discovery with growth, persistence, and reflection, as well as passion, joy and care. As researchers, we used different information sources to find out more about birds. We remembered the importance of recording a theory about our initial thinking and using the resources around us to see if we could confirm or adjust our theory.

As collaborators, we worked together at the insect station to see what we could find out. We examined the types of insects at the table and talked about what they had in common. Some insects have 5 eyes, some only have 2! We discovered that a spider is not an insect - it is an arachnid! We found out that this is because insects only have six legs while arachnids have eight! We continued to engage in box construction to make a shared piece of art, making sure to communicate respectfully and listen to each other's ideas while sharing materials with all. We have absolutely loved Discovery Time this term and we can’t wait to see the new stations in Term 2!

Have a wonderful week ahead!

Year F-2 Team

Year 3/4

The students in 3 / 4 have been working very well and we cannot believe that another term is drawing to a close. The students are showing that they are great self-managers who can collaborate with each other to achieve amazing things!

As readers, we have continued with the skill of inferencing. Through discussions and activities, the children are learning that when a good reader reads, they combine what they already know with what they learn from their reading to come up with a new and interesting meaning. This week our focus was on using non-fiction texts to make sensible inferences. As writers and thinkers, we are continuing to write persuasive texts, focusing on organising the structure of our writing and discussing word choice. The 3/4 teachers have been impressed with the students writing and some of the convincing arguments that the students have posed either for or against a given topic.

As Mathematicians, we have continued to be engaged in learning about measurement. We have been estimating, measuring, ordering and comparing lengths. This week we have used the formal measurement metres. The students have been engaged in a variety of hands-on activities such as measuring the distance their paper plane has flown, measuring the length of a bean bag throw and even measuring the length of their jump to determine which person in the class has the furthest jump. We were also challenged to convert measurements. As communicators, we discussed the importance of using benchmarks when estimating lengths. As thinkers, we created a list of our own personal benchmarks to use when estimating or measuring in cms and ms. This week we will focus on the ‘broken ruler’ task and measure using a ruler from a non-zero starting point. Maths learning in the 3/4 level has certainly been lots of fun!

A highlight of our week was participating in the National Walk to School Day on Wednesday the 23rd of March. At St. Fidelis, we can all agree on the healthy benefits of walking. Thank you to all those who got involved. It was great to see that the sun was out and shining, as we all shared a yummy breakfast together!

Year 3/4 Team

Belinda Panzarino, Katarina Davidson & Graham Troy

Year 5/6

It has been another productive week in the Year 5/6 Level! We have been busy inquiring, creating, inferring, persuading, and measuring!

As we continue working through the ‘The Resilience Project’, the focus this week was on ‘Gratitude’. The following questions were posed: ‘What is gratitude’? ‘What does it mean to be grateful’? The students' responses demonstrated their sound understanding of this concept. As collaborators, each class composed their own definition of ‘Gratitude’. The students will continue to reflect on their day, recognise and appreciate what they are grateful for, and write down ‘three moments of awesome’.

In preparation for the Art Show, and as part of our Inquiry ‘How Can Art Change the World?’ students finalised their art proposals and began the process of bringing these proposals and ideas to life! The SLA was a hub of creative activity as students began their paintings, sculptures, sketches, collages, and cartoon animations. Each student has chosen a social issue that he/she feels strongly about, and the challenge is to create an artwork that can communicate a message related to their chosen issue. Social issues include topics such as sustainability, animal cruelty, justice, equality, endangered species, pollution, recycling and anxiety. So far, the art pieces are very impressive and we are all excited to share them with the school community.

Thank you to the Year 5/6 students and parents who participated in ‘The Walk Safely to School Day last Wednesday. It was fantastic to see so many students and their family supporting such a great cause. Each class then had the opportunity to eat a delicious breakfast together.