Year Three - Spotlight on Learning

Dear Families,

This week has been a busy one full of new learnings, particularly in some areas. Ephesus Community had the incursion - KIDS ROAR on Thursday, where classes had individual sessions in their classrooms throughout the day. The acronym ‘ROAR’ stands for:

• Recognise (feelings, warning signs, safe / unsafe situations, secrets) 
• Own - their body and understand that it belongs to them 
• Assert - have confidence to implement the ‘No, Go, Tell’ strategy 
• Report to their identified trusted adults and persist in telling them how they feel.

Some of this programme’s  goals were that by the end of the lesson children would know that we all have the right to feel safe, recognise safe and unsafe feelings, identify and act upon early warning signs, use correct anatomical names of the private parts of their bodies, identify trusted adults they can talk to and identify the difference between safe and unsafe secrets. Students were very confident and engaged in these sessions.

Students will be coming home today with a handout from KidsROAR called ‘My Safety Hand’ where they have written the names of some trusted adults who they know they can go to if they are feeling unsafe or worried about something. On the back of the sheet there is also a message for you to read and also some information about how to receive a disclosure with some handy hints. Please let your child keep their Safety Hand in a visible place. Below are some photos of the incursion.

This week students also began the first lessons of the class music programme - Amplify Music Education. These lessons covered identifying the beat of a song and then learning about rhythm and its relationship to beat as well as exploring some traditional notation, looking at notes and their values. Students enjoyed these music lessons and activities and were able to demonstrate their knowledge of beat and rhythm to each other and the rest of the class.

This weekend is a long weekend encompassing the School Closure Day on Monday and the Melbourne Cup Public Holiday on Tuesday. The Ephesus Community teachers wish everyone a happy long weekend and hope that all families stay safe and enjoy their time together. 

Our Learning Focus. . .

Mathematics: In Maths we have been looking at Data Representation. This week students have learnt how to choose a data collection method, write and conduct a survey to collect categorical data, use the data to create a frequency table and then creating a pictograph from the data in the table.

English: In Reading students have been focusing on how to read and spell ‘ti and ci’ words. Some of the words used as examples were direction, magician, operation and politician. Students also revised identifying the tense of words in sentences whether it was past, present or future tense. To practise and work on their fluency, students have been doing partner reading of a piece of text from the class novel ‘The One and Only Ivan, giving feedback to each other regarding accuracy, rate, expression and punctuation.  

Religious Education: In our Bible study this week students have been able to explain what ‘author’ and ‘audience’ means referring to some of the texts in the Bible. Students were then able to give an example of a story or letter from the Bible and describe who it was written for. Students also found poems in the Bible and were able to explain the meaning of one, such as Psalm 23, sharing how the poem made them feel. 

Integrated Studies / Music: Students were able to learn how to identify the beat in a song, by clapping it out. They also learnt about rhythm and how rhythm is related to beat. Students were able to play, compose and communicate rhythms. 

Auslan: In Auslan, students were able to review some of the concepts learnt in the last three weeks. Auslan had its mid-cycle progress check and reflection where students reviewed  the following ‘I can . . .’ statements - I can sign an object first and then the colour. I can sign a pet and then use a SASS depicting sign to describe one that I have or want. I can describe how five farm animal signs link to a feature of each animal.

Reminders

Wednesday 20th November - Ephesus and Bethany Community Mass

Friday 29th November -  Charity activity - details to be confirmed