What's happening?
Foundation
Welcome back to Term 2!
We hope you had a wonderful Easter break filled with fun, rest, and maybe a few too many chocolate eggs! It has been so lovely welcoming our Foundation students back, refreshed and ready for an exciting term ahead. On the first day back, our students enjoyed writing and decorating postcards to recount their holiday adventures.
Literacy: Last week, we introduced the digraphs ‘ck’ and ‘sh’. A digraph is two letters that make one sound. This week, we are learning about the digraphs ‘ch’, ‘th’, ‘ng’, and ‘wh’.
Maths:
In Maths, we are continuing our Place Value unit in our group sessions. Place value is a vital concept that will be revisited throughout Terms 3 and 4, as well as during our daily Maths Warm-ups.
Social Skills: This term, our focus will be on understanding emotions through the Zones of Regulation. This wonderful tool helps students recognise their feelings and develop strategies to manage them effectively. Last term, we were fortunate to participate in a fantastic workshop all about friendship, where students learned how to be a Friendship Ninja and use their "friend-o-meter" to navigate social situations and resolve conflicts calmly and kindly. This term, we will continue building on those skills, helping students create and maintain healthy, feel-good friendships.
Corridor Reading: Corridor reading has officially begun! Thank you to the parents who have already signed up. If you are able to help, please add your name to the roster outside each classroom. A friendly reminder to return reading satchels and readers each day. Books are changed once a week. Please ensure your child reads each book at least twice and that their reading log is filled in.
Show and Tell: Show and Tell has recommenced this week. Thank you for ensuring your child comes prepared for their presentation each fortnight. A Show and Tell notice with topics for Term 2 has been sent home in your child’s satchel.
Reminders:
Hats are still required for outside play until May 1st.
As the weather gets cooler, you may like to pack a warmer (navy) coat for your child. Please make sure all clothing items are clearly named.
We are looking forward to a fantastic term ahead!
Grade 1
Term two has launched with a great start, the children have all returned from their break refreshed, ready to learn and have done a great job of settling back into the school routines.
In Literacy the children have been excited to learn about onomatopoeia- words that represent sounds such as BAM or CRASH! They may start mentioning words for sounds when at home or even identifying them in their readers! We have practised adding onomatopoeia to enhance our descriptive sentences about weather. From here, we will be having a look at poetry. And using different forms of poetry to write about the weather and Seasons!
Our letter code focus last week was “igh” and this week the six different sounds of “ough.” Keep an eye out for a new homework page practising these codes, which will go home on Thursday this week.
In Maths the students are working on Place Value and next week will begin learning about measurement starting with a focus on length. With this shift from a number topic to an applied topic, there may be some changes in maths groups.
We move into a new Inquiry topic this term, which is “Weather.” Our focus for this week is exposure to key words and symbols use when describing and observing weather.
This week we have been completing our DIBEL’s fluency tracking assessments and have been blown away by the children’s improvements in accuracy! Thank you for all of your support with your home reading routines, it is making a world of difference! For any parents wishing to assist with classroom reading this term, you can find new sign-up notices up outside classrooms. It is greatly appreciated by the student and the teachers.
Grade 2
It was great to welcome our Grade 2 students back to school looking refreshed and full of enthusiasm. We hope everyone had a lovely Easter break!
Now that students have had a term to settle in, we are encouraging them to independently enter the Grade 2 building and unpack their bag. We appreciate your support with this.
Literacy: Over the last fortnight, students have investigated procedural texts and their features, with a focus on purpose, sequencing and effective use of imperative (bossy) verbs. Students have also learnt to apply their knowledge from our Grammar Project lessons to expand their sentences by adding extra information (who, when, where, why, how).
During our PhOrMeS/Word Study lessons students have been learning to read and spell plural words, as well as third person singular words.
Maths: During Maths groups we have been continuing to revise and build upon students Number and Place Value knowledge and skills. This included partitioning, rearranging and renaming numbers using standard and non-standard groupings and recognising the role of a zero digit in place value notation. Just a reminder that your child may move between teachers for Maths depending on their assessment results for each topic. This ensures they are working in a group that best fits their needs for each topic.
Inquiry: This term students will become scientists during our ‘All Mixed Up’ (which focuses on chemical science) Inquiry topic. We began this unit by learning what Scientists do and how we use Science in our everyday lives. We will be linking this new Inquiry topic with our Reading Core knowledge unit this term.
Wellbeing: Over the last fortnight our wellbeing and social skills focus has been revising our school rules and the 5 step telling rule when dealing with problems that might occur in the classroom and the school yard.
Thank you for your support with homework: Regular reading aloud and a weekly Word Study/PhOrMeS worksheet. This will be sent home on Friday 2nd of May (please see Compass for more information). Optional online extras: ‘Nessy Reading and Spelling’ and ‘Sunset/Jetpack Maths’ (Essential Assessment).
Grade 3
Core Knowledge: This term, our unit, ‘We Are One’, will explore big questions like: Who lived in Australia first and how do we know? What was life like for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples before the arrival of the Europeans? How did traditional First Nations Australians live sustainable lives? How does The Dreaming help First Nations Australians make sense of their world?
In addition to developing knowledge, vocabulary and comprehension through reading a variety of texts for this unit, students will also continue to build their decoding skills by applying strategies such as breaking longer words into parts, sounding out/blending, recognising patterns and ‘rules’, and monitoring and clarifying as they read.
Writing: We begin the term with a focus on the structure and features of information reports. Students are learning how to organise facts into paragraphs with appropriate subheadings. In our grammar and syntax lessons, we have worked on using the articles ‘a, an, the’ correctly within sentences, as well as expanding simple sentences by including adverbs to support the ‘who/what, when, where, why, how’.
Word Study: We have been reviewing the ‘1-1-1’ doubling rule when adding a vowel suffix, the ‘wa, wha, war, whar’ code, and the ‘y to i rule’ when adding a suffix to a base word ending in y. Students have also been reading and spelling a range of homophones and ‘weird words’.
Maths: We began our ‘Fractions’ topic this week by exploring key language such as numerator and denominator, and drawing, dividing and shading shapes and collections to represent 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/10, along with non-unit fractions, and equivalent fractions. As always, we encourage opportunities to explore these concepts further at home, as well as ongoing practise of times tables and related division facts and strategies.
Wellbeing: Our wellbeing focus this week is on self-compassion, teaching students how to tame their ‘butterflies’ and feel calm when they are experiencing big emotions.
Homework: Thank you for your support with establishing homework routines this week. As per last week’s Compass note, the purpose of homework is to consolidate students’ learning from activities completed at school during the week. From this Friday onwards, students will have a Literacy and a Numeracy task to complete (with one week to complete). These will be posted on Seesaw on Fridays, and we will show and explain the tasks to students during class time. In addition to their Seesaw code, students have now added their unique Essential Assessment code to their diaries to complete ‘My Numeracy’ tasks.
All children need to ask a grown-up to check their homework with them and fix errors or make changes as needed, before submitting. We encourage you to support your child with completing tasks as needed.
We will continue to collect diaries every Friday to monitor and reward home reading and remind parents to please check and sign your child's diary each week.
Incursion: As part of our core knowledge unit, Grade 3 students will participate in an incursion involving a variety of activities about First Nations Australians.
The company conducting this incursion, Aboriginal Incursions, delivers fun, engaging and educational workshops that help students build a deeper understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures through storytelling, performances, and hands-on activities. Led by experienced cultural leaders and entertainers, these sessions blend traditional and contemporary experiences to foster respect, awareness, and lasting learning. Please check your ’Compass events’ for information, consent and payment.
Grade 4
Welcome back to Term 2. We hope all Grade 4 families had a relaxing break over Easter and students are refreshed and ready to go.
We have a fantastic term of learning ahead of us and we want to continue to build upon the great work that our Grade 4 students did in Term 1. Our cohort will continue with our weekly forums on Tuesday. It is a time where we all meet together to give out our trophy to our Values Award recipient, celebrate our successes, share birthday wishes, reminders and chat about our week ahead.
Science: ‘Friends or foes?’ is our first science-based topic this term. Big questions will guide the student’s learning as they explore the special relationship between plants and animals, such as bees and ants. Through investigations, students investigate the life cycles of these species as well as the mutually beneficial relationships these species have with one another. We have lots of ‘hands on’ tasks planned for our students this term to develop their natural curiosity, science understanding and skills.
Literacy: Reading has started with some big questions relating to our Inquiry topic such as, ‘What are organisms?’, ‘What is a life-cycle?’, ‘How do plants change over their lifetime?’ and ‘How does a planted seed change?’. Building our student’s background knowledge and exposing them to high quality subject specific vocabulary is important to develop their understanding and comprehension of texts. We have had plenty of meaningful discussions centred around our reading and work will continue with developing key comprehension strategies of questioning, clarifying, inferring and summarising. Explanation texts is our writing genre this term so we have been looking at their structure and language features through our WAGOLL (what a good one looks like) text on the lifecycle of a butterfly.
Numeracy: Decimals is our first Maths concept for Term 2. We have been looking at the value of digits in decimal numbers eg. tenths, hundredths, comparing and ordering decimal numbers and identifying where decimal numbers are on open number lines, are some examples of the work our Grade 4’s have been doing. Students will also continue with the completion of ‘Mental Maths’ tasks each day and ‘Daily Reviews’.
Homework:
Reading 5 x week. Students should be recording their reading in their diary and we ask if you could please sign these at the end of the week.
Word Study homework - either set on SeeSaw or completed as a hard copy.
SplashLearn Maths tasks + multiplication fact practice.
Reminders:
“Nude Food” on a Tuesday continues this Term. We encourage our students to try and bring their snacks and lunch in plastic free wrapping with the incentive to not only reduce the amount of disposable rubbish to help our environment, but to be the recipients of the ‘golden lunchbox’ which recognises the class with the highest percentage of students who have ‘nude food’ for the week!
Grade 5
It’s been a fantastic start to the term with lots of rich learning across all areas!
In Reading, we explored students' prior knowledge of Indigenous Australian history, with a special focus on the Bunurong Tribe. Next week, we’ll begin reading Rabbit Proof Fence, which will support our inquiry into Australia’s history.
Our Inquiry sessions introduced the new unit with a timeline activity and a video about Captain Cook to help revise the concept of first contact. We will begin examining the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
In Writing, students completed a response pre-test and explored writing from both first- and third-person points of view.
Our Word Study focus this week was revising the root claim/clam and starting our work with terr/terra.
In Maths, we’re continuing to strengthen our addition and subtraction strategies while also beginning our new topic on perimeter and area. These concepts will run concurrently to help students build fluency and apply their skills in practical ways.
During Wellbeing, we revised the PPS school rules, values, and protocols to set a positive tone for the term.
Reminders:
The Camp Compass event is now live – please submit formal consent and payment as soon as possible.
Medical forms are due back to classroom teachers – return them ASAP.
Camp packing lists have been sent home – students can start preparing what to bring.
Literacy and Maths homework will recommence this week.
We’re looking forward to another great week of learning and connection.
Grade 6
Literacy: Students have completed their information report pre-assessments on Australia this week. Based on their pre-test, students will identify three goals they will focus on during our writing unit. Students will revise the content and structure of an information report beginning with a WAGOLL on Neil Armstrong.
In Reading, we have begun working on our ‘Astronomy: Space’ Systems unit. Students have completed a group research task based on the question ‘How do people know what is in space?’. Each group presented their findings to the class in the form of a poster.
Mathematics: In Mathematics, we will be focusing on Fractions for the next few weeks. Students will further their understanding of a number of key areas, including the representation, ordering, comparison and equivalence of fractions.
Year 7 Transition 2025: Last week, Year 6 to Year 7 Placement Packs were sent out. Parents received a Compass notification and application forms were sent home with your child. These forms must be returned by Friday 9th May. Families will be notified of student placements on Tuesday 1st July. Please ensure you read the instructions carefully when completing the forms.
If you have any questions, please get in touch with the Year 7 transition coordinators (Audrey Ulrich & Ryan Hubbard).
Interschool Sport: Students will commence their Term 2 Interschool Sport this Friday 2nd May. Our first match is away against St. Marks. Sports this term include Tee-ball, Netball, AFL and Football.
Term 2 Dates
Please check Compass and Focus for further information regarding Term 2 dates relating to Grade 6 students