Foundation

We’re excited to celebrate our annual Alphabet Day on Thursday 3rd July! This semester, our Foundation students have been working hard to consolidate all their letters and sounds. They’ve now learnt the entire alphabet — and that’s certainly something worth celebrating! To mark this special occasion, students are invited to dress up as something that begins with any letter of the alphabet. We’re looking forward to a colourful and creative day filled with imagination and fun. Parents are warmly invited to join us for the Alphabet Parade at 9:05am on the quad, weather permitting. Please note that, for privacy reasons, parents are only permitted to take photos of their own child. Rest assured, classroom teachers will take group photos during the event and share them on Seesaw. We can’t wait to see all the fantastic costumes and to share this joyful day with you!

Maths

This week, we are concluding our ‘Addition’ unit. Students have been focusing on solving Addition stories and problems, using a range of strategies to support their understanding. These include counting on from the bigger number, using Friends of 10, working with number lines and tens frames, and exploring concepts through hands-on manipulatives. These tools have helped students make meaningful connections and develop confidence in their Addition skills. Next week, we’ll spend time on revision, consolidating what we’ve learned throughout the term.

Looking ahead to Term 3, students will begin their second unit on ‘Place Value’. This unit will build on their prior knowledge, allowing them to deepen their understanding of how numbers are composed and related, setting a strong foundation for future maths learning.

Inquiry:

In our Inquiry unit ‘Healthy Habits’, students have been learning about the difference between needs and wants. To consolidate their understanding, they have been busy designing and constructing their own bedrooms, thoughtfully including items they need and want in order to be healthy and happy. A big thank you to families for providing the materials needed to complete this project. Students are excited to share their creations, which will be sent home in the last week of Term 2!

Special events:

NAIDOC Week - It is the 50th year of NAIDOC and the theme this year is “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision and Legacy” with a focus on connecting and celebrating the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Our Foundation students will be listening to stories and completing some activities over the next two weeks. We encourage you to have conversations with your child at home to support this learning.

As we approach the end of Term 2, we would like to say a huge thank you for your ongoing support at home. We are especially grateful to the parents who volunteered their time to

help with corridor reading this term—it has made a big difference. We look forward to continuing this in Term 3!

We are so proud of our Foundation students for the amazing growth they have made in their first semester of school. It has been a joy to watch their confidence and independence grow each day.

Although we won't be assigning homework over the holidays, we highly recommend that students continue reading regularly and keep up with their independent reading goals.

We look forward to welcoming everyone back for the first day of Term 3 on Monday, 21st July. Happy holidays!

Grade 1

Year 1 Update

With just one week left of the term, the weather has certainly turned it on for our Year 1 students, giving them plenty to look at, feel, think about, and write about! Combining our Weather topic with Literacy, the students have been working in groups to produce a weather report based on this week’s conditions. They are really enjoying the investigation, writing, and team spirit, while focusing on weather-related terminology and presentation skills.

In Word Study, our focus this week and next is on the trigraphs "air" and "ear". These can represent the /âr/ sound (as in care and bear), but "ear" can also represent the long e sound, as in hear. Students are encouraged to look for these patterns in their take-home readers. While there’s no formal homework for the rest of the term, any extra practice with these two codes at home is always appreciated.

In Numeracy, students have been learning about Time. They’ve been introduced to the analogue clock and are exploring telling time to the hour and half hour. In Week 11, we’ll be reviewing the key concepts covered this term, including Place Value, Addition and Subtraction.

For Wellbeing, students participated in a meditation activity this week, learning relaxation techniques like muscle tensing and releasing. They also explored other calming strategies and we’re encouraging them to use these techniques when needed. Next week our focus will be gratitude. Following on from our Week 9 Wellbeing lesson, students worked in mixed groups across the Year 1 cohort to complete a fun STEM challenge — building a tower using just newspaper and a small amount of masking tape! It was a great opportunity to practise teamwork and use positive communication. Be sure to check out some photos in this edition of the newsletter!

We’ve noticed a few issues recently with toys being brought outside during recess and lunchtime, which has been affecting valuable learning time upon the students return to class. Please have a chat with your child about bringing appropriate toys to school. Any items brought should be clearly labelled, and students should be encouraged to take responsibility for their belongings during playtimes.

We hope everyone enjoys a well-deserved holiday break, and we look forward to seeing our Year 1 students back, refreshed and ready to go, in July!

Grade 2

As we wind up Term 2, we’d like to congratulate our Grade 2 students on their terrific effort and progress this term- they should be very proud of themselves! Thank you to our wonderful Grade 2 parents for your ongoing support.

Literacy: Our Grade 2 students have continued to be really engaged during our poetry unit and have produced some excellent Diamante and Rhyming Couplet poetry over the last few weeks. Students have been able to build on their understanding and skills around rhythm and rhyme in poetry.

During our PhOrMes/Word Study lessons, students have been learning to read and spell words containing the ‘Rabbit Pattern’. We double the consonant after a short vowel. Some words that follow this pattern are rabbit, raffle, cubby and possum.

Students have also been learning to apply their knowledge from our ‘Grammar Project’ lessons by finishing sentences when given a sentence stem containing a subordinating conjunction (if, when, before, after, although, even and though).

Inquiry/Core Knowledge: As part of our Inquiry/Core knowledge unit ‘All Mixed Up’, students have continued to investigate changes to matter (solids, liquids, gases) and conducted experiments to determine if changes to matter caused by heating or cooling can be reversed.

Maths: Students have continued to build their understanding of telling the time, focusing on telling the time on analogue and digital clocks. As always, opportunities to explore these concepts in everyday situations at home will be a wonderful way to consolidate and build on your child’s knowledge.

Wellbeing: We have been identifying physical reactions we might have to the different emotions we can feel. Students have also created their own personal tool kit for self-regulation and ways they can calm down when faced with a challenging situation.

Homework: Thank you for your support with homework. Please note there will be no spelling homework sheet given to students on the last day of this term (Friday 4th July). Optional online extras: ‘Nessy Reading and Spelling’ and ‘Sunset/Jetpack Maths’ (Essential Assessment).

Grade 3

Novel Study – We have been reading the text, ‘Yirra and her Deadly Dog, Demon’, a story about indigenous children living in Sydney. In addition to focusing on the ‘big ideas’ within the text so far, students been building vocabulary, sentence writing skills, and their understanding of literary devices (e.g. similes and idioms).

Writing: To kick off our poetry unit, students have been developing their rhyming skills, focusing on rhyming couplets and limericks – challenging but lots of fun! Keep an eye on Seesaw to see some of their work. Next week, we will explore Haiku poetry.

Word Study: This fortnight, we have been learning more about the Greek morpheme ‘bi’ and Latin morpheme ‘rupt’, and using these with a variety of prefixes and suffixes. We have also been reviewing when ‘y to i rule when adding a suffix’, as well as reading and spelling a range of homophones and ‘weird words’.

Maths: We are revisiting ‘Patterns and Early Algebra’ for the remaining two weeks of Term 2, exploring algorithms to create number patterns, and following algorithms to identify multiples.

Wellbeing, Social Skills and Friendships: Our session this week highlighted hot topics for this age group including: birthday parties, how to kindly decline, feeling caught in the middle, following & copying, and “stealing” friends. Our final session for the term next week, ties it all together, reviewing the key concepts covered so far.

Homework: Thank you for your ongoing support with homework this term - we are very impressed with the students’ effort to complete tasks, and hope that the homework has helped consolidate their learning, as well as giving parents some insight into what their children are learning each week. We encourage all students to continue with regular reading over the last week of term and throughout the holidays (all school ‘take home’ books need to be returned before Friday 4th July please).

Grade 4

Our Star Time incursion was a huge success last week & the students learnt so much about the movie making process such as how to use a green screen, filming techniques, editing processes such as transitions, sound effects etc. It was great to see co-operative group work and problem solving amongst the students. The teachers will be uploading the student’s documentaries to Seesaw.

Literacy: Speaking and listening skills were put to the test during our Star Time movie making incursions on Monday 16th June and Tuesday 17th June. The students did an excellent job with writing, reading, rehearsing and delivering their scripts when recording their speaking parts. We are now reading a great class novel called, ‘The Worst Witch’ and the students are completing reading comprehension tasks and vocabulary activities for each chapter that we cover.

Numeracy: Students have been learning about the different transformations that shapes and objects can undergo such as reflection (flip), rotation (turn) and slide (translation). They have also completed work that involved creating symmetrical shapes and pictures.

Science: We have begun a new Science unit called, ‘Melting Moments’ which comes under the umbrella of ‘chemical sciences’ for Level 3 & 4 of the Science curriculum. Our Grade 4’s will be investigating a change of state between solids and liquid that can be caused by adding or removing heat. Students have been introduced to the structure of science reports and will be writing these for different activities and experiments that they will be completing in class.

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.
Literacy homework - Apostrophes showing possession.
My Numeracy Task - Decimals - VC2M4N01
Multiplication fact practice.

Grade 5

As we near the end of term, our students have continued to demonstrate focus, growth, and creativity across all areas of learning.

In Reading, we followed the girls’ escape and journey back to Jigalong in Rabbit Proof Fence, exploring Chapters 7 and 8. Students are showing a deep understanding of the story and its historical context.

In Inquiry, students began their research projects on either a famous Indigenous Australian or an initiative, program, or day that promotes Indigenous rights. These projects will be presented during the final week of school, and we’ll also be marking NAIDOC Week with a special classroom activity to celebrate and reflect.

In Writing, students have planned, drafted, edited, and published their own palindrome poems, each focused on a thoughtful, real-world topic. The creativity and care students put into their work has been fantastic.

Our Word Study focus this week included new morphemes: psych, put(e), and flux/fluct - exploring their meanings and how they’re used in academic and everyday language.

In Maths, students achieved fabulous results on their probability post-tests last week! To wrap up the term, we’ve shifted our focus to 2D and 3D shapes, including nets, cross sections, and transformations such as rotation, reflection, and translation.

In Wellbeing, students explored the difference between harmful vs. helpful self-talk, building awareness of how their inner dialogue can impact confidence and wellbeing.

Reminders for the Final Week of Term:

Tuesday: Curriculum Day & Parent-Teacher Interviews (no school for students)
Thursday: We’ll be watching the Rabbit Proof Fence film in class.
Friday: Final STOMP session and early dismissal at 2:30pm.
Concert costumes: Parent reps have started organising costume accessories for the school concert, keep an eye out for more information regarding that soon.

We’re incredibly proud of all the hard work and growth this term - let’s finish strong!

Grade 6

Literacy

Students have completed their media study on the movie ‘Hidden Figures’ this week. Students have completed a quiz and are writing a response text based on the film.

In Reading, we have concluded our ‘Astronomy: Space Systems’ unit. This week, students have completed an end-of-unit quiz and are researching a significant question or idea related to space.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, we finished our unit on ‘Chance’ last week, with students completing their post-test on Friday. Students have commenced our new topic on ‘Patterns & Algebra’ this week.

Interschool Sport

Students played their fifth round of interschool sport last week against Mentone. Our final round is this Friday 27th June, at home against Mentone Park.

Space Incursion

On Thursday of last week, students participated in a space-themed incursion involving the ‘Science Discovery Dome’. Children also completed several space-related activities throughout the day to celebrate the end of the unit.

Camp

Information will be sent home this week or next about the Grade 6 Log Cabin Camp in Term 3 from Wednesday 27th August to Friday 29th August. If your child/children will not be attending camp, please contact your child’s teacher as soon as possible.

Term 2 & 3 Dates

Please check Compass and Focus for further information regarding Term 2 and 3 dates relating to Grade 6 students.

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