What's happening?

Foundation

Welcome back! The Foundation students have loved sharing with teachers and peers about their holidays through their recount writing on Monday morning. It is lovely to have them back refreshed and ready for a big term 4 - We can’t believe it is already their final term of Prep. You will soon receive our Term 4 Newsletter with lots of information regarding upcoming events and your child’s Maths Group.

The sign-up sheets for corridor reading and writing can be found either in the Foundation corridor or outside the FN classroom. We really appreciate your assistance with this, the children love their extra reading sessions. 

Over the next two weeks we will be learning about the jobs of ‘e’. The first of these jobs is Final Silent E. In this spelling rule, the ‘e’ comes at the end of a word, it jumps over a consonant and makes the vowel say its name (strong vowel sound) in words such as hope, kite, cube and plane. 

In maths, we are reviewing Place Value and are extremely impressed with all the student's growth on this topic. We will continue to use concrete materials such as MAB, unifix, bundling sticks and ten’s frames to help with this 

Our ‘Show and Tell’ notice was sent home in the final week of Term 3, please let your classroom teacher know if you did not receive this.

We look forward to a wonderful last term with our lovely preps!

Grade 1

Students are back into the swing of thing and doing an excellent job returning to school routines, including remembering to bring their hats. For students attending After School Care, they will need to take their hat with them and put it in their bag afterwards so they have it at school for the next day. Alternatively, it could be a good idea to have a second ‘After Care hat’ that remains in school bags. 

This week for writing students have done a brief descriptive recount of one part of their holidays. The students have also begun learning the vowel teams of ee and ea, and we will continue with these sounds into next week. Please keep an eye out for the new Word Study Practise Page – which will go home in reader folders this week. Next week, the students will be focusing on descriptive sentences by using adjectives and adverbs, and we will also begin our new writing topic of Narratives. The Red Flag Words for the next fortnight are upon, done and none. We are quickly approaching the end of our explicit teaching of List B Red Flag words and encourage all families to maintain practise of these words at home to enhance retention.   

In Maths the students will be working on Place Value in week one before moving into fractions of a collection, and halves and doubles facts.

We have started our new Inquiry into Mini Beasts this term and students will begin to explore all different bugs and their classifications. It’s an exciting and hands on time observing, researching and focusing on little critters. On Friday, the students will be working together to create our very own Bug Hotel, we are sure they will be very excited to show you this on Friday afternoon! There is an Incursion on Minibeasts in Week 5, please keep an eye on Compass for updates regarding this, and please be sure to sign the permission form and pay for the day’s activity as soon as possible. 

Grade 2

Our Grade 2 students have made a great start to Term 4, full of exciting news and a positive attitude!

Students have been exploring narrative writing and are doing a terrific job of demonstrating their understanding of the structure and key features of a story. For reading, we have been engaging in the text ‘Now and Then’, by building vocabulary and comprehension skills. This text also links to our new inquiry topic ‘Our Community Past and Present’. As part of our ‘Word Study’, we have been focusing on recognising the prefixes re- and pre- and explaining their meanings. Next week the focus will be on the prefixes un-, mid- and mis-. Students are learning to apply their knowledge from our ‘Grammar Project’ lessons by defining subjects and predicates within a sentence. 

In Maths this week, we began our measurement topic with students investigating ‘length’. They are learning to compare, order, and measure objects using appropriate informal units, and some familiar metric units. They will then move onto investigating area, capacity, volume and mass. As always, opportunities to explore ‘measurement’ in everyday situations at home will be a great way to consolidate and build on your child’s knowledge.

We have introduced our new Inquiry topic for this term, ‘Our Community Past and Present’. Students will begin the topic by recognising how the family home and how family life has changed over time.  

As part of our wellbeing program this term, we began with a focus on resilience (‘Bouncing Back’) and will then work on cooperation and respect (‘Fair Play’).

Thank you for your support with homework: regular reading aloud, sound pack practise and ‘Red Flag Word’ spelling. If students are reading other books from home, in addition to the coloured levelled readers, we’d love if these could also be recorded in reading logs please.

Special events: We will be having a Grade 2 incursion on Wednesday 13th November. This will also be a dress up day to celebrate our Inquiry topic, ‘Our Community Past and Present’. More information regarding this day will be sent home in the next couple of weeks. 

Grade 3

It’s been a lovely week welcoming back our Grade 3 students for an action-packed Term 4!

Novel Study: This week, we started our novel study, ‘Storm Boy’. Students listen to several pages each lesson and participate in discussions and written responses, with the current focus on building vocabulary, and sentence expansion to give more detail when talking and writing about the text.

Core Knowledge: Our inquiry unit this term is all about ‘Earth Science’. This week, students learned about the features of a rotation and a revolution, and how they cause day and night and seasons, and then moved on to investigate the layers of the earth.

Writing: We begin the term with a focus on the structure and features of narrative texts. This week, students had a go at writing a narrative in response to a prompt. This first piece (pre-assessment) will help guide the direction for their learning over the coming weeks.  

Word Study: Students have really enjoyed finding about the history of the English language this week, learning that English is not the same language it was when it started hundreds of years ago. English has borrowed lots of words from other languages, and when it borrowed words from other languages, it also borrowed the spellings from those languages too. So, English spelling now has the spelling patterns from lots of languages

Maths: We started our chance topic this week, with students beginning to conduct various chance experiments, identifying and describing possible outcomes, and recognising variation in results. 

Reminder of upcoming events (more information will be sent out very soon):

• Swimming – Week 6
• Camp – Week 7

Homework: Will be assigned this Friday (just Maths to start with) and we will remind students to ask a grown-up to check their homework with them and fix errors or make changes as needed, before submitting. Also, to continue regular home reading, record in diary, get it signed by a grown up, and bring it to school every Friday. Thanks for your ongoing support with this.

Grade 4

Welcome back from the holidays! We hope everyone had a restful break and is ready for an exciting Term 4. We also welcome Miss Cunningham back to 4S, she will be in on Thursdays and Fridays.

LITERACY

This week, we’re diving into our Literacy unit with the novel Wonder, where students will explore themes of kindness, empathy and acceptance by reading and responding to the novel. In Writing this term, we’ll be focusing on crafting engaging narratives. We begin this week by looking at the structure of narratives through short animation clips.

NUMERACY

In Maths, we’re kicking off with a week dedicated to Patterns and Algebra, then we will be transitioning to our Time unit in Week 2.

INQUIRY

Inquiry unit, "Our Island Home and Beyond," will allow students to discover the main characteristics of the continents of Africa and South America in relation to Australia, as well as the environmental features, fauna, flora and cities of these continents. A reminder that homework will come home in Week 2, however we do expect students to be reading and filling in their diaries this week. We’re looking forward to a fantastic term filled with learning and fun!

Grade 5

Welcome back for Term 4. This term is an action packed term in  5. Students will be participating in Health Education sessions across the next 4 weeks, leadership sessions and development of leadership skills, developing their understanding of different countries through our Geography unit and furthering their comprehension skills as we read ‘ A Long Walk to Water’.

Reading

We have begun reading our new mentor text for the term, ‘A Long Walk to Water’’ by Linda Sue Park. Students have been exploring Sudan and the reasons it has been separated into countries and have been introduced to the main characters of Nya and Salva. Homework tasks this term will again link back to this novel and what the students are learning during the reading sessions at school.

Maths

We begin the term with our new topic ‘Patterns and and Algebra’. Students have begun revising the important mathematical terminology for this topic, completing and recognising patterns and developing their understanding of algebraic expressions.

Writing

Students have begun revising their Narrative writing skills and have completed their pretest writing piece based on a given picture prompt. Throughout the rest of the week, students will be conferring with their classroom teacher and marking themselves against the marking rubric and begin working through sessions to further enhance their writing skills.

Inquiry

This week we also started our Geography Unit which is learning all about learning about countries from Europe, Asia and Central America, climates, natural disasters, cultures etc . This week we have begun to investigate different types of natural disasters and their impacts. Students have also been allocated groups in which over the course of the term will work together to create an informational display for their country that they will present at our end of term travel expo.

Health Education / Wellbeing

This week is the beginning of Health Education for our Grade 5 students. The students will participate in a 4x 90 minute sessions over the next four weeks learning about the development of the human body. As we do at the beginning of every term, students have been reminded of the high expectations we have of them with their effort and behaviour and in demonstrating the values of Parkdale P.S enabling us all to complete a great year before heading into Grade 6

Homework 

This term - literacy, maths, and minimum 20 minutes of reading each night recorded in diaries and signed off each week by a parent.

Reminder: 

Thank you to parents for getting all the sizing and name details in for next year's jumpers. Please check your Compass feed later in the week for information about payment for Year 6 2025 Jumpers.

Grade 6

Welcome back!  We hope everyone has had a fantastic and restful holiday and is ready to take on the final primary school term for our Grade 6’s.

This will be an exciting, but also busy time for all. Term 4 will be packed with lots of learning opportunities, exciting incursions and excursions, sports finals, gala days, transition for ear 7 and graduation, to name but a few.

Literacy 

The Grade 6 students will begin a new novel study based on a book called Rivet Boy. This will focus on studying the novel in depth and incorporate vocabulary and grammar linked to the story.

Writing

The Grade 6 students will continue to work on editing and publishing their memory book writing. We are also going to focus on the narrative writing genre this term. We started our narrative writing with a pre-assessment this week and will build on the students’ skills throughout the term.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, students will be working on money and financial maths in the first two weeks. This ties in with our Market Day Inquiry theme. It will involve using financial plans, calculating percentage discounts, profit and loss and working out best value for money. 

Inquiry

Our Market Day theme this term kicks off with our Mini Boss Incursion This incursion will introduce students to the business world in line with our Market Day inquiry theme. Students will embark on a quest to create a smoothie product and marketing campaign that promotes health and wellness in their community. Working in teams, students will discover what it takes to become a business owner. They will investigate the preferences of their target market, design and learn about cost and profit before trialling their delicious and nutritious blends. This will be followed by using their skills to create marketing materials to promote their product and brand. Then it all comes down to The Pitch!

Interschool Sport

This term some students will take part in interschool finals and a variety of gala days including lacrosse and touch rugby.

OCTOBER -   Useful Dates