Learning News

Learning News Weeks 5-6, Term 3 2024

Learning News

We are over halfway through the term and our classrooms are extremely busy. Students from K-6 have been practising for the upcoming Father’s Day performance and years 3-6 have been working hard on their musical. It’s not uncommon to hear music drifting from the Stage in the school throughout the day. Make sure you mark these events on your calendar, you won’t want to miss them! 📆 

The Year 6 students were fortunate enough to visit the residents at Manellae Lodge last week and join in with them with their craft activity of colouring. Many new friends were made and both residents and students alike look forward to our return visit where we will be painting some masterpieces.

Kinder have been artists, Year 1 have been exploring what life would be like if they couldn’t hear or see, Year 2 have been travelling the world in Geography, Year 3/4 have been making sundials and tracking the sun and Year 5 have been trying their hands at being authors. What a variety of learning!

We are definitely going to be ready for the spring holidays, there is so much going on at St Michael’s!

Yours in learning,

Cathy Shepherd

AP/LoP

Kindergarten

Kindergarten had a fantastic time in Visual Arts this term and created artworks inspired by the ocean. We experimented with different colours and textures to create interesting sea creatures. The children designed different interesting line patterns using wool on a cardboard template. They then covered the wool and cardboard with foil to create shimmering, scaly fish and glowing jellyfish, finishing them off with plenty of colour. What a fantastic seascape Kinder- Great job!

Miss Fraser

Year 1

This term in Creative Arts, Year 1 has been creating artworks that show how the landscape changes with the weather. We have learnt that as the day progresses, Uluru looks like it changes colour due to the sun’s position, the ground cracks during drought and the ‘water look’ of the environment after a flood. 

Year 1 also has been learning to play the Boomwhackers. Boomwhackers are coloured plastic tubes that make different sounds. We discovered that there are 8 notes in an octave before the colours repeat, and the longer boomwhackers have a low pitch whereas the shorter ones have a higher pitch. The students have tried very hard to read coloured ‘notes’ and play different songs on the beat. Great job Year 1! 

Miss Myers and Mrs G

Year 2

In Mathematics, Year 2 have been learning to make arrays of equal rows and columns. By doing so, students have been able to solve multiplication and division problems. In one activity, students had to roll a dice to give them the row number, then pick a card to give them a column number to then make the array. Students worked in pairs to create their arrays and then used skip counting to figure out the total number of counters. Keep up the great work Year 2!

Miss Rasche 

Year 3/4

This week, Year 3/4 attended their first gymnastics session at the PCYC in Tamworth. Students participated in a range of activities to show off their outstanding gymnastics skills. Year 3/4 raced around in warm up games, used their bodies to create different shapes and balancing positions, demonstrated some fantastic jumping skills on the trampolines and balanced on the beams and bars. Students had some great feedback about their experiences and are very excited for next week’s session. Amazing participation and sportsmanship this week Year 3/4! 

Miss Maunder 

Year 5

What a fantastic way to wrap up our writing from the first five weeks of our term. Year 5 has been undertaking a deep investigation of “Characterisation” (the way an author shows us about a character in a story) through the lens of our novel August & Jones by Pip Harry. To conclude our unit the students had to write a postcard from the perspective of Jones, one of the main  characters from the novel. In this task the students were introduced to the features of a postcard and many chose to adapt these when creating their final product. What fantastic work by Year 5!

Mr Beaumont.

Year 6

In Maths, Year 6 has been studying the relationship between the area of triangles, parallelograms, rectangles and composite shapes. To demonstrate our understanding, students designed a new playground, using these shapes to represent a variety of fun additions such as slides, pools, swings etc. They had a criteria that needed to be met and all added their own creative flair. Students were required to identify the area of all the different elements of their park. Fantastic design work Year 6! 

Miss Summerell