Last Term:

In the last week of term 3, the year 2s went to the Botanical Gardens for a Spring Seeds excursion. A very special thank you to Emily, our gardening teacher, for helping us organise this amazing experience. Students travelled to the Botanical Gardens on public transport and explored special features of the gardens. They also participated in an amazing seed collecting experience with Marie, a seed technologist, and a fun jelly plate printing art activity with Margaret, a rural artist. Students were excited to learn so much about seeds and try a new type of art activity. They also witnessed the filming of a TV gardening show and met the host! A huge thanks to all the parent volunteers who assisted on the day, your support made the day so much more special.

What we have been up to so far this term:

We have begun term 3 by flying into our new integrated topic “Up, Up and Away!”. Our Year 2 Mainstream students have been thinking and learning about different things that fly. Our students learnt about David Unaipon, his legacy and early helicopter-like designs. Information about our home project to extend on this learning will be sent home during Week 4.

Maths:

We have been focussing on sharing, fractions and geometry in maths. Students have been applying their knowledge of division and multiplication to share collections of objects. Our geometry lessons included looking at reflection and lines of symmetry to design artworks using blocks and colouring.

English:

We have started the term learning lots about things that fly - including helicopters and birds, all in preparation for writing explanation texts on how things fly.

This term, year 2 classes are continuing learning the Little Learners Love Literacy Stage 7.3 and 7.4 sounds. The Stage 7.3 sounds focus on ‘oo’ as in boo the goose and ‘le’ as in little poodle. The 7.4 sounds that we have focussed on for week 1 are long /e/ sounds: e-e (theme), e (remote). To reinforce their learning, students could be practising their reading and spelling at home.

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

Year 2 day camp at Camp Toolangi (1 hr and 20 mins away) - YAY!. The bus will be leaving at 9:00am on Thursday 23rd October. We will spend the day doing camp activities and finish with dinner. We will then head back on the bus, returning to school at approximately 8:00pm. Children will be required to bring their lunch and recess, a water bottle, hat and appropriate clothing.

Through our integrated topic, students will be introduced to the design process, exploring the four steps of Ask, Imagine, Create and Improve. Students will create and test different designs for paper helicopters to help put their learning of flight into practice.

Writing moves into looking at procedures, beginning with writing a procedure describing our paper helicopter creations to bring home and explain what we did. We are continuing to practise the writer’s process of planning, drafting, revising and editing.

In our phonics sessions in week 2 and 3 we will be exploring the sound and spelling patterns for the long /o/ sound: o_e (hope), o (go), ow (show) and oe(toe).

In Maths, we will continue making the connections between fractions and sharing. We will be connecting our knowledge of fractions to develop our understanding of time- specifically reading analogue and digital clocks. At home, you might start discussing how you use clocks in your daily life e.g:

-We have dinner at 6:00pm

-Look, it’s 7am! Time to wake up!

-You have basketball in 30 minutes, time to leave!

Cooking can be a great way to enjoy learning about fractions too and connects to our learning of procedure texts in writing.

As we are now in Term 4, please remember to pack a hat for your child every day!

BORING EXCURSION

One day I went on an excursion with the class and the grade 2s and I would rather take a nap but let’s get back to the story. So first, we got the train station but we had to wait 2,000 years then we were on the train. I took a nap and I don’t know, but anyway we got there and we got crazy. We went on the tram, and we were chilling but we were on the tram for 5 minutes and we were not still there and we were so, so, so, so, so hungry that the teachers were killing us. Then we were there, and we ate so, so, so much food.

After that we had a play and we got to the first thing which was, wait a second I forgot something. Hmm… so first we split up into groups and did the first thing. We went on a walk, and I saw nothing yet but I had a challenge. So I had to spot rainbow colours and I saw 41 colours then we saw a lake. We had a competition and I don’t know who won but it was fun.

Then we went into the deep, dark forest. Sabi and I saw a hammock, we were chilling. Then we ran to the group and we went back to some grass and we were rolling down the hill. I saw a dragonfly and I was so scared of the dragonfly. I tried to shoo it away but my legs were doomed. Then we kept walking, and we saw a celebrity filming a TV show and we said hi.

Next, I walked into a cactus and we saw a lake then I sat on a cactus and my butt was doomed until we got back to eat. Um, yum, yum! We had more time to play and then the next thing, yay!

We walked to the next thing and sat down to listen. We had to find seeds and I found a lot of seeds then we went to make some art but with seeds! Mine was so bad I put it in the bin. We went back and had a play again then we had to go. We went on the tram for 5 minutes, then we went on the train, and I fell asleep again. We got back to school.

The end.

August 2A

EXCITING TRIP TO BOTANICAL GARDENS

2A, 2B and 2S hopped on the train at 9:24am on Tuesday 16th September and rode on the train for about 20 minutes. Then we got a tram to the Botatanical Gardens (on the tram some people saw a crook).

When we got there we split into two groups and started doing activities. My group’s first activity was learning about seeds. We met a seed expert, then we had a snack. After that, we went to our next activity, jelly plate printing. It was really fun (we got to make two prints each), then we had lunch.

Our final activity was a long walk, after that everyone’s legs were really tired. We regrouped and went back to school. It was really fun.

Ivo 2A

Prep / 1 Steiner