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

This week, we introduced the x and y sound codes. Next week, students will learn about the digraphs ck and sh. A digraph is when two letters come together to make one sound. This term, we will continue developing writing skills through recount writing and begin exploring narrative writing. Students will learn how to structure a narrative and build their storytelling skills.

Maths

In Maths, we have begun our Place Value unit during group sessions. Place value is a vital concept that will continue to be revisited throughout Terms 3 and 4, as well as in our daily Maths warm-ups.

Social Skills

This term, our focus is on understanding emotions through the Zones of Regulation. This approach helps students recognise their feelings and develop strategies to manage them effectively. We will also support students in building healthy, positive friendships. They will learn how to navigate social situations, resolve conflicts calmly, and be a “Friendship Ninja” using their “friend-o-meter.”

Corridor Reading

Corridor Reading will officially begin next Monday (27th April) at 8:50am. We warmly welcome parents, grandparents, and carers to volunteer to listen to students read. Sign-up sheets are located outside the classrooms. Please note that helpers must hold a current Working With Children Check and have presented it to the office and class teacher.

Take Home Readers

A friendly reminder to return reading satchels and readers each day. Books are changed weekly. Please ensure your child reads each book at least twice and records this in their reading log. Thank you for your continued support with reading at home. We encourage at least four nights of reading per week, even five minutes each evening makes a big difference to confidence, fluency, and progress.

Show and Tell

Show and Tell will recommence next week. Thank you for ensuring your child is prepared for their presentation each fortnight. A Term 2 topic list has been sent home in your child’s satchel.

Reminders:

Hats are required for outdoor play until May 1st.
As the weather cools, please send your child with a warm (navy) coat.
Ensure all clothing items are clearly named.

We are looking forward to a fantastic Term ahead!

The Foundation Team

Grade 1

Term 2 has started wonderfully, with the children quickly settling back into their routines and feeling refreshed and ready for new learning.

In Literacy, we are exploring onomatopoeia—words that represent sounds—so you may hear your child pointing these out at home. This will be followed by a focus on poetry. Recently, we have been learning the letter pattern “igh,” and this week we are exploring the different sounds of “ough.” Homework will continue to support these learning areas.

In Maths, students are working on place value. Next week, we will begin a unit on measurement, focusing on comparing and ordering length, mass and capacity. Our “Five-a-Day” program and daily Maths reviews are also continuing to build confidence and fluency.

In Inquiry, we have started an exciting new topic: Weather. This week, students are being introduced to key vocabulary and are learning to observe and describe different types of weather.

A friendly reminder to continue reading take-home readers 4–5 times each week to support your child’s progress.

Reminder:

Please check that your child’s school jackets/jumpers, drink bottles and lunchboxes have their name clearly written on them.

Grade 2

Welcome back to Term 2! It has been wonderful to see our Grade 2 students return 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 bags on their own. We are also encouraging and reminding students to get into the habit of going to the toilet during break times. We appreciate your support with these routines as students continue to build their independence.

Literacy: Students have started learning about procedural texts and their features, with a focus on purpose, sequencing, and the effective use of imperative (bossy) verbs. Students have also been applying their knowledge from our Grammar Project lessons by adding adverbs to verbs to make their instructions more specific and descriptive.

During our PhOrMeS/Word Study lessons, students have been learning to read and spell words using the ar vs a spelling pattern. This week, we also reviewed the prefixes re–, in–, de– and un–, as well as the suffixes –s, –ed, –ing and –y. Students added these to a base word to create as many real words as possible, focusing on the base word “correct.” These learning areas are reflected in this week’s homework practice.

Maths: During Maths groups, we have been continuing to revise and build upon students’ Number and Place Value knowledge and skills. This has included partitioning, rearranging, and renaming numbers using standard and non-standard groupings, as well as 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.

Reading/Inquiry: This term, students will become scientists during our ‘All Mixed Up’ Inquiry unit, which focuses on chemical science. We began this unit by learning what scientists do and how we use science in our everyday lives. We will also be linking this Inquiry topic with our Reading Core Knowledge unit this term.

Wellbeing: To help students settle back into the term, our wellbeing and social skills focus has been revising our school rules and the 5-Step Telling Rule when dealing with problems that may occur in the classroom or playground.

Thank you for your continued support with homework, including: • Regular reading aloud• Weekly Word Study/PhOrMeS worksheet

Optional online extras: • Nessy Reading and Spelling• Sunset/Jetpack Maths (Essential Assessment)

Reminder:

Please check that your child’s school jackets/jumpers, drink bottles and lunchboxes have their name clearly written on them.

We are looking forward to another great term of learning in Grade 2! 😊

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: This week, we revisited ‘Number and Place Value’ with a focus on reading, writing, representing, ordering, regrouping and renaming numbers to 10,000 and beyond.

As always, we encourage opportunities to explore these concepts further at home, as well as ongoing practise with counting forwards and backwards by different numbers, from different starting points, to build fluency. Next week, we will start our ‘Time’ topic.

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 in Term 1 with establishing a regular reading routine along with diary entries. We will start posting weekly homework to Seesaw from this Friday, so have asked students to check their access to a device, and to Seesaw by logging in with their unique student code (glued in the back of their diary). Please advise your child's teacher via email if they have any issues with the above.

As per our Grade 3 information booklet, the purpose of homework is to consolidate students’ learning from activities completed at school during the week. Students will have a Literacy and a Numeracy task to complete (except for this week which will be Literacy only). 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 also have their unique Essential Assessment code in 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.

Whiteboard markers: Many students are going through their whiteboard markers quite quickly (we will change brands for next year’s stationery order) and/or do not have many left in their ‘extra’ stationery pack. While we will continue to provide a supply of ‘spare’ markers, we ask that all students bring in at least a six-pack to add to their own supply. Thank you for your support with this, as we use them every day. 😊

Reminder:

Please check that your child’s school jackets/jumpers, drink bottles and lunchboxes have their name clearly written on them.

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 a Monday. It is a time where we all meet 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 science 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 are 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: Fractions is our first Maths concept for Term 2. We will also be looking at Time, Length, Area & Perimeter as well as Shape & Location this term. 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 + Morphology homework - either set on Seesaw or completed as a hard copy.
Division tasks - this is a hard copy for students to complete.
Regular learning and practice of multiplication facts to 10x10. Please see COMPASS for a list of resources to support this.

Reminders:

Please check that your child’s school jackets/jumpers, drink bottles and lunchboxes have their name clearly written on them.

Grade 5

Welcome back to Term 2. We hope all families enjoyed a safe and restful Easter break. The Grade 5 students have returned to school settled and focused, quickly re-engaging with classroom routines and demonstrating enthusiasm for their learning.

This term, our Inquiry and Reading programs are integrated, with a focus on Australia’s First Peoples. Students will develop their understanding of identity, belonging, and connection to Country, while exploring aspects of daily life, culture, and traditions.

In Writing, students are strengthening their sentence structure by composing texts from both first- and third-person perspectives. There is a strong focus on developing more sophisticated writing through the use of compound and complex sentences.

Our Word Study focus has involved revising the root words terr/terra, supporting students to build vocabulary and deepen their understanding of word origins.

In Mathematics, we have commenced our unit on perimeter and area. Students will investigate how to calculate the perimeter and area of regular and irregular polygons, as well as composite shapes. These concepts will be taught concurrently to promote fluency and the application of skills in problem-solving contexts.

During Wellbeing sessions, students revisited the PPS school rules, values, and expectations, helping to establish a positive and productive learning environment for the term.

Reminders:

Reading, Literacy, and Mathematics homework will recommence in Week 2.
Please check that your child’s school jackets/jumpers, drink bottles and lunchboxes have their name clearly written on them.

We look forward to another engaging and successful term of learning and growth.

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 was then given the opportunity to present its findings to the class.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, we will focus on Time and the Properties of Circles during the first two weeks of this term. Students will further their understanding of several key areas, including 12 and 24-hour time, elapsed time and the relationship between π and the circumference, radius and diameter of a circle.

Year 7 Transition 2026

This 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 to your child’s classroom teacher by Friday 8th May. Families will be notified of student placements on Wednesday 24th June. 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 coordinator (Audrey Ulrich).

Interschool Sport

Students will commence their Term 2 Interschool Sport next Friday 1st May. Our first match is away against Kingswood. 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.

Reminder:

Please check that your child’s school jackets/jumpers, drink bottles and lunchboxes have their name clearly written on them.

Focus Newsletter

'Together We Achieve'

Issue 7 · 24 Apr 2026

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