Literacy News

We have a busy term ahead with Book Week celebrations and the Writers' Festival taking place. We are also hosting our first Lions Junior Speaking Competition for any student interested in years 3-6, and all classes will be acknowledging NAIDOC week in the first week or so of the term.

Here is what is also being taught in Literacy across the school in Term 3:

Foundation

In Foundation this term, we will continue to build on our sound knowledge. Students are working across a range of levels to develop their knowledge and appropriate use of sounds learnt. They will be reading decodable texts which align to the sounds they have learnt. We will continue to elaborate on our Phonological Awareness skills in daily Heggerty lessons.  In writing, students will continue to build their sentence level writing skills. Students will be learning about sentences which include subordinating conjunctions ‘but and because’ to create compound sentences. Finally, they learn to identify the difference between a statement and a question and how to appropriately use punctuation to represent this. These skills will be applied to our ‘Writer’s Festival’ piece, along with the rest of the school this term.

Students will begin using dotted thirds to develop their handwriting skills. We will be using ‘dirt, grass, sky’ books to guide the formation of letters. They will be learning the letters in formation groups (clockwise, anti-clockwise, I family and u-family letters).

We finish our week with writing with the ‘Writer’s Notebook’. Students are provided a topic or theme where they show curiosity, risk and imagination when responding to the prompt. 

Each week, a mentor text is selected which are aligned to developing our Literacy skills. Students are read the text daily and we unpack this responding to a range of questions, developing their comprehension skills and understanding of a text.

A jam packed term of learning in Literacy! We’re so proud of how far they have come in 6 short months and look forward to continuing with this positive trajectory of learning 😊 

Year 1/2

In Term 3, we will be learning about narrative writing. Students will be planning, drafting and publishing their own narratives. This year, student’s narratives will be based on our Writer’s Festival Topic ‘My Treasured Possession’. Students will continue extend their phonics understanding to improve their fluency and accuracy when reading. They will examine word parts through morphology lessons and build their vocabulary with word studies. Students align their comprehension skills with their decoding abilities through summarising, predicting, questioning, and clarifying a variety of rich texts. 

Year 3/4 

In Reading this term, we will be building our comprehension skills by identifying cause and effect within a text. We will also be revisiting literal and inferential questions, using the information within a text to support our answers. After this we will dive into learning about Reciprocal Reading and the roles within this; Questioner, Clarifier, Summariser, Predictor and Leader.

In Spelling, we will continue to explore spelling conventions. The students will continue to have individual spelling lists to work on each week, using the SMART spelling program.

In the first two weeks in our Writing lessons, students will be drafting a speech about their favourite book/fairy-tale character. Those who wish to participate, will present their speech to judges as a part of the the Lions Junior Public Speaking Competition. After this, we will be focusing on different types of poetry. Throughout the term, students will be creating a single piece of writing as a part of our Writer’s festival.

Year 5/6

In English, our main focus this term will be the Writers’ Festival, which will occur at the end of term. Students will work intensively to create an amazing piece of writing which will be displayed to the whole school community. Students will continue to do specific work around spelling and punctuation, and will increase their fluency and comprehension through reading and discussion in our Literature Circles program. Finally, students will be given the opportunity to enhance their speaking skills by participating in the Lions’ Club speaking competition.

Pre-loved Books

We are looking for pre-loved books that you no longer need for our Great Book Swap. If you have books that need a new home, please consider donating to this great cause. Books can be delivered to the office or place them in the box in the BER building. 

The Great Book Swap - Monday 19th August

This year Donvale Primary School is participating in the 2024 Great Book Swap, a fundraising activity that supports the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and their works with remote Communities across Australia. The Indigenous Literacy Foundation is a charity that works with 424 remote Communities to supply books and literacy resources, and publish books in First Languages by and for First Nations Peoples. 

We have been assigned to the Bigibigi house! Bigibigi means pig in Kriol, a ‘new’ Indigenous language spoken across the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland.

Children are encouraged to donate pre-loved books to the school. Please bring these books to the office or send them in with your child to give to their classroom teacher. On Monday 19th August as part of book week, the children can look through the donated books and for a gold coin donation, select a book that they can keep and enjoy. All money raised will be donated to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.

If you’d like more information about the Indigenous Literacy Foundation please click here. To donate to this great cause, please visit our school donation page.

Thank you for your support and we look forward to celebrating the national Great Book Swap with you, your child and the school community. Happy swapping!

Book Week Dress Up & Activity Day - Tuesday 20th August

This highly anticipated day has been set for this year.  We are giving you plenty of notice to start thinking about what favourite book character your child might like to come as on this fun day. The staff are busily working out what character they will be coming as too.

Here are some websites with some easy dress up ideas for Book week:

https://www.findingmyselfyoung.com/2022/07/easy-book-week-costume-ideas.html

https://childrensbooksdaily.com/book-week-costumes-for-kids/

https://www.mamamia.com.au/book-week-costume-ideas-2021/

https://www.bountyparents.com.au/expert-advice/easy-book-week-costumes/

Writers' Festival

This term we will be holding our bi-annual Writers' Festival. This event will be held on Wednesday 18th & Thursday 19th September. The students will all be writing about 'My Treasured Possession'. 

Your children should be starting to think about what their treasured possession might be. We will be beginning this writing next term from Monday 29th July (week 3).