Deputy Principal Learning and Teaching

Buongiorno a tutti

Week 8!

As we conclude Week 8, we are very grateful of the work our parents, students and staff are putting into our school. The Harvest Festival is coming together well and our students, with the unflappable Mrs Conroy have been cooking up a storm! Great work peoples!

Looking at organising an Italian day next term – we'll see how that goes!

As noted previously, Week 10 we have our swimming program and then we look forward to our students enjoying a restful break.

Ciao for now

Rosina Gemmill

Learning Diversity

Learning Diversity Picture Story Book Recommendations

Reading stories together is a wonderful way for parents and children to build understanding, empathy and acceptance of different ways of thinking, learning and experiencing the world. These books provide age-appropriate opportunities to start meaningful conversations about neurodiversity, helping children develop self-awareness, confidence and respect for others while supporting families to better understand the experiences of neurodivergent children.

Love Me Love My ADHD – Chrissie Davies This warm and engaging picture book helps children understand ADHD through a positive and relatable lens. It celebrates the strengths, challenges and unique perspectives of children with ADHD while encouraging empathy, acceptance and self-confidence.

The Buzzing Bees in My Brain – Ivy Parker Using the imaginative metaphor of buzzing bees, this story provides a child-friendly explanation of how some brains process thoughts, attention and emotions differently. It is a wonderful resource for helping children, families and classmates develop understanding, empathy and appreciation for neurodiversity.

All Cats Are on the Autism Spectrum – Kathy Hoopmann Featuring delightful photographs of cats, this book introduces Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in an accessible, respectful and engaging way. It highlights the diverse characteristics, experiences and strengths of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This makes it an excellent conversation starter for children and adults alike while promoting understanding and acceptance.

Foundation

This fortnight in the Foundation room saw lots of learning about numbers to 20. The class used blocks to make the number 20 and then use one-to-one counting making sure they didn’t miss a block. They are becoming confident in counting to 20 and then backwards too.

During our writing sessions we have been looking at the story ‘Postcards from Pop’. We learnt that Sam and Pop like working in the garden together but one day Pop went on a holiday to get out of the cold. They shared postcards talking about how the garden looks. When pop came back the garden was full of paper daisies. The class enjoyed following a procedure to make a paper daisy and then describe to a partner the steps involved.

Year 1

The Grade One's have been busy over recent weeks. They have been enjoying working with our life-sized number line in our classroom. We can make it show numbers from one to twenty and even one to one hundred. We have also been enjoying working alongside the Foundation students in our specialist subjects.

Foundation/ Year 1

Every year, Victorian Opera delivers an education-focused performance for its Access All Areas program. It offers a chance for primary school students to not only watch a performance, but also to understand how it was made, who made it, and ask questions. Our Foundation and Grade One students have been enjoying the sessions to learn about the making of an opera, culminating in the watching of the opera production of The Magic Pudding. We have seen how costumes, stage sets, the orchestra and singing the story all come together to create a theatre performance.

Year 2

We have had a great two weeks in grade 2! We have been learning about different spelling patterns, such as ch saying /k/ in words like school, learning the rules for adding ing to a base word, and ou and ow making the /ou/ sound in words like cloud and cow. We have also been practicing our tricky words eg build, about, house, always, across, sister, and father. Ask your child if they can remember the tricky bit in the word build and the rhyme to help us remember how to spell it. Check out how many tricky words we have learnt this year!

In Maths we have started learning to use different strategies to help us solve addition and subtraction problems.

Year 3/4

The 3/4 class have been collecting, reading, and composing different types of data in various situations in our everyday lives.

The students created tallies and transferred their data to a bar graph with a focus on correct labelling and structure.

Year 5/6

Literacy

Students have finished writing their Personal Responses to the book Free Diving. Here's some paragraphs written by some students in the structure of their final book report:

Riva Meyland:

Free Diving is a terrific picture book about First Nations peoples set in the 1800s in Western Australia. This book was written by Lorrae Coffin and illustrated by Bronwyn Houstan which tells the story of a young man who free dived with no equipment. This book explores the themes of danger, risk, bravery and connection to nature.

Matilda Sanders:

Free Diving follows the journey of a young man who dives for pearls. Free Diving is a picture book about Indigenous people who had to free dive for pearls. This book is also a song. It is set in the mid-1800s, set in the city of Broome. I would recommend this book to young children as the pictures are beautiful.

Chelsea Dealy:

Free Diving made me realise that First Nations peoples had to go through so much. Reading Free Diving made me realise that the Indigenous peoples had a dangerous job which they had no choice to do. I like that it's about different cultures and about nature. I definitely recommend this book if you want to learn about cultures of First Nations peoples and what they had to do. This book is really meaningful with beautiful illustrations and words. It is good for all ages if you like learning about history.

Bodhi Bourke:

Free Diving is an engaging story that explored danger, risk, bravery and connection to nature. The text focuses on how First Nations peoples were treated in the 19th century and how they were forced to pearl dive. I would recommend Free Diving to anyone who likes to learn about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's history.

Upcoming School Events

ST FRANCIS PRIMARY SCHOOL HARVEST FESTIVAL