Round the classes 

Reception class: Jess

Always time for play in Jess’s class. 

Play helps to develop a child's knowledge and skills, and prepares them for a lifetime of learning both in school and beyond. Play improves the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and young people. Through play, children learn about the world and themselves. They also learn skills they need for study, work and relationships such as confidence.

In our class, play is an important part of our week. We provide opportunities for students to create, explore, role-play and move in creative ways. By doing this our class is building confidence, resilience, respect, and trust amongst peers.  It is also providing an enjoyed atmosphere where students laugh and are able to be themselves, without judgement. 

If you have any creative play items that you could donate, I would love to hear from you.  Some items may include: play shop, pretend food, dolls, hospital items such as bandages, cooking items, gardening tool, waterplay, stationary (office), etc.

Please contact me via email jessica.rogers399@schools.sa.edu.au or come and chat with me out in the yard. 

Thanks 

Jess and the wonderful Receptions 

Reception class: Kelly

With sports day, Easter and the SANFL visiting our school it certainly has been a busy two weeks.

The children have been introduced to two new sounds: c and r. They have been learning how to write many cvc (consonants, vowels, consonants) and have attempted some four and five-letter sounds to form words. For writing, the children did a recount of their Easter weekend. It sounded like they all enjoyed going on Easter hunts and going away for a holiday. 

For English, Maths and Art the children listened to the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar written by Eric Carle. This linked well with learning about the letter sound c. We discussed the days of the week and the children worked out there was some counting too. For the Art lesson, they listened and followed a YouTube instructional video on how to draw the very hungry caterpillar.

In Maths we have been working on ordering numerals from 1-10. The children enjoyed playing a game where they had to order the numbers along a train track. They worked in pairs to solve the problem. The train driver told their partner the number and the track builder had to place the numerals correctly on the number track. The pairs got the opportunity to be both the train driver and the track builder.

We had the  SANFL clinic come out and teach the children some basic skills of football. They learnt to handball and kick the football correctly. The children had a great time learning some games too.

Year 1 class: Jaya

Wow! How are we nearly at the end of term 1?! What an amazing and jampacked term we have had. The last 2 weeks have flown by. I hope everyone had a lovely easter long weekend. 

The year ones had an absolute blast on sports day! It was so wonderful to see them working together, encouraging each other, and giving the different events their best go. I was so impressed to see them supporting each other and cheering on all the teams, not just their own. Lots of grit was shown during the team events such as tug-of-war, the fireman relay and Kolap. 

Here are some post sports day reflections: 

Harvey shared “The best part of sports day was the running race! I came first and my goal was to run fast at the running events”.

Zoe said “I liked it when we were jumping over the hurdles, it was fun!”, “I like it when we won!”.

Ezra enjoyed the three-legged race, “I liked being paired with Luey”.

“I enjoyed the sprints. I like that you got to run fast. That was my goal” said Quinn. 

Year 3 class: Stephen and Troy

We enjoyed the Sports Day last week.  Specifically, many of us are proud of how we managed to achieve our Sports Day goals, ranging from cheering our team members on, jumping further in the long jump and supporting the other teams.  The pictures below capture some of these goals.

More specifically, goal setting works right across our learning.  Very soon we will start thinking about our writing and maths goals.

We have also started to improve the quality of our writing by following the 7 Steps to Writing Success program.  The first of the seven steps is to “plan for success”.  This entails mapping out our thoughts before we commit to writing. The following picture captures the planning stage for recount writing. 

For our recount writing, we have ensured our completed texts are structured with the genre-specific criteria:

• Who? Where? What? How? Why? When?

Ask the students in year 3: they will tell you about this  😊

Year 4/5 class: Alex

Students thoroughly enjoyed Sports day last Thursday. They put an impressive effort into their athletic challenges and also into cheering on and supporting each other throughout the day which was great to see. Students had a visit from Deanne who ran a workshop around brainstorming ideas for a school calendar focused around the theme of the seasons and bushfire-readiness. Our class has been assigned the autumn months to create artwork for. With Deanne students thought about what aboriginal people would traditionally associate with autumn in terms of activities, clothing and food. Student brainstormed what came to mind as being relevant to autumn in their own personal experiences, jobs around the house and changes in nature. During our next session with Deanne, students will begin their artwork. 

In Maths students have continued to work toward their goals in the area of place value. They have been participating in multi-step problem-solving challenges and explaining their thinking process to their peers.

In writing this fortnight students have been practising tightening the tension in their stories, moving from pebble to rock to boulder problems in the plot line. Students have been practising describing the 5 senses that the main character would be feeling whilst encountering these problems. Enriching their descriptions using the senses paints a picture in the reader’s mind and makes the tightening tension scene long and strong, leading up to a suspenseful moment in which the character almost fails. 

Students have been participating in their word work through the ‘Words Their Way’ program. In their targeted spelling groups they have been learning a spelling rule each fortnight and practising the spelling of their words through a range of activities that they have selected as a class. 

Year 5/6 class: Sallie

In the last fortnight we have had the spectacular and very successful sports day. It was lovely to watch the sports captains encourage the students in the health hustle and team cheers. For some captains it was really out of their comfort zones but they rose to the occasion and led with confidence!  

Some students in the class were selected to compete in the district athletics carnival. We had a great day competing against some of the local schools. Some students were lucky enough to "place" - please read Innes' and Callum's write-up of the day.  Thank you to all the parents who volunteered their day to drive, supervise events and cheer all students on. A great day had by all. 

Reading is a big part of our class and recording books on the Premiers Reading Challenge is important. I keep the forms at school so I can monitor all students' progress but would love you to remind your child to keep reading and to fill out the proforma at school. 

We really enjoyed having Deanne come and speak to us about seasons from a First Nation perspective, how some things are similar and some things are different. Our class will be contributing to the Red Cross Calendar by looking at what spring looked like and hopefully what the night skies looked like. 

Makers Empire has provided us with the opportunity to work on challenges in three main areas 1 Mission to Mars, 2 Strong Structures and 3 Kids in Space.  This will lead us into next term's challenge of "problem solving" a space challenge and it will incorporate the students solving the "problem" by creating a 3-D replica. We have had a new 3-D printer delivered as part of our Kids in Space program and will look forward to using it next term. 

District Athletics 

It was a slightly mild day for athletics events. It was cold and rainy. We arrived at Cornerstone College at 9 o’clock. the first events were 800 meters and high jump. Arlo and Ashton were competing. Ashton got out on the first round and Arlo got out on the third round, (he claims he slipped three times in a row). In the 800-meter Ben thought he was going to come last but he came fifth beating Hugo by 2 milliseconds. There were lots of other races but Callum got a second in 100-meter finals losing by mere millimeters. He also got a first in the 200-meter sprint with a very comfortable win. Innes got a third in 1500-meters with a time of 6 minutes and 13 seconds. Louie got second in long jump but left before he could get a ribbon. Our 12-year-old girls relay team (Kayla, Chloe, Edith and Ila) came first in their heat. Everybody else who did athletics were Xavier, Tyson, Ila, Ivy, Elodie, Ellie K, Edith, Kayla, Chloe, Anji, Harriet and Sophie. Thanks to the parents (Ben, Zoe, Brad, Adam, Phil) who drove the kids to Cornerstone and supported us (other parents also came to cheer us on). We had a great day! 

By Innes and Callum. 

Indonesian: Ibu Susan

In Indonesian the year 3 students have been super busy writing some impressive Indonesian sentences. They could use any words they knew in a specific sentence structure. Amazingly, they could remember words from their lessons last year and the year before. Well done year 3s! Bagus!

PE: Emma and Troy

The highlight of our Physical Education this fortnight was Sports Day last Thursday! All of our fundamental movement skills were practised with precision during the athletic events. Throughout the day we demonstrated all of our school values, including Learn, Stand, Give and Fly. In particular, children showed incredible determination, encouragement and motivation. Well done! - Emma