What's happening?

Foundation

Welcome back to Term 2, we hope you had a fun and relaxing Easter break! On the first day back our Foundation students enjoyed writing and decorating a postcard recounting their holiday adventures. This week we are reviewing the letters ‘mdgock’ and using these sounds in our reading and writing. We will also be introducing the Red Flag Word - do.  Our new Inquiry topic this Term is “Healthy Habits”. We have plenty of fun things planned for this term including Breakfast at School, Market Fresh, and Dancing. Please inform your child’s class teacher if there are any food allergies we need to be aware of. 

Look out for our Term 2 newsletter that went home yesterday with important dates for this Term. With this you will have also received the Maths newsletter, please note that some students have moved groups. Your child’s Maths teacher is listed in the newsletter. We are currently working on Place Value. 

We will continue our Corridor Reading for this term and would love to have helpers each day. If you can help, please add your name to the roster outside each classroom or the exterior door for FN.

A reminder to return reading satchels, readers and soundpacks each day. Books are changed once a week. Please ensure your child has read each book at least twice and filled in their reading log.

Hats are still required for outside play until May the 1st, and as the days get colder you may like to pack a warmer coat (navy) for outside play. Please ensure it is clearly named.

Looking forward to a fantastic term!

Grade 1

The Year 1’s got off to a great start this week, with students all returning with readers, hats and a smile. 

In Literacy the students will continue to practise recount writing, and expanding their sentences by adding adjectives to describe the noun or setting. We will also be focused on correctly forming our letters, including correct punctuation and learning the new Red Flag Words which will be “want and who.” Student’s will also be reflecting on the power of punctuation when reading. Our new spelling focus, this week is the digraph ‘ng’ and blend ‘nk’. Please keep an eye out for this week’s word study practise page, for further ways to support your child’s learning at home. 

In Maths for the next 2 weeks the students will be looking at Place Value. They will see how we break 2 - digit numbers into parts: tens and ones. They will also learn sequencing of numbers and order, ascending and descending.

We start a new Inquiry this term about Weather, focusing on words to do with weather and symbols used to record weather patterns.

Please remember to label items that are coming to school and keep up the reading and word practise at home to assist your child’s development. If you are interested in helping with reading, we now have Term 2 timetables at the entrance to our rooms. Your children love having their parents come in and we really appreciate your involvement and support.

Grade 2

It was great to welcome our Grade 2 students back to school this week looking refreshed and full of enthusiasm.

This fortnight, students are investigating procedural texts and their features, with a focus on purpose, sequencing and effective use of imperative (“bossy”) verbs. Students are also learning to apply their knowledge from our ‘Syntax Project’ lessons to expand their sentences by adding extra information (who, when, where, why, how). As part of our ‘Word Study’, we are identifying when to use the long spelling dge for the /j/ sound. 

In Maths, students are exploring different types of Addition problems and developing efficient strategies for solving. Practise at home is always beneficial, from ‘quick facts’ games using dice and playing cards, to explaining which strategy was used to solve a problem.

As part of our wellbeing program this term, we begin with goal setting and then continue to focus on social skills, emotional literacy and regulation, and gratitude.

We have introduced our Inquiry topic for this term, ‘All Mixed Up’, looking into states of matter (solids, liquids and gases). Students will get to conduct lots of experiments this term, which will bring lots of enthusiasm and excitement.  

Thank you for your support with homework: Regular reading aloud and ‘Red Flag Word’ spelling.

Optional extras: ‘Nessy Reading and Spelling’ and ‘Sunset Maths’ (Essential Assessment).

Grade 3

Inquiry/Core Knowledge: This term our inquiry 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 First Nations Australians live sustainable lives? How does The Dreaming help First Nations Australians make sense of their world? 

Reading: 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 – identifying difficulties or ‘clunks’ with unfamiliar words, practising strategies to break up and read longer words, 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 are working on using the articles ‘a, an, the’ correctly within sentences. In our spelling lessons, we are looking at the grapheme ‘ea’, as well as reviewing previously taught prefixes.

Maths: We started our subtraction topic this week, revising and building on efficient strategies for solving subtraction word problems, identifying the missing element in a subtraction problem, and relating addition and subtraction. As always, opportunities to explore these concepts in everyday situations at home will be a great way to consolidate and build on your child’s knowledge.

Wellbeing: Our wellbeing focus this week is on identifying emotions, stress, and coping strategies.

Homework: Students will be assigned their first ‘homework’ task on Seesaw this Friday (in addition to their home reading), which they will have a week to complete. We will go through the process and expectations this Friday along with answering any questions that students may have. The purpose of assigned homework will be to consolidate students’ learning from activities completed at school during the week.

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 together to give out our G.O.A.T. trophy to our Values Award recipient, celebrate our successes, share birthday wishes, reminders and chat about our week ahead. 

Inquiry: ‘Friends or foes?’ is our first science based Inquiry 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 about 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 understandings and skills.

Literacy: Reading this week has started with some big questions relating to our Inquiry 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 is our writing genre this term, so we have been looking at examples of these, their structure and language features through our WAGOLL (what a good one looks like) text on the lifecycle of a butterfly.

Numeracy: Addition and subtraction are Maths concepts that we are continuing to focus on for the next two weeks. Students will be applying a variety of strategies, improving  accuracy of calculations, as well as working on worded problems that may involve either process or a combination using the problem solving strategy of CUBES. 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.
• Collecting seeds - students will have a copy of this homework task.

Reminders:

• Healesville Excursion Thursday 16th May. Information regarding this has been sent out on COMPASS.
• Glass jars. If we could have any donations of clean glass jars, that would be great as we will be using them for an Inquiry activity.

Grade 5

We hope everyone had a great Easter break and are feeling refreshed and ready for Term 2. 

This week the Grade 5’s are excited about their three day camp at Camp Manyung in Mt Eliza. This is a great opportunity for students to build new skills, work in teams, challenge themselves and strengthen friendships. This week Grade 5 and 6 students also had a visit from Moorabbin Police to discuss the dangers of cyber safety and inform students of the risks and ways that they can keep themselves safe when online.

Maths

Week 1 has seen the Grade 5’s begin their multiplication and division unit. Over the coming weeks students will continue to develop their fluency of multiplication facts and further develop their mental and written strategies to solve problems. We will also be continuing to develop the use of bar modelling to assist students in breaking down worded problems.

Writing

This term students main text focus is response writing. This week students have attempted to write a response piece of writing based on an image provided to them. Over the coming weeks we will further unpack the writing structure of response writing which will link to our inquiry unit ‘Closing The Gap’, focusing on Australian history. 

Reading

In reading, students have begun to read about Australian History with the focus on the ‘First People’. This week students have read about the history dating back 66,000 years, explored vocabulary, and answered questions based on read texts. Over the coming weeks, students will be continuing to develop their understanding of Australian history through readings and further developing their ability to read and answer comprehension questions. 

Inquiry

Our Inquiry unit this term, focuses on Australian Colonial and Indigenous history. During this unit, we will be focusing on the impact of the Stolen Generations on Indigenous Australians, identifying famous Indigenous Australians and their impacts on society, develop students understanding of the ongoing effects of historical injustices and demonstrate empathy towards Indigenous cultures.

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 presented their findings to the class as part of a jigsaw learning group share. Classes have also completed a STEM-based challenge titled ‘Roving on the Moon’ this week.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, we will be focusing on Chance and Probability for the next few weeks. Students have revised the concepts of experimental and theoretical probability by conducting a variety of experimental trials and analysing their results.

Cybersafety

Members from the Moorabbin Police Force presented a cyber safety information session to our Grade 5 and 6 students this week. For further information, parents can go to the ‘Think U Know’ website. 

https://www.thinkuknow.org.au/

Year 7 Transition 2025

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 by Friday 10th May. Families will be notified of student placements on Wednesday 17th July. 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 coordinators (Audrey Ulrich & Nathan James).

Interschool Sport

Students will commence their Term 2 Interschool Sport on Friday 3rd May (Week 3). Over the next two weeks, students will be training and teams will be finalised. 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.