Teaching and Learning Areas
Foundation
Welcome or welcome back to our Foundation families!
The Preps have had a great start to the year and are settling into their new classes well.
The main focus this week has been on establishing the routines that we will follow for the remainder of the year. These include learning how to set up their table for reading and writing lessons, packing equipment away responsibly, coming back to class at the end of outside breaks and taking turns when sharing and listening to ideas during class discussions. They have had Developmental Play time inside, whereby the goals have been to initiate and sustain conversations with their peers and demonstrate sharing skills.
We have also facilitated activities that have practised skills in making friends such as finding out what peers like and dislike - see the pic of a member of the Kookaburras with her friend likes Bingo quiz.
We hope your child has shared some of the experiences they’ve enjoyed so far. Please contact your child’s teacher if you have any concerns.
Enjoy your weekend!
Prep team
Tori, Stef, Arwen
Grade 3/4
The 3/4 team is excited to welcome everyone back for another amazing school year! We hope you had a wonderful break, full of fun and relaxation. As we come together for this new chapter, we’re filled with anticipation for the learning, and memories we’ll create as a community.
We have begun our learning sequence for The Resilience Project, where we focused on navigating our student journals including the healthy habit tracker, mood tracker and GEM (Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness) reflections. Students were guided to understand the importance of interacting with and reflecting on these pages throughout the year.
In mathematics, we have been playing place value based strategy games to hook students into learning. As we work towards setting up student devices, we will be administering Essential Assessment to help the teachers to understand what students know and create targeted learning sequences that aim to address key learning areas in mathematics.
In literacy, we have been reading ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’ by Drew Daywalt. We have used this text in reading to explicitly teach students how to answer literal and inferential questions in their reading books. Students also provided creative responses to the question, ‘Which crayon would you like to be and why?’ In writing, we have used the same text to begin composing a dynamic narrative where students have created their own character based on a colour. We aim that students use many writing strategies including onomatopoeia, descriptive language and imagery.
Our Integrated Studies topic this term is called: FAIL - First Attempts in Learning! We will be exploring the ideas of a ‘growth mindset’ vs a ‘fixed mindset’ and how this can help our learning. Throughout the term, we will be researching, publishing and presenting a Google Slide presentation about a ‘Famous Failure’. We look forward to incorporating ICT into this unit.
Thank you for being an essential part of your child’s learning. We look forward to a fantastic year ahead, filled with growth, new experiences and lots of smiles!
Grade 5/6
Wow! We’re already at the end of Week 2 and so much has happened in the 5/6 area!
We started our year familiarising ourselves with the School Wide Positive Behaviour Matrix. The year 5 and 6 students did a wonderful job discussing what it looks like to uphold the Merri-bek school values Respect, Responsibility and Resilience both within and outside the classroom. Students in 5/6 already demonstrated responsibility by co-creating classroom routines with their teachers.
Students started their work on The Resilience Project which will be scheduled every Monday morning. They reviewed their understanding of emotional literacy and wellbeing. To further support wellbeing in the classroom, students reviewed their understanding of Zones of Regulation.
In Mathematics, students learned about what makes successful maths learners, and developed familiarity with maths number talks and games. We also started our period of pre-assessment using the Victorian Mathematics Curriculum 2.0, and will shortly begin our unit on Place Value and decimals. Ask your young person about a number talk they have done recently!
In Literacy students started exploring historical narratives focusing on Australian History. In reading they are analysing texts collaboratively and individually as they develop their capacity to infer settings and perspectives, to summarise key events, and to develop their vocabularies. In writing students have practiced developing story ‘seed’ ideas using images as a prompt, using the ‘think/ see/ wonder’ framework.
Our Project Based Learning (PBL) on Australian History will start in Week 3 when we will look into the long history of the Australian continent and what life was like prior to colonisation.
Year 5 students have begun to have lunches with their Prep Buddies who they met on Wednesday. Well done on being kind and compassionate mentors to your Buddies, Year 5s!
Students have begun preparing and giving speeches as we prepare to determine Leadership Roles for Year 5 and 6. We wish all the Year 5s and 6s who are giving their speeches the best of luck, and send you a massive shout out for giving this opportunity a go!
PE
Dear families,
During Term 1, some classes will be lucky enough to participate in a free hockey clinic run by Hockey Victoria. If your child wishes to continue participating in hockey activities, please use the QR code in the below flyer.
