What's happening in our learning spaces? 

Students of the Week

Foundation - Year 1/2

It has been another busy week in Foundation and Grade 1/2. We can’t believe how quick the term is going, but we are definitely having fun as we engage in many exciting learning opportunities!

As inquirers, in 1/2 we are continuing to unpack our big question ‘How does Art tell our story?’ Utilising all the knowledge we have explored in our provocations, we are now focusing on the art within our local community. As thinkers, we began our week by exploring our surroundings by creating a birds-eye view of our neighbourhood now and what it would have looked like 100 years ago. As researchers, we examined different places within Coburg such as Pentridge shopping centre and the railway station upgrade, and explored how these places tell us a story about our community. 

In Foundation, we tuned in to Bullying by sharing our prior knowledge about the terms ‘Bully’ and ‘Bullying’. As researchers, we listened to the story ‘Don’t be a Bully, Billy!’ and discussed how bullying is a repeated action using words or physical actions, not just something that happens once. 

As inquirers, we all had time and opportunity to participate in an incursion with Bully Zero, where we explored what bullying is and the four different types of bullying, social, verbal, physical and cyber. As researchers, we listened to expert Layla, looked at photos and watched videos as we found out about how to be kind to others and what to do when we are being bullied or when we see someone being bullied. This week, we will participate in Bully No Way’s National Day of Action against Violence and Bullying, where the theme is Kindness Culture. 

As writers, we are all continuing to write about different experiences we have engaged in, including the Discovery Time and the Bully Zero incursion. In Foundation, as writers, we created a word wall to help us include known sight words in our writing. As thinkers, we are continuing to record initial sounds when attempting to write and some of us have begun including full stops at the end of our sentences and spaces between words. After the incursion, we drew a picture to show what we could do if we see someone being bullied or see someone who is sad at recess or lunch,  and what we could do if we are being bullied by another person. We are so proud of how much we have achieved in such a short time! 

Those of us in 1/2 have been using different sentence starters and reflection stems in our writing to make it more interesting and help us structure our writing. We have been finding out about the parts of speech in a sentence, nouns, verbs and adjectives. As thinkers, we brainstormed different nouns, verbs and adjectives and as researchers, we looked for these in different texts and in our own writing. We connected these to the Colourful Semantics cues, and as communicators, we are focusing on including these in our writing and highlighting them in different colours to match the Colourful Semantics.

As readers, in Foundation we engaged in a shared reading of the text ‘No One Likes Me’. As thinkers, we used the title, front cover and illustrations throughout the text to make predictions, and identified lots of new sight words. After reading, we identified and drew what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story. This week we will begin guided reading groups.

In 1/2 we tuned in to the reading skill, ‘Inferring’. As readers, we are learning to make inferences about a text by thinking about what the writer means but has not stated and connecting our prior knowledge to the clues in the text. Some of us explored the texts ‘I Want my Hat Back’ and ‘This is Not my Hat’ by Jon Klassen, and some of us explored the text ‘Sad the Dog’ by Sandy Fussell. We also looked at different pictures. As thinkers, we used what we already know, and evidence from the text, to infer how characters were feeling, what they were thinking, what was happening and why, what might happen next and where the characters were. We will continue to explore inferring in the coming weeks. 

We hope you all had a lovely long weekend. We are looking forward to the week ahead and welcoming everyone to our open day this Sunday 20th of March. 

Foundation to Year Two Team,

Leanne Wenckowski, Stefanie Carriera, Alycia Marsico & Alexandra Phillips 

Year  3/4

Last week was a very busy week in the year 3/4  level.  3/4GT and 3/4KD have hosted the whole school assembly the past 2 weeks and this week 3/4BP will take the reins and lead the school with Friday’s whole school assembly.  

Last week we had the Bully Zero incursion for the whole school.  The theme for our students was understanding the meaning and nature of bullying.  We will follow up on this in our classes.  

We also launched The Resilience Project as a whole school on Monday.  The focus is on Gratitude and how being grateful for what we have is connected to our own happiness. You may hear your children saying “Dis!” which was the signal word for things in their life that they are grateful to have and which help with their well being and happiness.

In Literacy, we continue to focus on writing texts to persuade, looking at both the structure and language features of persuasive texts. This can be supported at home through simple discussion on advertising and how it tries to influence people. In Reading, our focus is the strategy of inferring meaning from a text and the way in which keywords and our own background knowledge (Schema) help us to infer meaning that is not explicitly stated in the text.

In Mathematics, we are busy estimating and measuring the length of objects.  We are investigating the skills of measuring accurately, making reasonable estimates and the connection between metric units of measurement (M;Cm;Mm).  

In Inquiry, the students investigated historical events from Australia's past using the ‘Bus Stop’ strategy of investigation.  Students recorded what they already knew and followed up with new information they discovered.  We will continue to develop this learning.

Year 5/6

It has been another busy and exciting week in the Year 5/6 level. We look forward to another fun week with the students this week. 

In Literacy, the students have been reading a range of texts to locate important information and use this evidence to answer comprehension questions. They also read “The Great Kapok Tree” about the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest. Students were asked to write a persuasive paragraph in response to the text as to why we should not cut down and ruin our amazing natural resources. 

In Inquiry, students participated in a ‘Jigsaw Routine’  where they became experts on an artist who uses their platform to change the world. They then reported back to their group to share what they learned. Our big question this term “Can Art Change The World?’ has prompted many interesting wonderings from our students, and they enjoyed learning about a range of artists from Banksy to the Bangarra Theatre Company and how they use different art forms to send a message. Students will now be exploring different issues they are passionate about and creating artwork that conveys a message about this issue. 

This past week the students were also introduced to “The Resilience Project’ and watched a video of Hugh (the founder of the project) who explained his reasons for beginning this program. The students participated in a range of activities about emotions and how we feel these both physically and emotionally. We were very proud of the mature manner in which the students engaged in the activities and look forward to working through the ‘Resilience Project’ each Monday morning. 

We look forward to a fantastic week ahead, with our excursion to St Patrick's Cathedral and MACS Art Exhibition on Thursday, 17th March. 

We hope that all our students and families enjoyed their long weekend break. 

Michelle Casamento, Annette Gasbarro, Viviana Clarke & Olivia Sargent

Year 5/6 teachers