Inquiry Centre

Curriculum

This week has been an exciting week as we received news regarding returning to school earlier than anticipated! We would like to thank you all for the support that we have received from families and the community over the week. As we can imagine there will be changes at home due to the news, we won’t be holding our live chat with our classes. Instead, the 1/2 team are ecstatic and busily preparing for a safe return to school. As a team, we have also collated a variety of fun activities and games that have been practised throughout our remote learning. These will be presented to the students on Thursday and Friday this week as a choice board to allow more student-choice and the chance to practice skills and reflect on learning.

We also welcome back the Premier’s Reading Challenge to MPRPS! This is a great opportunity to celebrate reading within the 1/2 community as we begin recording our reading efforts. The exciting challenge began on the 3rd of February, so feel free to go ahead and add any books you have ‘experienced’ or read since then. We will also be adding in the class books that we have read together. Please find more information under Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge in this newsletter.

Last week in Literacy, we started off with publishing our persuasive text drafts continuing from Friday. Students were given the opportunity to become publishers of their own work as they engaged with their feedback and focused on handwriting, editing and up-levelling. It was wonderful to celebrate the mastery of new skills and their final written piece. We were also able to hold our first online Big Write and it was a booming success! It has been magnificent seeing the students experimenting with persuasive language and working independently on their persuasive texts. Our codes lesson this week focused on the or, wh, c, th, ow phonograms and the c and g rule. 

In Maths, we continued to work on our place value knowledge, doubles and near doubles strategies. We were able to see students getting creative with their place value monsters as they explored addition of two and three-digit numbers using the place value chart as a tool! Last week, we also began applying a combination of our addition strategies to explore solving many-part addition sums. We appreciate all the help we have received from families with maintaining engagement with students through different numeracy games such as Double Decker, 4 in a Row and Place Value Math War. 

In STEM, students became paper plane engineers as they experimented with the science, maths and engineering behind paper planes. Students were challenged to apply some newly introduced concepts in order to achieve their own personalised goals. This activity also provided students the opportunity to revisit utilising informal units of measurement. In Guided Inquiry, students continued to explore both physical and chemical changes occurring in their natural environment, including food preparation. It was fantastic to see students engaging with daily activities from a scientist’s perspective through questioning and predicting, conducting investigations, and analysing and evaluating their findings and conclusions. 

Last week in Wellbeing, we set off with creating our personalised Wellbeing Home Toolboxes. We found it was valuable for the students to reflect on the different zones, how they might be feeling within each and the tools they could enable at home to help them. We also dedicated time towards making good choices when problem solving. Through this, we were able to reflect on the feelings of ourselves and others, consequences behind different actions and the opportunity to consider different choices available to us.

Finally we must take a moment to thank Miss Moffatt for her work and support over the last few four weeks. Miss Moffatt has been on teaching placement in 1/2O and due to our move to remote learning this meant she was supporting remote learning across the Inquiry Centre. This was not the learning experience Miss Moffatt was planning for but she rolled with it and we are incredibly grateful to have had her support over this time. We are looking forward to seeing Miss Moffatt again in Term 4 (maybe some visits earlier if we are lucky).

Below is the specialist timetable for Week 7. We thought it might be useful for parents and students to know what specialist classes are on next week as there has been some slight changes to the timetable to allow specialists to continue remote learning for Years 3-6.

Student Voice

Maddie T: I was showing creativity on the maths monster making.

Wahib A: I find my well being task of making paper planes quite challenging but I overcome that with my love of learning and creativity.

Reminders

School will be starting for Foundation, Grade 1 and Grade 2 from Tuesday the 26th of May. Please read the Principals Report for details.

Thank you all for your remarkable support, patience and flexibility.

Pupil of the Week

1/2BR: Viraj S - 

For completing all learning tasks to a consistently high standard and taking on teacher feedback to further improve his work. You show a true love of learning.

1/2E: Mackenzie D - 

For always showing love of learning and creativity when completing your tasks. You also did a fantastic job writing your persuasive piece to convince Mrs Streitberger to include potato sticks and hot chocolate! You used a range of openers and finished with a strong closing argument! Great work Kenz! 

1/2H: Sakina D - 

For demonstrating a love of learning throughout the remote learning period. You are always so enthusiastic when commenting on our daily check in videos, and I have been very impressed with all of the activities you have completed. Well done on the amazing effort Sakina!

1/2K: Archer F - 

For consistently demonstrating a love of learning both in the classroom and during remote learning. Your Seesaw posts are always outstanding and show you always try your best to complete your activities. Thank you for putting in the effort you do, keep up the great work Super Star! 

1/2O: Saumya V - 

For consistently demonstrating creativity and perseverance through our remote learning experience. I have looked forward to your responses as you always try to add a little more and show you are thinking deeply about all learning tasks. Thank you Super Star Saumya!

1/2P: Sophie C - 

For regularly putting maximum effort into all learning tasks. You have shown amazing perseverance and creativity by writing out responses to your tasks on paper or with other materials. Your voice description of the addition strategies you used to solve a problem was especially impressive. Well done, Sophie! 

1/2W: Muhammad Wahib A -

 For consistently being an active member of the 1/2W online community. You have demonstrated perseverance and love of learning throughout all your responses and continuously seek to improve your work through applying all feedback.