Governing Council Reports

Early Years

We are using the department units for English and adopting and adapting them to suit our site needs. They have needed lots of discussion and negotiations within our teams to make them purposeful and user-friendly. We have enjoyed ensuring we are teaching consistently within our teams and there is consistency across all classrooms.

In math, we have been delving into number/place value/ partitioning/ number lines and exploring various forms of recording and explaining our working out.

Primary Years

In English, we are continuing to work on exploring the language used to persuade in a range of texts. In maths we are about to carry out a content assessment,  based on the work we have covered this term, this will give us an insight into our student’s understanding. We have had a huge response to the Children’s University and across the years 3-5 we have had 96 students sign up. The university has almost finished processing everything and packs should hopefully go out towards the end of week 8. In preparation for Sports Day, we have been running relay trials. In weeks 7 & 8 our year 3 students sat NAPLAN for the first time and have done a great job showing confidence across all areas. 

Middle Years

Our students have enjoyed participating in a number of extracurricular activities over the last few weeks. Our girls participated in cricket clinics run by SACA, everyone participated in lacrosse clinics, a number of students went to the SAPSASA lacrosse carnival, and lots of years 5/6 students have joined and begun rehearsing with the choir.

In class, students have engaged well with the DfE units of work in HASS and English, and they have enjoyed learning about how to improve food crops and vegetable gardens through our Design and Technology lessons. Students are also working on a digital technology unit with Mrs Howard creating an electronic game using computational thinking.

Performing Arts

Our early-year students (foundation, 1 and 2) are learning drama improvisation and performance with fairy tales, storytelling and scenarios. The early year's students are also learning movement (dance) and singing with Try Everything and Believer. 

The years 3 to 5 students are working on the department units for drama arts. They are learning about building characters, scripts, improvisation in groups, on-the-move characters and scenarios performed in groups. They are looking at characters’ intentions, stereotypes, emotions, actions and the character’s inner and outer traits.

Japanese

Our early-year students are working through the department units which have seen some interesting discussions about world languages, body language and different ways to greet people. Year 3 and 4 students are in the process of making a book about an imaginary pet, which involves learning the structure of sentences in Japanese. This book will be brought home once completed. The year 5 and 6 students are learning to ask someone to lend them something, which involves looking at sentence structure and will also involve a role play with a 2-way conversation.

Science

Foundation and year 1 students, have been learning how objects move (push and pull forces) and how factors including their size, shape or material influence their movement. 

Year 2 students have been learning how sound energy causes objects to vibrate, and how different actions can make various sounds, alongside creating sounds themselves.

Year 3 students have been learning about heat energy, different sources of heat and how temperature changes when heat energy is transferred from one object to another.

Year 4 students have been learning about forces and how they are exerted by one object onto another, with or without contact. They have been investigating the effect of frictional forces on different objects.

Year 5 students have been learning about light, how light travels and how light can be reflected and refracted.

Year 6 students have been learning about energy transformation, alongside renewable and nonrenewable energy.