Classroom connections
Hepster Hub
In previous years we have communicated once a term what learning was planned in classrooms through the HEPSTER Hub. Going forward, the HEPSTER Hub newsletter has been replaced with a fortnightly learning showcase here in the classroom connections section of our school newsletter. We hope you find that this gives you, our HEPS community insight into the amazing things that happen in our classrooms on a more regular basis. Please enjoy a snapshot of our wonderful learning.
Cross Country
What an amazing day. The weather gods looked after us for most of the day with only a few drops late in the day. Every level participated in the annual HEPS cross country event. Students showed terrific teamwork and our community supported and cheered on all of our students. It was lovely to see some of our older students being positive role models for our younger students, helping them around the track, distributing ribbons and helping in any way that they could by supporting the teachers. Congratulations to those students in level 3-6 who placed in the top ten in their races, who will now progress through to represent our school at district cross country on Tuesday 23rd May at Quambee Reserve. Thank you to the staff for organising the day and the parents that volunteered their time around the track, your help is invaluable.
Michael Hodgson
FBB
It has been wonderful to welcome the Foundation students back for Term 2, with lots of happy and excited faces greeting us at the door on day one!
In Literacy students have been reviewing their letter and sound knowledge with the fun new addition of ‘Jolly Classroom’. We have learnt so much already this year and it is helping us to become amazing readers. Next week we will be introduced to the new sounds, /ou/ /oi/ /ue/ /er/ /ar/.
In Reading we are putting our stretching and blending skills to work and are impressing our teachers and each other with how much we have grown. We read ‘A Bug in a Mug’ fluently using, ‘Lefty Larry’, ‘Grapheme Grasshopper’ and ‘Blendy Wendy’, and had a giggle when the bug ended up in Ben’s tummy!
We started the term off strong with some fabulous holiday writing, drawing pictures of our adventures and having a go at writing a sentence.
Later in the week we practised writing ‘CVC’ (Consonant, Vowel, Consonant) words with a scavenger hunt around the room – finding all the pictures hiding in sneaky places, stretching out the sounds out loud and then writing a letter for each sound. We are superstars!
In Maths we are learning all about patterns. We can identify, continue and create AB, ABB and ABC patterns using our creativity!
This term in Inquiry, Foundation students are learning about change through the lens of ‘Sensational Seasons’. We made some wonderful seasons trees to show how they change over time as the seasons change and are having a great time learning our ‘Four Seasons’ song to share at assembly in Week 3! (Make sure you come and check us out on stage if you can!)
1EJ
What a fantastic start to Term 2 it has been for our Level 1 students!
Numeracy
Over the past two weeks, students have been learning about addition and the different strategies they can use when adding numbers together. They have learnt about counting on by using number lines and grabbing big, adding small. We have also focused on partitioning by breaking the number into tens and ones to make it easier to add larger numbers together. Students have enjoyed playing addition tag and skip counting buzz during our warmup games at the start of our lessons.
Reading
In reading we have begun the term with making text-to-self connections. Students have demonstrated a strong understanding on how we can connect events and experiences that we have experienced to the ones the characters in the stories have also experienced. It has been wonderful to see the students show how this can help us understand and comprehend the story better.
Jolly Phonics
Our focus for our Jolly Phonics sound this week was /ss/ and /zz/. We always start off with a whole class brainstorm where we think of as many words that have our focus sound as we can. Students then can create their words using sensory play items such as salt and rainbow rice trays, playdough, letter stamps, magnetic letters and stencils.
Over the next two weeks, students will learn about subtraction as well as location such as giving and following directions. In Literacy, students will be learning about finding the main idea of a text and continuing to write procedures. We can’t wait for another two weeks of growing and learning in Level 1!
Level 2
A massive welcome back to all of our Level 2 families! It has been so wonderful having students back at school following their well earnt holidays. Students have loved sharing and comparing their wonderful holiday adventures with their classmates. Students were asked to write ‘2 truths and a lie’ about their holidays, and were in fits of giggles as they tried to guess one another’s holiday lie!
Cross Country
Congratulations to every single one of our cross-country runners for their efforts this week. It was amazing to witness the persistence and determination in all our students to finish the race. Well done everyone!
Literacy
Level 2 are investigating persuasive writing this term. Students have enjoyed the opportunity to write about their own passions and opinions, as well as trying to convince their peers that their opinion is the correct one. We have introduced students to line debates, where they work in affirmative and negative teams to argue a given persuasive prompt such as ‘all children should eat dessert every single night’ or ‘children should be allowed to drive a car’. Students have also explored the Ideas Trait, using ‘Would you rather….’ Questions to prompt their persuasive ideas.
In reading, students have been practicing the skill of reading fluently. They have enjoyed singing and dancing Blazer Fresh’s ‘Don’t Read Like a Robot’. We have been reading out loud into our Whisper Phones, concentrating on reading smoothly, re-reading when bumpy and chunking words together into phrases. Students have been building on their comprehension skills by investigating what it means to infer meaning. Students have also been learning about making inferences and about syllables in words.
Numeracy
Level 2 have continued our learning about place value this term, and have used this knowledge to begin our journey into recognising, ordering and adding Australian money. Students have enjoyed hands on explorations and games to expand their place value and money knowledge.
Inquiry
Our Inquiry into water this term has already led us to lots of interesting places. Students have identified lots of questions and wonderings that they have about water and we have borrowed lots of books from the library that will aid us with our inquiry. All classes have entered into a Water Hunt around our school and discovered that HEPS has lots of expected and unexpected water sources. We have investigated how water responds differently in different landscapes and that water will behave differently on different surfaces (soaking in, running off, pooling, drying up).
Coming up in Weeks 3 and 4:
Reading: Making predictions and inferring (clues in book + prior knowledge = inferring/reading between the lines)
Writing: Persuasive
Maths: Money and Addition
RRRR: Relaxation strategies and asking for help/helping others
Inquiry: Water Cycle
3MW
In 3MW we have been enjoying the warm weather whenever we can. During reading, the students found some interesting places to ‘get lost’ and read their ‘just right’ book!
Our focus for reading has been making text to text, text to self and text to world connections. We read the story ‘ANZAC Biscuits’ all about Rachel and her mother who make biscuits in their nice warm kitchen to send to her father who's in the trenches, cold and afraid. Students then made connections between the story and the world at present. Here are a few examples of their work.
The highlight of the week was our connection between world events and us and making ‘Anzac Balls’. Thank you, Mrs McClare, for sharing your secret recipe! We crushed, mixed, rolled and tossed over 120 Anzac Balls before finishing our cooking efforts with some delicious hand licking.
Inquiry this week saw the students delving into history and looking at changes over time. The class discussed the changes that have occurred from items from the past to modern day and the reasons why these changes took place. Items included the kitchen, the classroom setting, the typewriter and various types of transport. Students then predicted and designed how their item may look in the future. Take a look!
And finally, during Numeracy our focus has been on patterns. At Assembly we will showcase our singing skills by performing a song all about, you guessed it, patterns! Patterns in the air, patterns everywhere, patterns made of shapes, patterns made of grapes, patterns on a cheetah, patterns on my feet!
LEVEL 4
Welcome back to what promises to be an exciting term.
For our Level 4 Students and Staff, the first few weeks is all about CAMP!!!
We are very excited to be heading to Urban Camp in Parkville from Wednesday 3rd to Friday 5th May.
Although we are away for just a few days and nights, we will be very busy and our days and evenings are jam packed full of fun and excitement. In the time we will be away, we will visit many wonderful Melbourne sights; the mighty MCG, the Shrine of Remembrance, Ian Potter Centre, Skydeck at night, the Melbourne Museum, the Old Melbourne Gaol and the Melbourne Zoo.
LEVEL 6
Writing- This term we are learning about how to write a persuasive piece. One of the pieces we worked on was a letter to inform Mrs Elliot about whether to keep the uniform compulsory or not. We learnt some of the persuasive devices during a lesson on how to make our persuasive pieces more intriguing to readers. The persuasive devices that we worked on are; modality, personal pronouns, exaggeration and emotive language. We took our learning to the next level and used the devices within a sentence.
Cross country- This week we had the opportunity to show our excellent running skills in cross country. We cheered on each other showing kindness to others. We loved seeing our buddies try their hardest in the race. Some of our Level 6 students ran with the children who we could see needed a little extra encouragement.
Fractions- This term in Numeracy Level 6 has been focusing on how to add and subtract fractions. We were learning how to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. At first it was challenging but then after our teachers explained it for us we found it a lot easier.
Written using incredible teamwork by students in 6JL
