Classroom News

Foundation News

Discoveries: Indigenous Studies

In Indigenous Studies, students are utilising resources from 'Our Land, Our Stories', which feature stories and profiles about different families across Australia. Students are describing their own families as well as celebrating the similarities and differences between their classmates. Students are also exploring Wadawurrung Language words for family members, such as 'gnardang' (mother) and 'gurrau' (father). Our school engages with the Wadawurrung Language App to support the learning of these important language words.

Foundation Science Needs Your Help!

As we begin thinking ahead to an exciting new term, our Foundation students will be diving into a hands-on science project where they will be creating animal habitats. To help bring this project to life, we are in need of clean egg cartons and empty toilet rolls. If you have any spare at home, we would greatly appreciate it if you could donate!

Both 6-pack and 12-pack cartons will work perfectly for this activity. These cartons will provide the perfect structure for our students to design and build their very own miniature habitats.

Please drop off any egg cartons to the classroom or send them with your child any time before the beginning of Term 2. Your support in this project will help foster creativity and enhance the students’ learning experience!

Thank you so much for your generosity and support. We can’t wait to get started!

Middle School News

Content Knowledge

This week, students focused on integrating phonic, morphemic, and vocabulary knowledge to enhance their reading comprehension. We explored complex digraphs and blends such as /ch/, /tch/, and /ture/, helping students decode words more effectively. Vocabulary development included words like merchant, expedition, acquisition, and shunned, reinforcing language skills through contextual understanding.

Students also engaged in explicit reading instruction, learning about key historical figures such as Abel Tasman, Captain Cook, Captain Arthur Phillip, Bennelong, and Joseph Banks. Using note-taking symbols, they practiced extracting key information from texts while improving summarisation skills.

Text Construction

Students utilised their information and note taking from Content Knowledge to begin to make Single Paragraph Outlines (SPO). Teachers modelled the importance of organising information effectively working with students to develop a Topic Sentence, 3 supporting details and a concluding sentence for their paragraphs.

Mathematics

This week’s math focus revolved around understanding part-part-whole relationships and fact families. Students applied their learning to addition and subtraction problems, using structured models such as:

• Part-part-whole models for addition and subtraction
• Fact family equations to identify number relationships
• Vertical addition and subtraction with place value strategies

Hands-on activities, such as dice rolling and card flipping, made learning engaging and interactive. Students also practiced labelling place values to support structured problem-solving.

For The Future:

Content Knowledge: Continue practicing phonics-based decoding strategies and reinforcing note-taking techniques further exploring the use of symbols in note taking and summarisation skills.

Text Construction: Continuing sentence level work and building paragraphs.

Mathematics: Apply part-part-whole models to solve more complex Addition and Subtraction problems.

Reminders

• Reading Logs: Please continue supporting home reading and encourage students to record their reading in their diaries so that they can receive a dojo!
• Next week is NAPLAN. Families of Grade 3s, if you haven't already; check out the information about NAPLAN