CLASSROOM NEWS!

P-1 Super Heroes

We have had a wonderful week getting to know one another, and I am incredibly proud of all the Foundation–1 students for the resilience they have shown as they adjust to having a new teacher halfway through the year. I am looking forward to the rest of the year with such a fantastic group of students.

Literacy

In Literacy, students have been developing their phoneme knowledge, reading and writing skills through a range of engaging activities. Foundation students have learnt the digraphs 'ee' and 'ch' and are working hard to practise reading and writing words containing these sounds. Level 1 students have been focusing on split digraphs and have also learnt the digraph 'aw', as in saw.

Now that our Foundation students have developed a strong understanding of phonemes, we have begun whole-class writing. Students have learnt how to write a procedural text by making their own fairy bread on Tuesday before beginning their writing piece, How to Make Fairy Bread, on Wednesday.

Numeracy

The students have been developing their addition and subtraction skills through a cycle of hands-on learning activities, recording their thinking using number sentences, and discussing the strategies they used to reach their answers using mathematical language. We have also been focusing on positive group work behaviours, including listening to others, participating actively and being inclusive of all group members. 

2/3 Team

We have had yet another busy fortnight in grade 2/3. 

In Year 2-4 Writing block, we have been finishing up our Information reports. All the students have been trying to make sure they include features specific to information texts, like topic sentences, sub-headings and terminology specific to their animal. We have also had an emphasis on writing our information in paragraphs and ensuring that each paragraph focuses on one part of the topic. 

In our 2/3 Literacy block, we have continued our focus on inference and using clues from the text and our personal experience to work out what the author is trying to tell us. We have focused on the soft c and g in our spelling and adverbs in grammar! All students show a strong understanding in these areas. 

In our 2/3 Maths block, we have just finished up a series of lessons on division. Our students have shown understanding of how to share between groups by grouping objects and sharing things out one (or 2, or 3) at a time. We have been looking at shapes too and will soon begin a series of lessons on additive thinking with a subtraction focus.  

In Humanities, we are looking at Old and New. This week we looked at artifacts from the past, tried to figure out what they were and why we don’t use them anymore. 

A homework task has been handed out this week. The task requires your students to answer some questions about what their life is like and interview someone born in 1985 or before about what how their life was as a child. As your child returns their homework over the next couple of weeks, they will share their findings with the group. I have mentioned to the students that if they don’t know anyone ‘old’, we have plenty of old teachers at school that can help out! 😊

We have athletics next week in Bendigo. All students are expected to attend. They will need to be in school uniform and bring a packed lunch, drinks and a jacket if the weather is cold. Keep an eye out for a permission form and information about travel arrangements.

Headlines from 4/5/6 

In Literacy, we are continuing to read Bindi, and the students have been having some very engaging discussions about its plot and themes. We have also begun to learn about note-taking, and have been practicing how to record information more efficiently by using symbols and abbreviations.

In Maths, the students spent last week applying their knowledge of area and perimeter in two special projects, where they had to use their mathematical creativity and knowledge to design mazes and determine who in our classroom would be the next ‘Bigfoot’. We are now adding onto these concepts by exploring mass and capacity in a variety of contexts. 

In Geography, we have been learning about the benefits and shortcomings of renewable and non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels and solar power. The students were even able to use their note-taking skills from Literacy to do some in-depth research into how watermills use natural resources to power machinery!