Governing Council

The following learning updates were provided at our recent Governing Council Meeting:

Preschool

We have welcomed our 7 new mid-year preschoolers who are settling in well. We are all learning about the routines and expectations at Modbury Preschool, including teaching our new children about being ready to learn and how to listen to their bodies' need for food, drink and rest.. This is new learning from Professional Development our educators have been doing with the Berry Street Education model for the early years.

The children are developing new relationships and strengthening existing relationships. We have asked families to provide a family photo so we can talk about family dynamics and strengthen their identities from home. This allows opportunities for children to explore similarities and differences in their play.

Children have shown interest in construction and vehicles, homes and babies, and representing their ideas through painting, drawing and singing. These interests have informed our fortnightly program for children and some parents have commented that the learning experiences provided reflect their child’s interest and they are excited to come into the space.

Rooms 6 and 7

We have had a wonderful start to Term 3. It has been delightful welcoming our new reception children into our community. Equally, it has been very special to see our existing students take them under their wing, showing them all that school has to offer. This term the existing receptions (and their teachers) have been taking on new learning through the implementation of the DfE phonics program. We have all been loving the new processes and are already applying our new knowledge to other contexts. Year one students have been continuing their phonics learning through our Read, Write, Inc program which has supported with consistency in learning leading up to the year One Phonics Screener Check. In other areas of English we have been exploring narrative texts and focussing on character and setting using all of our descriptive language that we have acquired over the year. In Maths we have been exploring concepts of measurement, looking at the different words we use to compare objects. Coming weeks will see us learning about measurement principles. It was lovely visiting the garden over the last fortnight, especially in this gorgeous weather! We created our very own compost-ariums in jars and will spend our next few visits to the garden making observations of their changes. We are looking forward to another rigorous term of learning.

Room 8

This term in English, we are learning about the Narrative genre.

We read “The Very Grumpy Bear” and we are working on describing the characters and the setting of the book. We are writing noun groups using a pointer, describer, classifiers, and key nouns. The students are using their noun groups to create sentences in past tense and adding verbs. Their Narratives will include an orientation, complication resolution and coda.

Room 9

This term we welcome Amy, who is a 4th year Preservice teacher into our learning space, who is completing a 7 week block. The students are excited to have another adult in the room to support their learning. This term, we are focussing on fractions and measurement in Mathematics. In writing, our focus is procedure writing and re-visiting narrative writing. WIthin Science, we are learning about heat sources and light, as well as visiting the garden each fortnight and learning about composting. WIthin HASS we are learning about First Nations peoples and in Technology, coding! It’s going to be a very busy term in room 9!

Room 11

All students returned to Term 3 with a positive attitude and ready to learn. Both the teacher and students are now well adjusted to the daily Spelling lessons and we are learning lots of generalisations of the English language. In Writing we are focusing on Information Reports and Susie the EALD teacher supports in class twice a week. Our current Maths activities support our understanding of measuring attributes of objects. Biological Science and The First Nations Australians are the Science and HASS learning this term. In Technology, we are now using a problem solving approach to develop a solution to a road safety problem around our school that the students have identified. Our models will be showcased towards the end of this term at a community event.

Room 10

Swimming resumed in Week 1 with all students attending weekly lessons. Students leave school at 11.30am and return at approximately 2.00pm. The children are growing in confidence each week, and we are looking forward to the weather warming up for when we get out of the pool.

Day camp Wednesday 31st July in week 2. Students had a fantastic time joining the senior classes for a day at camp. They participated in the activities alongside mainstream students, and were very tired on the way back to school. Students are excited to continue community excursions, including the Zoo Day excursion provided for free by Variety the Children’s Charity to finish the term in week 10.

Miss Vikki will be organising times for families to discuss student One Plans. Notices will be sent home for families wishing to update and discuss future learning goals for students.

Our main focus for learning over the first few weeks of term was the Olympics. students enjoyed learning about France, Paris, the Olympic games and all the various sports involved.

Week 7, Monday 2nd and Tuesday 3rd of September are student free and school closure days. The school will be closed on these days to allow teachers and co-educators to participate in staff training and also a “show week” day.

Physical Education

The reception to Year 2 classes have focused on Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS). which has included throwing (both overarm and underarm), dribbling with their feet, catching, bouncing, dodging and kicking (both AFL and Soccer style). We have done this through a range of different games and activities with a different FMS focus for each week.

The Year 3-6 students have focused on Netball. This included shooting, passing, the rules, the movement and the game sense. The Years 3-6 students participated in mini games with a netball focus; this included running and passing drills and games, and shooting mini games. This will lead us into the positions of netball: where each of the positions are able to move, and which zones they are not allowed to enter during games.

In the second half of the Term 3, all classes will be focusing on Sports Day. This includes a brand new Health Hustle (which is like a warm up all students will do in their House Teams on the morning of Sports Day), practicing the new Sports Day chants, and doing all of the sports day events in their PE lessons. this preparation supports our students in knowing how each activity on Sports Day is run. This includes sprints, hurdles, high jump and other tabloid events for the Years 3-6 students, and the Fundamental Movement Skills activities for our Preschool - Year 2 students.

Performing Arts with Mrs A

On Tuesday the 6th of August we had our Wakakirri performance, where the students travelled to the Norwood Concert hall to perform. This Years theme was Belonging and we decided to tell our story of belonging through our Modbury Community.

Reception/Year 1

Students will be focusing on Drama through storytelling, looking at characters, emotions, and what makes a good character.

Year 1/ 2

The students will be focusing on Drama through story books and storytelling, doing a variety of activities, looking at characters, emotions, and what makes a good character.

Year 2/3

Using the elements of drama, students will engage in dramatic play to construct fictional situations. They will learn to bring these situations to life through body language, facial expressions, and mime, communicating ideas and emotions with purpose and impact.

Year 4/ 5/6

Welcome to Modbury’s Olympics. This term we will be incorporating Drama, Music and Movement (their learning into the activities). Students will learn about the Olympics, work together to complete tasks as a group/country (examples, bucket rhymes, Dramatic drama, Dancing beats, memory mind etc).

Japanese with Fox Sensei

This term, students are continuing our unit on the Japanese version of The Hungry Caterpillar, はらぺこ　あおむし.

Years R-3 are learning the days of the week in Japanese and will learn to add them into the sentence that we learnt last term around the topic of FRUIT を　食べました。(I ate fruit.)

Years 4-6 are learning how to count general objects in Japanese. E.g. 一つ、二つ、三つ、四つ、五つ。E.g. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th. Students will be learning to add that into the sentence we have been working on of DAY に　FRUIT　を　食べました。(I ate this fruit on this day.)

EALD with Mrs Young

This term, Mrs Young will continue to work with classroom teachers to further strengthen and build our students’ skills in understanding some key functional grammar concepts in selected genre text creation.

In Year R-3, we’ll focus on:

building descriptions of key nouns in the narrative genre.
adding details that include pointer, describer, size, colour and classifier before the key noun.
understanding the different tenses in verbs
the use of circumstance of time and place (prepositions) in a text

In Year 4-6, we’ll focus on

developing the technique of paraphrasing. This is an important skill in gathering information and writing information reports.
the use of different cohesive devices to build a coherent text.