The Anchor

Primary School

Primary School students have enjoyed their first full week of Term Two learning, with the excitement of orienteering, Eagle’s Cup and tomorrow, Foundation Day. 

 

Thank you again to the families who supported a successful Grandparent’s Day on Friday and we look forward to making this bigger and better next year.  

Culture, Engagement and Excellence 

Home Reading 

Over the last four years, the Reading programme at Great Southern Grammar has had an overhaul to align with the body of research known as the Science of Reading. 

The main focus of this has been to move away from the cued system, which was aligned with reading levels, and allow students to form reading understanding through the five keys to reading: 

 

Phonemic awareness: the ability to identify and manipulate the individual speech sounds in words, called phonemes.

 

Phonics: knowledge of the relationships between letters and sounds, and the ability to use letter-sound relationships to decode words.

 

Fluency: the ability to read accurately, quickly, and expressively. Fluent readers can focus on reading for meaning. 

 

Vocabulary: knowledge of the meaning of words in isolation and in context.

 

Comprehension: the ability to extract and construct meaning from written text  

 

Fortunately, the School was in a good place before the research was shared with most of our programmes aligning with Dyslexia Speld Association and therefore already best practice. We pushed our synthetic phonics programme for just ECC right though to Year Six and made changes to the type of reading and spelling instruction in our programmes.   

 

A major shift, aside from classroom instruction, has been to overhaul our home reading programme. The first stage was to align our home readers with the synthetic phonics programme we use, Promoting Literacy Development in our ECC and for our students in Years Three to Six requiring additional reading practice. Our levelled readers were still used for students who had ‘cracked the code’ but long term, these needed to be aligned with our synthetic phonics code.  

 

We have now completed this in our ECC and students have begun to take a mix of decodable books and ‘vocabulary’ readers home. These old, levelled books encourage students to guess words with pictures and rote learning rather than decoding. They have now been re-levelled and put into topic boxes so students can explore a wider range of texts, vocabulary and interests that are hard to replicate in a rigid phonics coded reader.  

If your child is taking home these books, you may need to support them more with decoding the text. 

 

Please encourage them by: 

  • Asking them to sound unknown words 
  • Reading the title for them (often that is the hardest part of these older books!) 
  • Reading parts of the book that have more complex code than your child is used to 

Please do not encourage them to: 

  • Guess the words using pictures 
  • Skip words 
  • Practise the words in a rote fashion or memorise the book 

We are excited to have finished this project in the ECC and hope having the balance of decodable readers and realigned books will encourage a life-long love of reading in our students. Our Years Three to Six collection is beginning to be sorted now.

 

  

Year Four Learning  

Our learning in Year Four this term has been guided by their inquiry statement: Governing systems impact the lives of its community members with their class novel Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda supporting this. Please see a summary prepared by their class teachers Mrs Lisa Keatch and Miss Gracie Laneaux-Neale and students Banjo, Juliet and Leah. 

 

During our Civics and Citizenship we looked at the village of Rin and whether the village should have a local council. We illustrated our opinions by creating a values line and justified our choices. Here are some of our responses:

 

Banjo on behalf of the No camp: "Rin is already pretty amazing, what if the council changes everything?" 

 

Juliet and Appin on behalf of the Maybe crew: "Rin is great already but a local council is needed to control things, and it could help some of the people feel safer and protected." 

 

Leah on behalf of the Yes club: "If Rin had a local council, they could create a local fire brigade. That way Rowan's father, Sefton, could have been saved." 

 

Horizons 

Horizons for Term Two has begun with ECC Art on a Monday, and Coding, Line Dancing and Crochet clubs on a Wednesday. 

 

Please remember to put in your child’s diary if they are or are not attending Horizons to help the teachers with the after-school arrangements and marking of rolls.  

 

Orienteering 

Today 15 x Year Five and 15 x Year Six students who qualified to be a part of our Interschool Orienteering team participated in an Interschools event at Centennial Oval. 

 

Thank you to Mr Geoff Hardey for coordinating, along with Miss Carys Nichols, Miss Paige Boyley and Mr Lachie Steytler for chaperoning our students.  

 

 

Eagles Cup 

We are so excited that this is back on our calendar and Mr Geoff Hardey has been training our team of elite footballers ready for their first game today. We look forward to hearing how they go in their game against St Joseph’s College. 

 

These games will be played every second week on a Thursday after lunch, with our home game scheduled for Thursday 16 May at 1.30pm. 

 

ECC Briefing 

Star Awards  

Kindergarten - Sophie Doorey 

Pre-Primary - Ally Buxton 

Year One - Finn De Snoo 

Year Two - Eymen Carter 

 

Integrity Values Awards 

Kindergarten - Avery Laurens  

Year Two - Finn Mears 

Year Three - Joel Castle 

Year Four - Gracie Williamson and Sophie Mitrovski 

Year Five - William Irving 

Year Six - Nate Hubbard and Robbie Fergie 

 

 

Upcoming Events 

Friday 3 May - Foundation Day and Running of the Flags  

The school will be celebrating its 26th birthday with cake, an assembly and the annual Running of the Flags tomorrow. The assembly is in the Multi-Purpose Sport Complex, starting at 1.45pm and is open to all families, with the Running of the Flags beginning at 2.30pm in the Quadrangle.

  

Thursday 9 May – ECC Mother’s Day Morning 9.00am to11.00am 

An invitation has been sent to families of our Kindergarten to Year Two students to join us for class activities and a morning tea (just for the adults) in the Library afterward to celebrate the mothers and mother figures in our students’ lives.

  

Friday 10 May – Year Five Assembly 2.20pm in the Hall 

All families are welcome to attend.  

 

Thursday 16 May – Wilson Day and Walk/Ride to School Day 

More information to come on Wilson Day, and please schedule in your diaries a walk/ride to school day.  

 

Please remember to utilise the Fresh Produce stand out the front of the ECC. It was looking lush with the school’s market garden produce this week.  

 

Have a lovely weekend 

Ms Leah Field | Head of Primary

Interhouse Cross Country 

I would like to extend my thanks and congratulate all of the students who took part in the Primary School Cross Country event last week. It was a beautiful day with the sun somewhat shining and low winds throughout. Your efforts and enthusiasm were truly remarkable, and you should all be very proud of yourselves. 

 

I would like to thank all parents who attended the event to show their support as well as the volunteers and staff that made the event run so smoothly. 

 

Congratulations to the students that managed to get a top three placing and for our outstanding record breakers. 

 

Champion House Record Breakers 

Wilson    Year Two        Rosie Mitrovski     4 min 25 secs 

Mokare   Year Three    Pippa Daniel          4 min 21 secs 

 

Mr Stephen Berryman | Primary School Teacher and Sports Coordinator