Year Level & Specialist Curriculum

Foundation:

Year One:

Year Two:

Year Three:

Year Four:

Year Five: 

Year Six:

Term 3, 2023 Specialist Curriculum Overviews

Our Specialist programs will cover the following during Term Three:

Physical Education

“Every child is a winner, when they try their very best”  

Welcome to Term 3, another jam packed PE and Sport Curriculum and we are looking very forward to it!!

Prep: This term we continue to focus on introducing more of our fundamental skills. For the first four weeks we will focus on kicking using a soccer ball and various games and techniques. We will then have a couple of weeks to focus on developing the students skills like coordination, flexibility, balance, strength and body control. We will also get some time to do some activities around healthy lifestyles and continue to focus on using equipment and space safely.

Year  1 / 2: This term we continue to focus on refining our fundamental skills.  We begin the term with Strike Soccer School joining us for 3 weeks to help us with our kicking ability. The students will then be introduced to Wall Ball for 3 weeks, run by SJV parent Lydia Morgan and her team. This is a sport in which players compete by hitting a ball against a wall with their hands, a great way to continue to refine our skills with a ball and hand eye coordination. We will then finish the term off with a few weeks of target games.

Year  3:  This term the focus will be on target games (where players send an object toward a target while avoiding any obstacles). By playing these games, participants will learn the key skills and strategies for games such as Golf, Boccia and Bowling.  We will particularly focus on Bowling and Hockey, with coaches from Hockey Victoria giving us some tips and techniques to master this sport.   We are also very excited to introduce the sport of Wall Ball (a sport in which players compete by hitting a ball against a wall with their hands).  SJV parent and player Lydia Morgan will come out and show us what to do. We can’t wait to introduce it to the students. 

Year 4: This term we have a number of sporting events so our PE lessons will be focused around this.  We will begin the term with athletics - focusing on both track and field events to prepare us for our Athletics Day on Wednesday 9th August.  As our school is quite interested in Downball, we have Lydia Morgan from Wall Ball (a sport in which players compete by hitting a ball against a wall with their hands) to come and introduce us to this sport.  We will finish our term off with some Hockey, with coaches from Hockey Victoria. We will also try and get some practice in there for our basketball day set for 11th September.

Year 5 / 6:  Another jam packed Sport and PE schedule ahead for these students.  We will begin the term with athletics - focusing on both track and field events to prepare us for our Athletics Day on Wednesday 9th August.  In between this the students will have a Basketball Tournament to participate in (Monday 17th July).  As this group tends to be quite fond of Down Ball, we have been able to fit in an introductory session or two of Wall Ball (a sport in which players compete by hitting a ball against a wall with their hands).  We will finish our term off with some Hockey, with coaches from Hockey Victoria running these sessions.

Visual Arts

Welcome to Term 3 and what an exciting term it will be! This will be the first term that the Preps will have Visual Arts. 

Prep:

The Prep students will begin the term looking at four different books. The first book the students will read is the book titled ‘I Am Me’ and will create a self portrait with a watercolour background. The next book the students will read is ‘The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be’.  Afterwards students will create a hot air balloon. ‘What Makes A Rainbow?’ is the third book the students will read and they will create their own rainbow. The final book the students will work with is ‘Sloth Slept On’, students will then draw their own sloths. For the remainder of the term students will be working with Primary Colours to create their artworks.

Year 1: 

The Year One students will create their own artworks around the book ‘The Jungle Book’. They will create Zentangle Zebras. Zentangle is an American method for drawing, which not only promotes concentration and creativity but at the same time increases personal well-being. Zentangles are different patterns the students create to use their own imagination. Students will be making a colour wheel lion to introduce them to the colour wheel. They will use this knowledge for the remainder of the term when they work with a variety of art activities using secondary colours.

Year 2:

The Year Two students will have a strong focus on artwork inspired by different artists. They will first be creating ‘Silly Cities’ based on the artist James Rizzi. Georgia O’Keefe will drive their next art piece which will be based on different flowers. Finally students will have a focus on ‘Colour Theory’ and their art lessons will be based around warm and cool colours.

Auslan

"Signs are to eyes what words are to ears." ~ Deaf Proverb

Welcome to Term 3! Hopefully you’ve had a wonderful winter holiday and are looking forward to the fresh semester ahead. In Auslan this term, all students will continue to grow their signed vocabulary in new areas and also work towards a signed concert item. Students will access live and simulated material, share peer to peer interactions and improve their receptive skills with a variety of signed and pictorial activities.

Preps will deepen their concept of the Deaf community and the use of Auslan. They will consolidate their Semester 1 vocabulary, particularly about ‘self’, colours and fingerspelling. Preps will also explore new signed vocabulary areas including numbers and family, especially through the use of children’s literature, guided group activities and signed games.

Year 1 and 2 will maintain their Semester 1 vocabulary, particularly in the areas of body and clothing signs. This term they will expand their vocabulary to include ‘life and work’ and everyday-related signs. They will participate in shared signing experiences and simple language games to demonstrate their receptive and productive skills in Auslan.

Years 3 – 6 will primarily focus their vocabulary expansion on the areas of ‘occupation’ and ‘community’. Students will demonstrate their signing and receptive skills in group interactions and peer communication. They will also have the opportunity to engage with Deaf-created material and consider some complexities of the Deaf community.

As always, it will be a joy to see students make new learning connections and increase their ability to genuinely communicate in Auslan.

Performing Arts

This semester the Year 3, 4 & 5 students will be moving from participating in Visual Arts classes in Semester One to participating in Performing Arts sessions in Semester Two. 

All Year 5 students will be attending sessions with a Music focus for one term with Mrs.Tracey O’Connor and then a second term with a Drama focus with Mrs. Claire Feild In this way students will be participating in a broader range of activities within the Performing Arts curriculum and we are looking forward to working together with these students.

Year 3 & 4 - Students will focus on dance this term. We will work on our concert dances, with students learning choreography for their level’s dances, as well as contributing their own choreography to the dances. 

Year 5P - Students will work on developing their expressive skills, and use these skills to develop a character and show different emotions. They will then further develop their skills with Improvisation, and work on staying in character when presenting a short improvisation. 

Year 5S - We will begin with a focus on the elements of music, and students will use these understandings to compose their own pieces using ‘Incredibox’. Students will then try their hands at ‘bucket drumming’, and will work on developing their ability to read notation to play a short piece on the drums. Students will also listen to and reflect on different musical pieces over the term.

Year 6 - The Year Six students will have a strong focus on theatre sports. They will work on their confidence individually and in small groups getting up in front of the class and performing. They will work with a script to perform in front of their prep buddies.

STEMMS

Preps:  This term the students will continue working on their skills using Google Docs and navigating through the St James Student Landing Page.  They will also be working on their coding and problem solving skills using an app - CodeSpark

Year 1 - The students will be building on their Google Suite knowledge by exploring the use of Google Slides.  They will also be working on their coding and problem solving skills using the online program Code.org

Year 2 - This term the students will build on their coding and problem solving skills using the app Tynker.  They will also look at design and building concepts using the Makedo construction tools.

Year 3 - This term the students will continue building on their coding and problem solving skills using the app Scratch Junior.  They will explore ways to use the code to make small interactive stories, games, and solve problems.

Year 4 - The students will use their coding and problem solving skills using the online platform - Scratch.  They will also look at machines and how they work in particular pull and push concepts, whilst building their own machines using Lego.

Year 5 - The students will use their coding and problem solving skills using the online platform - Scratch.  The students will choose a project to design and develop using Scratch and will present this product at a class showcase. They will then look at the Swift app where coding is no longer in a block format and is written code.  They will look at concepts such as functions, loops and conditional code.

Year 6 - The students this term will be looking using an app on the iPads called Reality Composer.  Reality Composer uses 3d shapes and items and puts them into real life situations, scenarios and games, Augmented Reality (AR).  The students will need to look at using real life applications such as physics, how objects move i.e. rubber balls bouncing, metal objects hitting the ground then tumbling, scaling of objects, behaviours of moving objects, collisions etc.