What's Happening in our Classrooms
Prep
What’s Happening in Prep: Weeks 7 and 8
What’s been happening
Swimming has started this week! The Prep teachers are so proud of how responsible, independent and resilient the Preps have been. We have well and truly begun our rehearsing for the upcoming Prep concert which will take place on Thursday 5th of December at 9.10am and will run for approximately an hour. Please save the date with more information to come.
What will be happening over the next fortnight
Wellbeing
- Being independent and resilient when routines change
Phonics
- Identify and write words using ‘r-controlled vowels’ /ar/ and /or/
- Revising learnt sounds
Reading
- Decoding words and blending to read smoothly
Writing
- Writing sentences correctly, using an adjective.
Maths
- Understanding the place value of numbers
- Partitioning and subitising numbers
Inquiry
Big Question: How do we keep our bodies healthy and safe?
Over the next fortnight, students will be exploring the following lines of inquiry:
- How can we keep ourselves safe at home, at school, at the beach or in the community?
- Who are the experts in our community that can help us stay healthy and safe?
- How can we contact the community helpers who can keep us healthy and safe?
Homework
Continue looking through Decoding Detective and Word Wizard book as well as take home readers. Students are encouraged to participate in daily reading. If students record 100 nights of reading in their journal, they will enjoy a pizza party hosted by Mr. Tapp. Please encourage students to read the same book multiple times per week as this is valuable to their learning and assists with their fluency. Please note that reading pages from the Decoding Detective/ Word Wizard exercise book counts as a reading entry in the student journal.
Optional: Mathletics and exploring the Prep-2 homework rubric located inside the students reading pouch.
Reminders
- Prep to Year 2 Swimming – Monday 18th – Thursday 28th November
- Open Afternoon – Friday 29th November
- Prep Concert 9:10am – Thursday 5th December
- Reading Nights Pizza Party – Friday 6th December
- Christmas Carols – Wednesday 11th December
Year 1
What’s Happening in Year 1: Weeks 7 & 8
What’s been happening
The Year 1s have had another busy fortnight with the start of our swimming program and lots of learning! We have enjoyed hearing about our health project and have started plans to create our personal strength stories based on Noni the Pony. It was a bit of a challenge coming up with an animal that started with the same letter as our name, but most of us got there in the end. In Maths we are looking forward to exploring shapes and their properties. We have also started learning our Christmas Carols for the concert which we are very excited about.
What will be happening over the next week in Year 1
Wellbeing
Students will identify their personal strengths
Students will understand the difference between strengths and qualities
Students will begin planning and writing their personal narrative that celebrates and utilises their personal strengths and qualities to solve a problem
Literacy
Literacy encompasses spelling, reading and writing. The following few weeks students will be focusing on:
Spelling: Students will continue developing their understanding of the different spelling patterns for the /aw/ sound. For example, lawn, haunt and caught. Then they will move on to learning about the short e pronunciation of the /ea/ sound, for example; bread, head, thread.
Writing: Students will continue to look at the different features of a narrative. We will pay special attention to how to make an interesting start and an exciting ending.
Reading: Students will continue to practice their reading, by reading texts that are based on our spelling focus for the week. This includes echo reading, choral reading, cloze reading and partner reading.
Maths
Year 1 students will be learning all about 3D shapes and their properties. We will be investigating, making and drawing them. We will then compare the 3D shapes to 2D shapes and see what the difference and similarities are.
Inquiry
During Health, we will continue to look at what makes us unique. We will learn the difference between personal strengths and qualities and then identify some of these in each other. Next, we will explore character strengths and qualities in some of our favourite picture story books and how they helped the character throughout the story. The students have also been focusing on being ‘Bucket Fillers’ after reading the story ‘Have you filled a bucket today?’ This involves writing notes of kindness to their peers celebrating their strengths and how that makes our class a better place to be.
Homework
Keep practicing spelling and reading the memory words that were sent home.
The students have been looking at time in the classroom, it would be great if students could practice this more at home!
Read every day to add to your 100 days of reading challenge and the Premier’s Reading Challenge
Mathletics passwords are in the front of reading journals. Students can practice what we have been learning in class
Additionally, students can choose a homework activity from the Prep - Year 2 homework rubric.
Here is a list of suggested books students may like to read at home besides their Take Home Readers:
Ella Diaries
Hey Jack!
Pizza & Taco
Little Lunch
Billie B Brown
Spooky House
Captain Underpants
Dog Man
Ninja Kids
Paddy Mills – The big book
The Runaway Kitten
Bad Guys
Hot Dog
The Treehouse Stories
The Faraway Tree
Ella & Olivia
The Beach House
Big Dream
Olivia’s Secret Scribbles
The Tiara Club
Geronimo Stilton
How to Train Your Dragon
Dragon Girls
Rainbow Magic
Curry Career
School of Monsters
The Boy who never gave up
Harry Potter
Ninjago
Weirdo (Ahn Do)
Year 2
What’s Happening in Year 2: Week 7 & 8
What will be happening over the next two weeks in Year 2
Over the next two weeks of the term students will be participating in a Swimming Program at Mentone Aquatics. The Year 2 teachers are expecting these two weeks to be jampacked full of fun and laughter.
Wellbeing
As we continue to discuss swimming, upcoming end of year events and transitions, the students will be focusing on building their resilience toolkit/strategies. Our goal is to prepare our students as best we can for upcoming change.
Reading
Students will be focusing on comparing different texts as well as inferring and using evidence to support this. Students will continue to build fluency through whole class reading sessions, cloze reading opportunities and partnered reading opportunities.
Writing
The Year 2 students will be working on their inquiry projects and writing their scripts for their Inquiry presentations.
Maths
Over the next two weeks, students will be sharing their knowledge surrounding number and algebra.
Inquiry
Over the next two weeks, students in Year 2 will be working on their independent presentations. Students will choose from 4 different areas of Health and Wellbeing. Using information gained through their workshops that took place over the last several weeks, students will create a short presentation with information about how people in their community can look after the particular area of health and wellbeing.
Reminders
Beaumaris North and Beaumaris Primary School Pen Pal meet up- Thursday 5th December
To celebrate our wonderful friendship with the Beaumaris North Primary School Pen Pals, the Year 2 students from both schools will be meeting up to have one final play and catch up for the year. This will take place in a mutual place for the two schools. The permission for this event is included through the local walks permission given at the beginning of each year.
Reading Nights Pizza Party- 6th December
Students have until the 29th of November to submit their reading diaries. The Year 2 teachers have been keeping a tally of all students in their classes. Students that have reached 100 nights of reading during this time will receive an invitation to the pizza party prior to the week. For the students that have not reached 100 nights, they will remain in their classroom with their classroom teacher. Please find more information about this event via compass/ the newsletter.
Year 2 Celebration Lunch- 17th December
On the 17th of December, students will celebrate their incredible year that they have had with a special lunch. A Compass event has been published on Compass. If your child wishes to participate in this lunch please ensure you have given consent and paid for your child to participate. Students will have the option between receiving a nugget and chip pack or a fish and chip pack. If your child wishes to participate in the lunch, please fill out a Microsoft form with your child’s lunch preference.
Link to form here : https://forms.office.com/r/fiqJuVk2V9
Please complete this form before the 10th of December.
Parent Reading helpers
The Year 2 teaching team would like to thank all the parents, special friends and carers who have volunteered their time this year. Each week it has been a delight having visitors in our classroom listening to the students read. We have watched many of our students confidence grow throughout these sessions and they would not have been possible without your help. Whilst swimming is taking place, we will take a break from reading parent helpers. We would love to welcome the reading parent helpers back in Week 9 and 10 with our sessions coming to a close for the year in week 10.
Year 3
What’s Happening in Year 3: Term 4 Week 7 and 8
What’s been happening in Year 3
Hello from the Year 3 Team!
The students had a truly sensational time at Camp Oasis! They all thoroughly enjoyed participating in the activities that included candle making, a flying fox as well as crate climbing and rock-wall climbing. A big thank you to all the parents that attended as we can’t offer these wonderful experiences to our students without your assistance.
What will be happening over the next two weeks in Year 3
Wellbeing
- Our wellbeing focus will be thinking about friends that we work well with in a classroom.
- We will be looking at peers and discussing personal qualities and characteristics found in our friends that enable us to work well with them in the classroom environment.
Reading
- We are continuing to read our class novel ‘The One and Only Ivan’. Our class discussions and conversations around the book have sparked excellent debates about zoos and animals who are kept to as performing animals.
- We will be completing assessments and evaluations that will inform teachers of students progress made in all areas of literacy.
Writing
- We will be continuing our work with sentence structure and excellent word choice when drafting and editing written pieces.
- We have dedicated handwriting time where the students are explicitly taught correct letter formation. It is particularly exciting learning how the different letters join when writing in cursive.
- We will be conducting writing sessions that will be moderated as a cohort to inform report writing for teachers.
Maths
- We will be focusing addition and subtraction strategies over the next two weeks
- Students will be completing assessments and evaluations that will inform teachers of student progress made this semester in all areas of mathematics.
- Students will continue to be encouraged to learn and recite their times tables.
Inquiry – Science
Big Question:
How does heat help us understand and explore the changes in materials?
Students will be completing simple science experiments during inquiry sessions. We will discover how to write a scientific report as experiments are conducted.
Homework
Students are asked to continue to read every night and to complete Mathletics tasks set by classroom teachers. Students have some optional activities to complete from the Homework Grid in their homework books.
Reminders
Diaries are expected to come to school every day with their reading recorded and ready to be checked by the teacher.
Year 4
What’s Happening in Year 4: Term 4 Week 7 and 8
What will be happening for Weeks 7 and 8
Students in Year 4 recently had St John Ambulance come to our school to run some basic first aid training. The students went through DR ABC with their instructor. You can see some photos of the students taking part in this below.
The students have been working hard to complete their Black Beard’s Treasure map, and you can see some photos of the final products below. They learnt all about the features of a map, and how to provide directional instructions.
The students are looking forward to the Bike Education Program, which is commencing in Week 9. Your child should have brought home with them a bike and helmet checklist. Please complete this form, and return it to your child’s teacher prior to the program commencing. It would be great if you could take your child out on a bike ride before the program, especially if they haven’t been on their bike for a while.
On Friday 29th November is the Swimming Trial for 2025. The students in Year 4 have filled in an online form to express interest in competing in the 50m race events, or taking part in the 25m races for fun. Please make sure you provide consent if your child has opted to take part in this event.
Wellbeing
- Listening to the ‘Grow your Mind’ podcast and completing the activities
- Students will complete lessons based on ‘how to be a good friend’
Reading
- Whole class reading and building vocabulary
- Focus on fluency through a range of whole, paired and independent activities
- Use context clues to infer meaning and respond to questions about different text types
- Book Club -Groups will meet weekly to discuss characters and events from the story- Students need to have their books at school each day.
Writing
Persuasive Writing
Students will be writing a persuasive text over the next couple of weeks. They will be conducting research into a given topic and then brainstorming multiple arguments for and against. Students will use a template provided to plan their persuasive piece. Their teacher will model how to write an introduction and what to include in it. Students will then select their 3 strongest arguments and expand on them. Throughout their persuasive piece, students will be encouraged to use the persuasive techniques they have learnt, for example, emotive language and rhetorical questions, to convince their audience. Students will then learn how to structure their conclusion and finally publish their work.
Maths
Revision
During our Numeracy sessions we have been doing a thorough revision of all the concepts taught this semester. This has included addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, statistics and calculating the area and perimeter of regular shapes. Students will be completing PAT testing this week, to see how much growth they have made this semester. Teachers will use the results to target areas of need for the remainder of the school year.
Inquiry
Big Question: How does where we live affect how we live?
We will be exploring:
- How are the continents of Australia, Africa and South America similar and different?
- What are the geographical features and cultural practices that make these places unique?
- How do people and animals in different climate zones adapt to their environments?
- How can people use the natural resources available in a sustainable way?
- What features might attract tourism to a certain place?
Students have been researching all about Africa, including its climate, geographical features, landmarks, fauna and flora. This week we are exploring South America, and in particular the living conditions, food and climate.
Homework
Homework consists of 20 minutes reading a night, 3-4 Mathletics tasks to reinforce the concepts being taught at school, and an optional choice board of activities to be completed at your family’s discretion. Diaries will be collected every Friday. Students may take work home to complete, that was unfinished during class time.
Reminders
Bike Education: Monday 2nd December – Thursday 5th December
Swimming Carnival: Friday 29th November
Library Days:
- Monday – 4R
- Thursday – 4B, 4L
Year 5
What’s Happening in Year 5: Term 4 Week 7 & 8
What will be happening in Weeks 7 and 8 in Year 5
The Year 5 students have a busy few weeks ahead. This week we visited Beaumaris Secondary College for a high school taster. The students made pizza muffins, conducted a science experiment, collaborated with a small group to complete a challenge and played new sports games. It was a great day out. The final Elephant Ed session is on Wednesday morning. We had a 100% ‘thumbs up’ score after the first session last week. The students will participate in lifesaving on Friday. Students need to arrive at 8:45am. Students need to wear their bathers to school as we will begin the program at 9:30am and will not have time to change on arrival. All students need to have a rash vest, bathers or board shorts for the program. They will need to bring a towel, snack, water bottle and school uniform to change into in a backpack. All students must walk to and from the venue with closed toe shoes but can bring thongs to wear at the beach.
Week 8 is not as busy. Students will continue to make their buddy books for the 2025 Prep students. They will complete their persuasive texts and continue the ‘Can You See Me?’ novel study. We wish the students who are trialling for the 2025 swim team good luck on Friday 29th Nov. On 2nd December (Week 9) the students will participate in a staff-led Smoothie Day. Students will work in small groups to design, create and advertise a smoothie. This day incorporates persuasive writing, the design process and the physical health component of the Health curriculum. It will be a wonderful way to end the Health inquiry unit of work this term.
Wellbeing
- Students will work on resilience, respect, relationships and responsibility.
Literacy
- Students will practise reading fluency (accuracy, rate, prosody) through repeated oral strategies and information texts related to the Can you See Me? novel study and Health inquiry unit
- Students will read and respond to queries from our class novel ‘Can You See Me?’
- Students will use and understand new words from the class novel
- Students will generate sentence stems containing a semicolon and a conjunctive adverb (however, therefore)
- Students will join sentences using connectives to link arguments, evidence and reasons
- Students will write simple, compound and complex sentences
- Students will plan publish a persuasive letter
- Students will research facts to support their arguments of a chosen topic
- Students will follow the writing process to write a persuasive text
Maths
- Students will find unknown values in numerical equations involving multiplication and division using the properties of numbers and operations
- Students will recognise and use rules that generate visually growing patterns and number patterns involving rational numbers
- Students will design and use algorithms involving a sequence of steps and decisions that use rules to generate sets of numbers; identify, interpret and explain emerging patterns
- Students will plan and conduct statistical investigations by posing questions or identifying a problem and collecting relevant data
- Students will acquire, validate and represent data for nominal and ordinal categorical and discrete numerical variables to address a question of interest or purpose
Health
- Identify changes associated with puberty
- Explore what it means to be physically, socially and emotionally healthy
- Investigate strategies to establish and manage relationships
- Explore and celebrate how cultures differ in behaviours, beliefs and values
- What are some preventative health strategies that promote health, safety and wellbeing for individuals and their communities?
- How does the media influence personal attitudes, beliefs, decisions and behaviours?
- How do members of the community influence personal attitudes, beliefs, decisions and behaviours?
Homework
Please refer to the Year 5&6 Homework Rubric
Students are expected to be reading every night and completing assigned Mathletics activities over the fortnight.
Reminders
20th Nov - Elephant Ed session 2
22nd Nov - Beach Lifesaving
29th Nov - Swimming Trials
2nd Dec - Year 5 Smoothie Day
Year 6
What’s Happening in Year 6: Week 8 and 9
What’s been happening in Year 6
We all enjoyed an amazing day out at South Melbourne Market on Friday followed by a few hours at St. Kilda Botanical Gardens. The weather was stunning, and the students sampled lots of the delicious food at the market. Thank you to Mr Jarvis for organising the excursion and to the parents who came along to help.
Some Year 6 students took part in a ‘Count Like a Computer’ Mathematics webinar in Week 5; some challenging modular arithmetics was explored which is sometimes only studied at university! The students have also been very busy completing various assessments in preparation for the end-of-year reports.
What will be happening in Year 6
Students have officially launched into the main part of their Economics unit so work shall continue with this project. We will have an open afternoon on Friday 29th November, Market Day on Friday 6th December as well as the Reading Night Pizza Party coming up for those who have reached the 100 night milestone.
Wellbeing
- Term 4 is always a really busy time. We ask that students use their diaries to be aware of specifics around events that are upcoming. This is also a great way to take on self-responsibility in preparation for Year 7.
Literacy
- Spelling – Latin bases continued
- Students will be working on an advertising campaign for their market day stall. Each group will use their persuasive writing skills to produce a radio and print advertisement to share with the other classes to promote their stall.
Maths
- Students will be reviewing a variety of Mathematics concepts based on assessment data.
- Students will be applying measurement and shape understandings to practical situations.
Business & Economics
- Students have begun their Economics unit, learning about different types of businesses and developing skills that they will use at the market stall later this term.
- Economics lessons will look at entrepreneurship, different types of businesses and consumer choice.
Homework
Students are expected to be reading every night and completing assigned Mathletics activities over the fortnight. Diaries with reading recorded will be checked weekly and Mathletics tasks should be completed by Friday 6 December.
Reminders
Open Afternoon – Friday 29 November
Beaumaris Secondary Transition Presentation – Tuesday 3 December
Market Day – Friday 6 December
Reading Nights Pizza Party – Friday 6 December
