What's Happening in our Classrooms

Prep

What’s Happening in Prep: Weeks 5 & 6

What’s been happening in Prep

Last week marked the 50th day of being at school for the Prep students so we celebrated being halfway to 100 days of school by learning all about the concept of ‘half’. We dressed up in halves, cut shapes in halves and shared a special treat fairly with a friend. We also went on our first trip to the local Beaumaris library where we sang songs, read stories and found out more about what makes up a community!

What will be happening in this fortnight

Wellbeing

• Safe play with others
• What makes a good friend

Phonics

• Reading and writing words with a superhero ‘e’
• Identifying phonemes /x/ /y/ /qu/

Reading

• Practising decoding unfamiliar words
• Visualize when reading
• Identify memory words within the text we are reading

Writing

• Constructing sentences correctly (finger spaces between words, capital letters and full stops)
• Rereading our writing to check it makes sense
• Using onset and rime to spell words

Maths

• Estimating, counting and comparing collections of objects
• Explaining the length and height of objects 
• Modelling addition in everyday situations

Inquiry

Big Question: How are we part of a community?

Over the next fortnight, students will be exploring the following lines of inquiry:

• What are the community essentials?
• What types of environments are important to a community?

Homework

Continue looking through Decoding Detective and Word Wizard book as well as take home readers.  

Students are encouraged to be reading nightly and recording this. 

Optional: Students can select an activity from the Homework Rubric. This has been shared with your child, and please also see this attached below. Mathletics tasks are also optional. 

Reminders

• Second visit to Local Library - Wednesday 22nd May
• Prep and Year 6 walk to Banksia Reserve – Friday 24th 

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1: Weeks 5 & 6

What’s been happening

For the past few weeks, the Year 1 students have been delving into our past and our family’s history. To enrich our learning, we were fortunate enough to visit Ripponlea Estate. To fully harness the experience, students were asked to dress up in ‘olden day’ clothing. As if we’d travelled to 1868, we stepped into the past and enjoyed a very informative day with Bronwyn and Zoe, who told us everything about life when Mr and Mrs Sargood ran the Estate. Students will be using their experience at Ripponlea Estate and their interviews with a family member or older special friend to complete a project for our History Inquiry unit in the coming weeks. 

What will be happening this fortnight

Wellbeing

• Students will be perfecting their toolkits for the Zones of Regulation. This could be an amazing discussion point at home. Ask students about this!
• We’ll be doing emotional check-ins and reflection on emotions throughout the day so students are more in tune with their feelings.  

Literacy

Literacy encompasses spelling, reading and writing. The students will be focusing on: 

• Spelling: We will continue to explore r-controlled vowels in week 5. We will then be introducing the Year 1 students to diphthongs. A diphthong is two vowel sounds that combine to make one vowel sound. We’ll specifically be looking at <oi> and <oy> in week 
• Writing: When writing, students will concentrate on properly placing nouns in sentences and surrounding their nouns with adjectives and verbs to make an interesting sentence. Additionally, students will focus on making sure their punctuation is correct. This means students will have to be diligent in rereading their work. 
• Reading: We will be decoding words and sentences; focusing on pointing out the nouns. We will also be practicing our fluent reading strategies which involves using punctuation to guide our reading.  

Maths

• Year 1 students will be looking at length next week and exploring addition the following week. To help their learning students will be using a wide variety of strategies to add. 

Inquiry

• Now that the Year 1 students have visited Ripponlea Estate, they will be using their family interviews and their knowledge from the excursion to analyse how families have changed over time. 

Homework

Keep practicing spelling and reading the memory words that were sent home. 

Students are encouraged to be reading nightly and recording this. 

Optional: Students can select an activity from the Homework Rubric. This has been shared with your child, and please also see this attached below.  

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2: Weeks 5 & 6

What’s been happening in Year 2

The Year 2 students have been looking at our place in the world; who we are as individuals and where we fit into our world, continent, state etc. The Year 2 students have been looking into how individuals connect to different places for different reasons. We LOVED having our mums and other special visitors in our classroom last Friday and were so grateful to be able to spend time with them at school. 

What will be happening this fortnight

Tomorrow the students will be going on a walking excursion to Long Hollow Heathlands as a part of our inquiry unit. We are also looking forward to inviting our Grandparents and special friends into our classrooms in Week 8. 

Wellbeing

Students will continue to work through the RRRR (Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships) program with a specific focus on personal strengths. 

Reading

The Year 2 students were thrilled to welcome in some parent helpers on Monday morning. We would LOVE to welcome more parents/ carers to come to hear the students read. Our reading focus for the next two weeks will be comprehension; asking questions, before, during and after reading and also changing our voices to suit the character we are reading about/ from.

Writing

Over the next two weeks the Year 2 cohort will be working on writing about their special places to link to Inquiry. The students will be focusing on using precise verbs and adjectives to describe characters and settings and also using personal experiences to find an idea to write about.

Maths

Students will begin investigating mathematical modelling to solve practical subtraction and multiplicative problems, including money transactions, representing the situation and choosing calculation strategies.

Inquiry

Big Question: How and why do people connect to different places?   

Over the next fortnight, students will be asked to: 

Think about different environments in our community and think about how different people connect to different places and why.

Reminders

• Walking Excursion to Long Hollow Heathlands - Friday 17th May 
• Library - please find below the timetable of when your child will visit the BPS library. Please ensure that your child brings their library book each week on this day. Students should bring their library book to and from school in a library bag (this can be the navy blue BPS one or another bag of your choice). 

• If you wish to contact your child’s classroom teacher for any reason, please do so using the beau box. Beaumaris.ps@education.vic.gov.au 

Specialist classes

Year 3

What’s Happening in Year 3: Weeks 5 & 6

What’s been happening in Year 3

The students have been extremely busy organising their Mother’s Day surprises and gifts. They have also been particularly focused and engaged when learning about Australian history. 

What will be happening this fortnight

Wellbeing

• Our focus during wellbeing sessions will be dedicated to developing our growth mindset when faced with challenges. This will include a particular focus on building resilience.

Reading

• To support our history inquiry, we will be developing our research skills, primarily recalling facts and details when reading. 
• We will also focus on using our own vocabulary when recalling facts and opinions.

Writing

• We will be working on the writing trait of ‘Voice’ throughout the next two weeks. Tone and mood will be explicitly taught during writing sessions.

Maths

• We will be deepening our understanding of the correlation between addition and subtraction.
• Students will be taught a variety of strategies to use when adding and subtracting, including the ‘split strategy’ as well as the ‘adding and subtracting parts' strategy.

Inquiry - History

Big Question: How and why has Australia changed over time?

During the next two weeks, the students will be discussing who and why people migrated to Australia.

Homework

Students are encouraged to be reading nightly and recording this. 

Students are also encouraged to be completing the assigned Mathletics tasks.  

Optional: Students can select an activity from the Homework Rubric. This has been shared with your child, and please also see this attached below.  

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: Weeks 5 and 6

What’s been happening in Year 4

Over the past two weeks, students have been working very hard to create magazine articles based on Intrepizine articles (a section of Literacy Planet). They have begun publishing a good copy in the form of a poster, ready to be displayed in the classroom. In maths, students have been building their foundational knowledge of decimal numbers and can now read them correctly, place them on a number line and compare the size of decimal numbers. Students have begun creating identity wheels to share with the class and are learning new information about each other every day. 

What will be happening this fortnight

Wellbeing

• Understanding the important of seeing situations from other people’s perspective

Reading

• Whole class reading and building vocabulary 
• Focus on fluency through a range of whole, paired and independent activities
• Silent reading personal choice book
• Commencing a Book Club and discussing, characters, settings and events 

Writing

• Experimenting with vocabulary choices
• Building an understanding of paragraphing
• Using connectives to link ideas in a story
• Using ellipses to build tension
• Paired writing activities

Maths

• Represent shapes and objects from the environment
• Identify lines of symmetry
• Identify rotational symmetry
• Create symmetrical patterns
• Connection between addition and subtraction, and fact families

Inquiry

Big Question: How can we educate younger year levels on the importance of creating a safe, fair and happy environment for everyone?

We will be exploring

• Different perspectives in a range of situations
• Types of health and ways to care for them

Homework

Students are encouraged to be reading nightly and recording this. Diaries will be collected every Friday.

Students are also encouraged to be completing the assigned Mathletics tasks.  

Optional: Students can select an activity from the Homework Rubric. This has been shared with your child, and please also see this attached below.  

Students also have personalised spelling lists on Literacy Planet (created in class) which they can use to practice spelling words at home if desired.

Reminders

• Seaside District Cross Country is in Week 5 on Wednesday 15th May, payment/consent can be completed via Compass.

Year 5

What’s Happening in Year 5: Weeks 5 and 6

What will be happening this fortnight in Year 5

On Wednesday 15th May students who qualified for the District Cross Country Event will compete against runners in our Seaside District. Good luck to everyone involved.

Student Action Leadership Teams (SALT) will begin in Week 5. Students have selected areas that they are interested in, and feel will help improve the wellbeing of students at BPS. Each SALT will be working on an agreed goal within their area of interest. The teams will continue for the remainder of the year and will be a fabulous opportunity for students to develop their leadership skills. The Biodiversity SALT will be cooking apple parcels with the apples from the orchard with Mr O’Loughlin on Friday 17th May.

In Week 5 students will play a double header for interschool sport, versing Brighton Beach Primary School and Black Rock Primary School. Students will be back at school at lunchtime so will need to take their backpack with snacks and water to the games. Teams will play a single game in Week 6 against Sandringham East Primary School. A reminder that students need to arrive at school at 8:45am to be marked present and get on the bus by 9am.

Wellbeing

• Students work on resilience, respect, relationships and responsibility. 

Literacy

• Students are practising reading fluency (accuracy, rate, prosody) through repeated oral strategies through information texts related to natural disasters in Australia and around the world
• Through study of our mentor text ‘Spark’ by Jackie French students will identify language choices that help move the text forward and aid comprehension of the reader
• Students will will use descriptive language to describe a setting
• Students will use literary devices from mentor texts to capture emotion
• Understand when to use vowel teams to spell words 
• Spell Words with Common Letter Patterns but different pronunciations

Maths

• Students will understand the link between fractions, decimals and percentages
• Students will compare and order some common unit fractions
• Students will recognise that 100% represents the complete whole and use percentages to describe, represent and compare relative size
• Students will connect familiar percentages to their decimal and fraction equivalents 
• Students will solve problems involving addition and subtraction of fractions with the same or related denominators, using different strategies 

Inquiry - Geography

We are starting a new inquiry unit investigating how regions are predisposed and respond to natural disasters. 

Big Question: How might we reduce the impacts of natural disasters? (human, environmental, economic)

Our lines of Inquiry will be:

• How do the environments and culture of Europe, North America and Asia, compare to Australia? 
• What are the factors and how do they influence the way people adapt to the climatic conditions in these regions? (culture, technology) 
• What impact do we as humans have on the environmental features of places? 
• What can be learnt from traditional land management techniques? 
• How can the impact of natural disasters on people and places be reduced? 
• How do sudden geological changes or extreme weather conditions can affect Earth’s surface? 

Homework

Students are encouraged to be reading nightly and recording this. 

Students are also encouraged to be completing the assigned Mathletics tasks.  

Optional: Students can select an activity from the Homework Rubric. This has been shared with your child, and please also see this attached below.  

Reminders

District Cross Country - Dendy Park 15th May 

Interschool Sport V Brighton Beach and Black Rock - 17th May

Interschool Sport V Sandringham East - 24th May

Year 6

What’s Happening in Year 6: Weeks 5 and 6

We would like to extend a huge thank you to all parents who attended the Mother’s Day afternoon tea and subsequent Year 6 Kahoot in the classrooms. A wonderful time was had by all and we, as teachers, could see where some of our students get their competitive spirit from! Our Art excursion to the NGV was another highlight of the fortnight. Thank you to Ms Ally Palermo for organising this experience. 

What will be happening this fortnight

A relatively quiet fortnight ahead for Year 6 so the chance to get our heads down and focus on classwork. A short walk to Banksia Reserve with Prep buddies is pencilled in for Friday of Week 6, and those students selected to take part in the next SouthernFM Radio show will be debuting on Thursday 30th of May. The students have submitted their audition forms for the production with auditions beginning in Week 6. See the reminders section below for any other upcoming events.

Wellbeing

• Students will discuss and reflect on their progress this year, ready to set goals for the rest of 2024. 

Literacy

• Students are practising reading fluency and comprehension with a variety of text types focusing on Floods. We will be doing a range of teacher lead, paired and independent activities to work on reading rate, prosody and accuracy. 
• We are continuing our work on sentence structure, writing compound and complex sentences using Jackie French’s ‘Flood’ to inspire our writing. 
• Spelling – suffixes including -ist, -or, -ism and –tude.

Maths

• Students will be revising addition and subtraction strategies including partitioning, rounding and adjusting and commutativity.
• Students will be learning how to use the most efficient addition and subtraction strategies and applying these to various problem-solving situations.

Inquiry

Big Question: How do people respond to the geographical challenges of their region?

Our focus for the next two weeks will extend to Europe and Asia, where students will compare it to Australia. Students will complete a short research project in class time.

Homework

Students are encouraged to be reading nightly and recording this. Diaries with reading recorded will be checked weekly.

Students are also encouraged to be completing the assigned Mathletics tasks.  

Optional: Students can select an activity from the Homework Rubric. This has been shared with your child, and please also see this attached below.  

Reminders

• Walk to Banksia Reserve with Prep: Friday 24/5
• Division Cross Country - Karkarook Park: Friday 24/5 
• Boys Volleyball playoff - Brighton: Monday 27/5
• Team 2, SouthernFM Radio Show: Thursday 30/5