Learning Community 1

Prep Guy

Over the last two weeks we have been very busy revising all of our learning from the year. We practised reading, writing, spelling and maths assessments and worked on individual goals ready to complete assessment activities next week. We also learnt about antonyms, synonyms and homophones, plus the sound made by ch, ou, ow, ph and er. Well done everyone on being so resilient, working your way through challenging tasks and not giving up. I am so proud of you all. On Monday we were visited by Bunnings and made some coasters for our special grandparents. A huge thank you to Jo form Bunnings Pakenham West for donating all the materials and showing the students how to make these colourful presents. On Wednesday this week the railways visited us showing where our painted bandicoot boxes will be placed. We also hade a visit from some very cute blue tongued lizards. On Thursday we made some fun Halloween masks with our Grade 5 buddies who will be there for us in 2024. On Friday we invited our Grandparents into our classroom where we spent some special time together making bookmarks, painting hands,  reading books together and showing our special people our wonderful school. 

Last week our student of the week was  Florence and this week Karsyn was chosen. Well done on showing our core values of resilience, respect and responsibility. We are all very proud of you for being voted in by your peers. 

1/2 Stoll & Parker

We have had a very busy last fortnight! Mrs Parker's class has spent lots of time getting to know their new teacher. Mrs Parker has already made so many amazing connections with her students, students at out school, with our teaching team and families. 

Over the last two weeks in reading, we have been reviewing our knowledge of text genres, features of different texts and their purpose. This has led to some great discussions about fiction versus non-fiction themes. In Ms Stoll's class, we became so invested in discussing salt water crocodiles that we spent time watching a documentary whilst taking notes about facts of fresh and salt water crocodiles in Australia. Students were especially surprised by the facts that only 1 in 80 baby crocodiles in the wild live to adulthood and the fact that crocodiles grow new teeth when they lose one and because of this, some crocodiles will go through 1,000 teeth in their life.

In writing we have been reviewing narrative writing, particularly our TOCRE structure. Students have then begun planning their own narrative using the acronym above, T for title, O for orientation, C for complication, R for resolution and E for ending. To choose our characters, setting and problem for our stories, each class did an activity where we collectively came up with 6 ideas for character 1, character 2, the setting and the problem, and students then rolled a dice to choose their narratives characters, setting and problem.

Ms Stoll's class spent two lessons exploring procedural writing, ingredients were gathered to make fairy bread and students were so eager to begin making their own. The students began quickly telling Ms Stoll the instructions for making fairy bread,

"First you get the bread, then put the butter and sprinkles on" one student said, so I did just that. I grabbed a loaf of bread, put the tub of butter on it and then placed the bag of sprinkles on top of the butter. We called it our leaning tower of fairy bread however students quickly learned that I required them to specifically detail the instructions I needed to take in order to make one slice of fairy bread. "Geez Ms Stoll, have you never made fairy bread before?" was a commonly asked question. It was a very fun lesson! After each student made their slice of fairy bread, I asked them to cut it into a specific fraction, either in halves, quarters or thirds. Some students cut their halves or quarters into squares whilst others cut theirs into triangles.

In maths we have reviewed some place value concepts, such as counting on and back starting from zero and then other numbers, either by ones, twos, threes, fives or tens. We also re-introduced the concept of sharing, this includes sharing into equal groups and sharing into equal groups with leftovers. We will continue to explore sharing into the coming weeks and move towards linking grouping and sharing with skip counting and repeated addition and subtraction.

Mrs Parker's student achievers from the last two weeks were Mrs Beilby and Indi! 

We wrote Mrs Beilby letters to thank her for all her hard work and dedication to our school. Congratulations to Indi for being chosen to be Mrs Beilby's last and Mrs Parker's first student achiever!

In Ms Stoll's class, our student achiever's were our fabulous Finn and our amazing Addi! Well done to Finn and Addi, you have both been going above and beyond to ensure you are classroom and school role models for Bunyip PS. I am so proud of you both!

To all prep, grade 1 and grade 2 students and families; 

We are pleased to announce that we will be having our grade 1 and grade 2 sleepover at school later this term, more information including the date and times will follow shortly.