What's Happening in our Classrooms

Prep

What’s Happening in Prep: Weeks 3 and 4

What’s been happening in Prep

What a fantastic day we had yesterday, celebrating the Prep’s 100th day at school! To celebrate this milestone we decorated photo frames, completed a ‘100 things’ scavenger hunt with our buddies, ate pizza for lunch and made a medal to mark the achievement. The teachers could not be prouder of all the Preps. We can’t wait for the next 100 days! 

What will be happening this fortnight

Wellbeing

• To begin to identify ‘flexible thinking’ and developing a growth mindset

Phonics

• Revising all previously taught phonemes, including the vowel teams /ee/ and /oo/
• Identifying the 2 sounds made by /y/ as a vowel (Mr Y the Cheeky Guy)

Reading

• Decoding words and blending to read smoothly
• Identifying the features of non-fiction texts

Writing

• Using dotted thirds to write upper and lower-case letters
• Writing simple sentences correctly
• Expanding simple sentences with adjectives

Maths

• Representing real life situations using subtraction
• Using a variety of materials to solve subtraction problems 
• Making connections between addition and subtraction
• Using positional language to describe an objects location 
• Giving and following simple directions to a location  

Inquiry

Big Question: How do living things grow and change?

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

• What is a living thing? 
• What do living things need to survive? 
• What are some features of animals and plants?

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, also attached below. The tasks on this have been updated for Term 3. 

Reminders

• Friday 9th August - Olympics Day – Students may dress up in colours that represent their allocated country
• Wednesday 21st August – Book Week dress up day
• Friday 23rd August – Moonlit Sanctuary Excursion

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1: Weeks 3 and 4

What’s been happening

The Year 1’s have come back to school with a hunger for learning. Their attention has especially been focused on learning about our new Inquiry unit, Science. During the first few weeks, the Year 1 students have really shown how grown up they already are, looking at multiplication and division problems for Maths, simple and compound sentences for Literacy and learning to use suffixes in Spelling. 

What will be happening over the next fortnight

Wellbeing

• Students will consider their emotions through the Respectful Relationships program. 
• Students will construct their Term 3 learning goals and evaluate their Term 2 goals. 

Literacy

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

• Spelling: Students will learn about the different sounds vowels can make when followed by a LL e.g. pull, troll, ball. 
• Writing: Students will be creating pieces of writing using a combination of simple and compound sentences. Additionally, they will be using mentor texts to guide their writing. 
• Reading: We will be looking at mentor texts to identify the parts of a simple sentence; a subject, verb and object. Students will also be identifying different types of sentences in a text; such as, simple and compound sentences. 

Maths

Students will continue to look at sharing (division) and multiplying in the following weeks. In addition to this, they will be practicing their problem-solving skills. 

Inquiry

For our Science unit, students will be exploring how materials can change. To help support their learning and continue their enthusiasm for learning, the Year 1’s will participate in a Science Incursion.

Homework

• Keep practicing spelling and reading the memory words that were sent 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, these tasks have been updated for Term 3. Please find below.  

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2: Week 3 & 4

What will be happening over the next two weeks in Year 2

The Year 2 teachers are VERY excited for the next two weeks of learning at BPS. Over the next two weeks there will be a focus on the Paris Olympics, our very own Potato Olympics and LOTS of experiments to link to our Inquiry unit of Design and Technologies. 

Wellbeing

During the next two weeks of the term the students will be focusing on strategies to support them in handling situations that may be found stressful.

Reading

The Year 2 students will be meeting an author during Book Week. The author the students will be meeting is an author whose work we have been reading throughout the term! In the classroom the students will be focusing on working on their fluency through practising choral reading with their classmates and teachers. Students will also be working on their ability to infer and support with evidence.

Writing

Over the next two weeks the Year 2 cohort will be writing about the various experiments that take place throughout week 3. Students will also write about the Potato Olympics taking place in each classroom. FUN! FUN! FUN!

Maths

Students will continue exploring the concepts of multiplication and division. Students will explore the vocabulary of the two concepts. Students will build on their learning from Term 2, as they explore multiplication as being the concept of being repeated addition and division as repeated subtraction. Students will also be making connections to various other mathematical concepts such as measurement as they engage in the Potato Olympics.

Inquiry

Throughout Term 3 the Year 2 cohort will be focusing on Design and Technologies as their unit of Inquiry. The Big Question for the unit of Inquiry is: How do forces create movement in our daily lives? 

Over the next two weeks students will be completing lots of different experiments and will begin designing their Arcade Games. 

Reminders

Reading Rockets/ Take Home Readers

The Reading Rockets program will continue in Term 3. The Year 2 teachers will continue to check reading diaries on a Monday morning and will be adding to the Reading Rockets tally in the classrooms. 

The Homework Rubric with optional additional tasks has been updated for Term 3. Please find this below.

Potato Olympics- taking place in WK 4

Each student is asked to bring in a potato next Monday so they can participate in our very own exciting BPS Potato Olympics.

BPS Olympics- Friday 9th August

On Friday 9 August students will be participating in the BPS Olympics. Each student has been randomly allocated a country. On this day students are asked to wear the colour of this country. Students will be participating in an opening ceremony with their allocated country. Following the opening ceremony the students will be participating in several different activities as a Year 2 cohort.

Year 3

What’s Happening in Year 3: Term 3 Week 3 & 4

What’s been happening in Year 3

The BPS Year 3 Potato Olympics have officially begun! Our spuds have begun their long-awaited quest to find the champion potato to rule them all!

We had an amazing incursion last week about the different ways we can start a garden. We learned about sustainable garden practices and created our own wicking pot that waters itself! Over the next few weeks, we will be observing the plant growth in our pots and applying the learning to our inquiry summative task.

What will be happening over the next two weeks in Year 3

Wellbeing

• How to maintain a positive and growth mindset
• Recognising and celebrating character strengths
• Strengthening our existing relationships and building a supportive team environment within our classroom and in the yard through small groups, whole class and whole year level activities.

Reading

• Identifying and understanding how authors and illustrators engage their readers.
• Identifying the features and purpose of persuasive texts.

Writing

• We are publishing our plant information texts filled with accurate facts and informative diagrams, connecting our inquiry learning with writing.
• We are exploring contractions e.g. Wasn’t = wasn’t. We’re understanding what contractions are and how an apostrophe is used to signal a missing letter.
• We continue to reinforce the importance of punctuation in our writing.

Maths

• The Potato Olympics is giving us the opportunity to do hands-on activities exploring several areas of measurement including time, length and mass. 
• We continue to practice and learn our multiplication facts, utilising strategies such as double and skip counting to solve them along with connecting them to the related division facts

Inquiry – Design and Technology

Big Question: 

How might we design a community park that is sustainable, inclusive and reflects Indigenous perspectives?

During the next two weeks, the students will be learning about native and Indigenous plants. We will be exploring the significance of native plants to Indigenous people and their culture.  

Homework

Students are asked to continue to read every night and to complete Mathletics tasks set by classroom teachers. Students have optional activities to complete from the Homework Rubric. The tasks on this have been updated for Term 3, the updated rubric is in student's homework books and please also find a copy below.

Reminders

Diaries are expected to come to school every day with their reading recorded and ready to be checked by the teacher. We are keeping a tally of individual reading and as a class to hopefully win the prize of a pizza lunch!

Please see the details for our upcoming excursion to CERES via the Compass event, happening in Week 6.  

Olympics Day Friday 9th August - Dress in your country’s colours 

Scholastics Book Fair Monday 12th August

Location: Middle of SALC Morning sales will occur between 8:30am and 9:00am Monday 12th – Thursday 15th 

Book Week Dress Up Wednesday 21st August - Dress as your favourite book/book character

Ceres Excursion Friday 23rd August - Make sure you have given permission and payment via the Compass event

Father’s Day Stall Wednesday 28th August - More details TBC

Father’s Day Breakfast & Footy Day Friday 30th August - More details TBC 

Friendship Lunch Thursday 5th September - More details TBC 

Open Classroom Friday 6th September - More details TBC 

Last Day of Term Friday 20th September - 2:30pm Early Dismissal

Year 4

What’s Happening in Year 4: Weeks 3 and 4

What’s been happening in Year 4

The Year 4 students have been off to a racing start with Friday Athletics training. In weeks 3 and 4, they have been learning new skills in shotput, hurdles, long jump, discuss and running. This is in preparation for our Year 4 – 6 House Athletics Carnival, which will be held in week 5 (Tuesday 13th August). We have also been celebrating the Olympics at school. Your child will have received a country. They have been participating in weekly meetings, with a variety of different students from varying year levels, to learn about their Olympics country and the cultural beliefs, sites and traditions within their allocated country. On Friday 9th August, your child has been invited to wear their team colours, or any creative form of dress-up, to celebrate their country and participate in our Beaumaris Primary Opening Ceremony. Many of our Year 4 students have been preparing a special Parisian style can-can dance to perform at our opening ceremony. 

What will be happening for Weeks 3 and 4

Wellbeing

• Focusing on how our differences make us who we are
• Goal setting for Term 3
• Working on school values of Resilience, Relationships, Respect and Responsibility

Reading

• Whole class reading and building vocabulary 
• Focus on fluency through a range of whole, paired and independent activities
• Analysis of characters and themes in stories using the class novel “Nim's Island”
• Silent reading personal choice book

Writing

• Learning the conventions of dialogue
• Correcting run-on sentences in writing
• Punctuation; full stops, capital letters
• Using verb groups to enhance our writing
• Focusing on the prefix ‘un’

Maths

• Exploring multiplication facts
• Exploring division facts
• Looking at factors and multiples
• Evaluating prime and composite numbers

Inquiry

Big Question: How does our Earth change?

We will be exploring:

• How are the Earth, Sun and Moon connected?
• What causes day and night, and the four seasons?
• What is the Earth’s surface and how does it change?
• How do cause and effect relationships affect the way the Earth works?
• How do human actions impact the Earth’s surface?

Homework

Homework consists of 20 minutes reading a night, 3- 4 Mathletics tasks to reinforce the concepts being taught at school, and an optional rubric of activities to be completed at your family’s discretion. The tasks on this rubric have been updated, please find this below. Diaries will be collected every Friday. 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

• 09/08 - School Olympics Day
• 13/08 - House Athletics Carnival

Library Days:

• Monday – 4R 
• Thursday – 4B, 4L

Year 5

What will be Happening in Year 5: Weeks 3 and 4

What will be happening in Weeks 3 and 4 in Year 5

What a busy 2 weeks we’ve had in Year 5! We have hit the ground running and have no sign of slowing down for the rest of the term. The students enjoyed the excursion to Science Works, the wide variety of areas of science and technology has inspired the students and engaged them in the Science Inquiry Unit. 

The Year 5 students are excited about the Olympics and are tracking the medal tallies daily and mapping and graphing the results. The students are looking forward to the final catch up with their Olympic Day countrymen on Friday 2nd August, and are excited to participate in the Olympic Day festivities on Friday 9th August, Week 4. Just a reminder that students will dress up in their designated country colours on Olympic Day.

House Athletics training is in full swing, and the students are enjoying learning and practicing all the events in readiness for the House Athletics Day on Tuesday 13th August, Week 5. Athletics training is on Friday mornings. Please talk to your child about dressing warmly as the mornings are very cold and not all events are physical.

Congratulations to the Hockey team and Mrs. Robinson for advancing to the Regional Finals. Good luck!

Wellbeing

• Students 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 Earth and Space Science curriculum. 
•  Students will study the features of an imaginative podcast through the study of our mentor podcast ‘Macaroy Uncovered’ by ABC.
• Students will develop and explain a point of view about a text.  
• Students will spell words with common letter patterns but different pronunciations.

Maths

• Students will use mathematical mental and written strategies to solve multiplication problems.
• Use all four operations with decimals.
• Perform transformations.
• Describe the results of transformations.
• Identify any symmetries.

Science 

Chemistry 

• What is matter? 
• What is the difference between solids, liquids and gases? 
• Why do materials behave the way they do? 
• What causes changes to matter? 

Earth and Space 

• What makes up the solar system? 
• Why is the sun so important?

Homework

An updated Year 5&6 Homework Rubric is attached below. It is also linked to your child’s class Microsoft Team.

Students are expected to be reading every night and completing assigned Mathletics activities over the fortnight.

Reminders

9th August Olympic Day

13th August House Athletics

12th-16th August Book Fair

Year 6

What’s Happening in Year 6: Weeks 3 & 4

It has been a busy start to Term 3 with students already rehearsing for our upcoming production, an incursion for our Science inquiry, and various division sports taking place. The Year 6 students also had a wonderful time celebrating the Prep students’ 100 days of school. We are now busily preparing for the Olympics Day in week 4.

What will be happening in Week 3 and 4  in Year 6

Week 4 sees us celebrate Olympic Day on Friday the 9th of August. Students are encouraged to wear their assigned country’s colours for the day. Rehearsals shall continue on Tuesday afternoons although we request students bring scripts in every day for rehearsal purposes.

Wellbeing

• We are exploring the impacts of gender stereotypes on individuals and the way we interact with others based on their gender. 

Literacy

• Spelling – Latin bases <ject> 
• Classes will be continuing to read Us Mob Walawurru, students will be engaging in accountable independent reading, paired and small group reading and listening to teacher read aloud. 
• Sentence level writing – using subordinating conjunctions in complex sentences.
• Students will be building on their knowledge of the preservation of Indigenous culture including Dreamtime stories and familial structure to finish writing and publish their explanation piece. 

Maths

• Students will be revising the connection between fractions, decimals and percentages and applying this knowledge to find percentages of different amounts.
• Students will be working with different units of measurement, connecting to decimal numbers and converting between different units of measurement.

Inquiry

• Big Question: How is energy generated and transferred and how can we generate electricity in sustainable ways?
• What are the different forms of energy?
• How is energy transferred and transformed?

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 August 9th. Students are also able to select a task from the Homework Rubric, these are optional. These tasks have been updated for Term 3, please also find a copy below.

Reminders

Week 4

Friday 9th August – Olympics Day