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Term 4 Week 6

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It has been a busy fortnight in the P-2 area with lots of wonderful learning happening. 

Foundation

The Preps have been learning lots of new sounds: /wh/, /th/, /oo/ and /ay/. They are learning some new tricky words such as down and out as well as tricky words that begin with the /th/ spelling pattern.

Preps have also been learning CVCC words and are going to be introduced to CCVC words this week.

They’ve been enjoying the text, “Wombat Stew,” by Marcia K Vaughan. This story has repetitive text that the children love joining in with: “Wombat Stew, Wombat Stew, gooey brewy, yummy chewy, Wombat Stew!” It’s not recommended that you make this stew at home!

Gr 1

Grade Ones have finished the story, “Dingo,” by Claire Saxby. This text is a narrative text, however, each double page spread has some facts about dingoes included, so the children are learning lots of new information about dingoes. Their next text is “Creatures with Features,” an information text about animals that shuffle, bounce and leap. The new vocabulary for grade ones this week is: scamper, coiled and grip.

Grade One children are continuing their learning about the ‘bossy e’ spelling pattern (split digraph spelling choice) and are practicing spelling words that use this spelling pattern, such as cake, ute and Pete. They are also learning how to use /aw/ and /au/ correctly in words.

Gr 2

Grade Twos have begun revising the content they have covered this year in spelling. They have focused on the long vowel sounds including /oa/ and /ow/ (boat, snow) and /igh/ and /-y/ (high, sky). They are revising the following tricky words: favourite, different, caught, February, women, friend and were. In reading, they have been learning how to Monitor their reading of a text and have learnt some strategies to help them make sure they understand what they are reading. These strategies include: stop and retell, check for understanding, identify any words you don’t understand, read on for meaning or use a dictionary to help with the definition of unknown words.

Grade Twos have started listening to “The 27th Annual African Hippopotamus Race,” by Morris Lurie. They have made their predictions about the text and can’t wait to find out if 8 year old Edward wins this prestigious swimming event or not.

Foundation

In Mathematics, Grade Prep children have been using bundling to represent two-digit numbers. They have also been making 2 digit numbers with materials. They are counting to 100, forwards and backwards and have also been learning about money, with a focus on recognising Australian coins and their value.

Gr 1 

Grade Ones have been learning about time. They are learning that events have a duration and a sequence. They have been ordering events, looking at the days of the week and the months of the year.

Gr 2

Grade Two children have finished their work on bar models and are now working on the topic of fractions. They have learnt that a whole object or collection can be divided into parts but these parts must be equal in order to properly represent fractions. They have learnt about halves, quarters and eighths. They will be learning about equivalent fractions at the end of this week.

Gr 3 and 4

Literacy

Gr 3-4s are well into the novel 'Charlotte's Web' by E.B. White. 

We have again revised the prefixes re- , dis- , 'pre-  and how they change the base word. We have also revised suffixes and focused on -age words eg breakage, spillage, shortage, voltage.

Our vocabulary is taken from the novel 'Charlotte's Web'. We have learned what the following words mean: murmur, wondrous, remarkable, radiant, monotonous and versatile.

We have continued work on the conjunctions as well as independent and dependent clauses. 

During Spelling we revised words containing the /k/ phoneme and when and where you should use each spelling choice eg cat, kitten, sack. We circled back to review when to double the last letter when adding a suffix eg plan - planned, clap - clapping. We have also focused heavily on words with the -age suffix.

We are reviewing sentence types (statement, exclamation, question, command), dependent/independent clauses and simple/compound/complex sentences. Students have also been introduced to predicates.

Work on narrative writing continues. We have completed our introductions, action paragraphs and have begun our problem paragraphs. We have also completed our PAT Reading tests.

Work on 'Multiplication and Division' has finished and we have moved on to Decimals. We are representing and writing tenths and hundredths in decimal format and placing them on number lines. Our next step is writing and ordering numbers to two decimal places. 

Gr 5 and 6

Literacy

In Literacy, we are enjoying our current novel called "The Last Bear" by Hannah Gold. This story is about a lonely girl named April that travels to the Arctic with her scientist father and befriends a polar bear. It focuses on their developing friendship, and April's determination to help the bear, who is stranded and suffering due to the effects of climate change. In connection with this novel, during writing time, students are focusing on persuasive writing and in particular, writing a persuasive letter about the protection of Polar Bears in the Arctic.

During spelling, our focus will be on root words 'clud', 'clus' & 'clos', 'mit' & 'mis' and 'rect'.

In Maths this week we have started our new unit 'Fractions, Decimals & Percentages'. This will run for the next 3 weeks. We are learning about percentage discounts, converting between fractions, decimals & percentages and using real life scenarios to do this!