From the classroom

Numeracy 

What can you do for your child’s maths at home?

Many parents want to know what they can be doing for their children at home to improve their mathematical understanding. Having conversations with your child about what they are doing in Maths and being creative with the way that you can include maths into their everyday lives can help them enjoy maths more and improve their mathematical understanding. Here are some examples of what you can do at home:

• Cut your child’s toast or bread into different shapes and have them identify the shapes.
• Measure ingredients for cooking.
• Give your child change to count out to pay for small purchases at the store; have older children calculate the change.
• Ask your child to compare prices of items by asking things like, “Which can of beans costs more?” By how much?
• Read the days and dates on a calendar, talk about the number of days in the month, the number of days remaining until a special event, etc.
• Watch the weather report for a week, write down the temperatures for each day, and then graph the temperatures.
• Compare the temperature of Rochester to a place a relative lives or a place that you are going to for holidays? How much hotter or colder is Rochester than the other place?
• Encourage your child to teach you a card or dice game that they have learned at school and play this game with them.

Spelling Prep - 6

Across the school we are trialling a new aproach to spelling. This change has come about in response to data collected showing that this is an area we can improve on. Over the past term we have been investigating what other schools implement, different approaches and strategies to teaching spelling. We have combined this reseach with researched evidence to great a Scope and Sequence of spelling as well as how it will be taught within our school. Teachers are currently trialling parts of the progam so we can tweak it and have it ready to go in 2024. This may mean some children may not be coming home with spelling words and others will be. Once we have finalised the program we will ensure parents and carers are aware of the students requirements at home and how you can help. 

Grade 1/2 News

This term our Inquiry Unit in Grade P/1/2 is Toys. As part of our unit last week, we looked at toys from the past. We played games that were played in the past and are some are still played today at school. We discovered that the materials they were made from had changed. Skipping rope were made from twine, stilts were old fruit cans and jacks were bones from sheep. 

Here are some of our thoughts……

"I think the games were really fun and we had to be careful not to break them." Alva

"The games were fun because they were old and special." Evie

"I think the games were fun to play because you got to experience the olden days." Peyton

"Marbles were my favourite. It was a little bit hard but I got the hang of it." Malakai