News from our Specialists

STEM

With our focus on Digital Technologies this term, the whole school have been practicing coding on either the ScratchJr app or on Scratch.mit.edu. The 5/6's have started adding variables to track time/scores. The 3/4's have been refining their movement controls. The 1/2's are practicing using messages to have one character set off another character's movement. And Foundation experimented with "repeat forever" and "nested repeat" blocks to enhance their programs.

Foundation to Year 2 families, if you have an iPad with the ScratchJr app, I encourage you to get your children to show off their skills. Years 3-6 families, your children have unique logins on the Scratch website where they can showcase their work. They are all so creative in how they practice and embed their knowledge during class time.

Mandarin 

This term, our Foundation students have begun their new topic on Fruit. We have been learning fruit names through songs, picture cards, and fun matching games. So far, students have learned seven different fruits, including watermelon, peach, and strawberry. 

In addition to learning new vocabulary, students are now practising how to express different degrees of preference, such as I like, I don’t like, I really like, and I really don’t like. We are also building simple sentences by combining the fruit words with the family vocabulary they learned earlier this year. Soon, students will enjoy singing The Fruit Song and a festive version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” to celebrate the season while continuing their learning.