Classroom & Curriculum News

Through Learning We Discover God

1/2 Update

It has been a very busy month in Year 1/2. From starting our days with a range of positive primers, to brainstorming adjectives to help us create fascinating fables, there has been plenty of rich learning taking place. Alongside this, students have enjoyed our recent excursion and have been working hard throughout our addition and subtraction unit. You can read more about all of this learning below or over on the Kids for Kids page.

1/2 discovering Aesop's Fables in Language and Literature

Year 1/2 have enjoyed exploring Aesop’s fables, short stories often featuring animals that teach important moral lessons.

We have focused on identifying the moral of each story while building vocabulary and comprehension skills. Students have responded through discussions, creative activities and writing tasks. Some of the fables we have explored include The Crow and the Fox, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Tortoise and the Hare and The Rooster, the Fox and the Dog.

Through these stories, students have learned vocabulary such as flatter, foolish, proud, greedy, moral and wise. Our discussions have also helped students make connections to the stories Jesus taught as He journeyed toward the cross. By reflecting on characters’ choices and consequences, students are beginning to think more deeply about how they can act as disciples in their daily lives while strengthening our classroom values of being Respectful, Responsible, Safe and Ready.

See more on the Kids for Kids page!

Palm Sunday

1/2 learned about Palm Sunday and why it is an important part of Holy Week. We explored how Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was welcomed by the crowd waving palm branches and calling out “Hosanna”.

Students showed their understanding through discussion, drawing and simple written responses. This learning helped students begin to understand the events leading up to Easter and the significance of Jesus’ journey to the cross.

1/2RS Welcome Paddington Bear into our classroom for a week

One of our classmates, Neo, kindly shared her beautiful Paddington Bear with us for a week or two while we read some of Paddington’s stories. During this time, the students wrote postcards to the Brown family describing Paddington’s adventures in our classroom. This was a fun and creative opportunity for students to write about the humorous activities of this well-known character.

St Patrick's Day greens

1/2RS loved celebrating St Patrick’s Day in our classroom. We began our day by learning how to say “good morning” in Irish – Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig. While our accents may not have been perfect, we had lots of fun giving it a go!

Next, we tried Irish dancing as part of our Positive Primer. We quickly discovered it was much more challenging than we expected, but we enjoyed the experience and had a great time laughing together.

Mrs Re brought in a baby watermelon as a green-themed treat for the staffroom, and the students decided it would be much more fun to decorate it first!

Throughout the rest of the day, we enjoyed listening to stories from Ireland and loved dressing in green to celebrate together.

1/2 Easter hats

In year 1/2 we love any chance to dress up and show off, so the Easter Hat parade was a perfect opportunity to do this before the term ended. Thank you to all our parents who spent some much time creating the children's wonderful bonnets. We appreciate all you do to make these occassions so much fun.

Prep M

The Prep students have been working so hard the past couple of weeks building on a range of learning tasks.

The Prep students have been developing their skills in recognising numerals and matching them to corresponding quantities. As part of an engaging assessment task, they took part in a beachside-themed treasure hunt, exploring both the classroom and the undercover area to find and identify groups of objects.

Catholic Education Week: St Patrick's Mass

On Friday 20th March, the Year 6 Leaders (School Captains, Vice Captains and Wellbeing Leaders) were amongst thousands of Primary and Secondary students gathered together at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne for the annual Mass to celebrate Catholic Education Week and Feast of St Patrick.

This year’s theme draws from Saint Patrick, ‘Christ beside me: Walking in the footsteps of St Patrick’.

Lead by Archbishop Peter Comensoli, the celebration brought together schools across Victoria in a shared expression of faith, tradition and connection.

Year 3/4 News

Wow - what a term we have had! We have had a very successful Term 1 in Year 3/4, and it has been amazing to see the growth in students’ self-confidence as the term has progressed. We are extremely proud of the efforts and focus shown by the Year 3 students while completing NAPLAN this term.

In Numeracy, we finished the term learning about addition and subtraction, time, and 2D shapes. As part of our unit on time, students used the iPads to estimate and time what could be done in one minute. We also explored how to calculate the number of straight sides, curved sides and vertices a two-dimensional shape has, and how to identify common shapes that form composite shapes. See photos of the fun they had during these sessions!

We also started our Word Origins Spelling Program, and it has been wonderful to see the students engage in each lesson and begin to understand where words come from and how they are built, rather than just memorising spelling words. Through this program, we will explore:

• Prefixes (beginnings of words) such as dis-, re-, pro-

• Suffixes (endings of words) such as -ful, -less, -or

• Base/root words and how they change when parts are added

• Word meanings and how spelling connects to meaning

This program will help students develop stronger spelling skills, improved reading skills, expanded vocabulary and greater confidence in their writing. As we continue this into Term 2 and throughout the remainder of the year, we are excited to see students grow as confident readers, writers and spellers.

We have also really enjoyed taking part in the Stephanie Alexander Program with Mrs Re! Students have learnt many skills that they can continue using at home - both in the kitchen and in the garden.

With the Sacrament of Reconciliation now completed, next term we will begin learning about the Sacrament of the First Eucharist to help prepare students who will be making this very special Sacrament.

In Writing, we revised our understanding of apostrophes for contractions and explored how verbs can be changed to match the subject and tense. We also learnt how to upgrade action and speaking verbs, and how to expand sentences using two or more adjectives to make our writing more engaging. Students also completed a grammar escape room.

There was also some excitement in 3/4L - a pigeon flew into the classroom, and Miss L caught it with her hands! We all got to gently touch it before setting it free - see the photos below! Thanks Oslo & family for allowing 3/4L to borrow a surfboard for our class this year to match our theme. We loved the opportunity to stand on it!

We thank you all for your continued support throughout this term and wish you all a lovely and safe Easter break.

Clare & Natalie