School News

Prep

Learning Adventures – What We’ve Been Up To!

We’ve had an exciting and busy time in Prep recently, exploring lots of new concepts and having hands-on learning fun! Here’s a little snapshot of what your children have been discovering this term:

Reading:

Our focus has been on non-fiction texts and the special features that make these texts unique. The preps have been learning how to identify facts, headings, pictures, and labels that help us understand real-world information better.

Writing:

We started learning how to write information reports! We began by gathering interesting facts about animals and putting them together into simple reports. The children are practicing writing clear and informative sentences, just like real researchers.

Maths:

Our maths lessons have been full of data fun! The preps have been learning about tally marks, how to collect data, and how to represent that data using bar graphs. We’ve also practiced interpreting these graphs to answer questions, building important skills in understanding information visually.

Investigations:

Our new investigation spaces are a hit! The children have been exploring four dramatic play areas: the Zoo, Vet, Supermarket, and Bank. These imaginative spaces help them practice social skills, problem solving, and creativity. We’ve also enjoyed fine motor activities such as sewing, crafts, and sensory play to build hand strength and coordination.

Quantum Excursion: We had an amazing trip to Quantum, where we explored our five senses! The children had hands-on experiences discovering how our ears, tongue, eyes, hands, and nose help us understand the world around us. It was fantastic to see their curiosity and excitement as they learned through play and exploration.

Reminders:

Term 4 is hat season
It is getting hot, please ensure your child has a drink bottle
7th of November is the Colour Run
Yoyos are for sale as per the notice sent home in regard to NED Resilience

Kindest regards,

The Prep Team

Laina Brebner, Kayla Hartrick and Emma Wright

Grade 1

What a fantastic start we’ve had to our final term in Grade 1! From practising strategies to monitor our reading, to writing our own persuasive pieces, surveying our peers, and drawing graphs – we’ve been busy learning and having fun along the way.

The two standout highlights have undoubtedly been exploring our new investigation spaces and the much-anticipated Level 1 Fun Night!

This term, our inquiry focus is Creativity. We’ve designed our investigation spaces with this theme in mind, guided not only by the curriculum but also by student voice. Already, students have loved immersing themselves in a variety of imaginative and hands-on experiences. From visiting the Aquarium, reading the weather, coding robots, and pretending to be astronauts exploring space, to experimenting as scientists, creating art in nature, battling with Pokémon, and making pom poms – the creativity is flowing! And that’s just the beginning. We can’t wait to see the many ways our students’ creative sides continue to shine throughout the term.

Level 1 Fun Night – What a blast!

Last Friday, our students and staff had an amazing time at the Level 1 Fun Night! Students loved the opportunity to mix with their peers while rotating through four exciting activities: robotics, keyring making, mini golf, and a visit to the ice cream van – all before dinner! We then joined the Grade 2s for a delicious pizza dinner followed by a disco, where K-Pop Demon Hunters definitely brought the energy and got nearly everyone up on the dance floor!

A huge thank you to our wonderful students for their positive attitudes and exemplary behaviour. You helped make the night fun, smooth, and memorable for everyone involved.

Congratulations to our Shining Stars for Term 3, week 9 and Term 4, week 1 – Dustin, Lucy, Eli, Piper, Noah and Lizzie. Keep shining bright!

Wishing all our families a wonderful weekend.

Kind regards,

The Grade 1 Team

Mel Layton, Sally Newton and Ashleigh Wilson and Tim Huntington

Grade 2

The Grade 2 students have had a fantastic start to Term 4! Here are some of our highlights:

In Reading, the Grade 2 students have been focusing on critiquing authors based on the characters, settings, morals and visual elements. Students have enjoyed a variety of picture story books from Julia Donaldson and Jeanie Baker.

In Writing, students have begun creating persuasive pieces. We have been busy forming our opinions and coming up with arguments to support our beliefs. The students have been focusing on this week about whether Grade 2’s students should have an hour of level sport each week? Students have been using the TEEL structure to write their paragraphs.

In Mathematics, students have started learning about how to collect and record data. They have explored how to ask questions, record responses in a tally and create pictographs and bar graphs. Students have also completed their Maths Learning Task about graphing where they have selected their own question of interest and created a graph to represent their data.

In Wellbeing, students discussed the Rolling Hills value of Support and we chatted about how we can be a good support to our peers, staff and to our community. We have also explored through the Cyber Safety Project how we can regulate our emotions when working online. Students came up with strategies for different situations such as what to do when frustrated during an online game.

Our Grade 2’s also had a wonderful time at the Fun Night and Sleepover! They responsibly set up their mattress and sleeping bag in the afternoon before enjoying a night of minigolf, ice-cream, keyring making and robot coding! The Grade 2’s also enjoyed watching Monsters Inc with some popcorn before bed!

We also went to Mont De Lancey to see how life has changed since the 1800's. Our Grade 2's looked fantastic in their olden day dress. We enjoyed seeing a woodturner, blacksmith and seeing how vehicles have changed. We attended an old-fashioned class where the students wrote on blackboards and then played some fun games with skipping ropes and billy carts. What a great day out!

The Grade 2 Team

Allie Harrison, Sarah Jones and Brendan Van Haaster

Grade 3 & 4

Welcome back for Term 4! It’s been wonderful seeing the students back in the classroom, enjoying seeing their friends again and jumping straight into amazing learning.

In Reading, the children have been revising some conventions, such as the different ways we use apostrophes and commas in our writing. We have also completed some word work with homophones, whilst completing lots of great reading. ‘Homophone and apostrophe hunts’ while reading their good-fit books have kept the students very busy!

In Writing, our kids have begun planning persuasive topics about ‘Things they’re passionate about’! Revising the structure and features of a persuasive text, and language we use, such as modality words, has been a strong focus. This week, they have participated in short, sharp writing tasks about persuasive topics, which included sizzling starts and strong arguments paragraphs.

In Maths, the students have completed 2 weeks of their ‘Data and Statistics’ unit. They have understood the difference between open and closed questions and used these skills to create questions to collect data. Collecting data in frequency tables and beginning to represent this as a graph has been our learning focus this week. Some of the graphs we have learned about and created include pictographs, bar graphs and line graphs. This will allow the students to show their best during next week’s Learning Task!

In Inquiry, we have begun learning about places, people and environments to gain a better understanding of our country, and those around the world. This week, students learned about climate zones and the equator. Ask your child what climate zone we are in here in Melbourne!

Our students thoroughly enjoyed the NED session this week, as there were some great messages about – Never giving up, Encouraging others and Doing your best – a great reminder of how we can show resilience in life! I’m sure they’ll be lots of yo yo’ing across the school over the next few weeks!

Lastly, a reminder that home learning is an expectation for all students in the Grade 3 and 4 area. Spelling words, reading logs and Squizya Maths tasks have been given out and set for Term 4. If you have any concerns or questions relating to home learning tasks, please reach out to your child’s teacher.

Have a lovely weekend!

Kind regards,

The 3/4 Team

Damien Smith, Daena Hailey, Brent Smith, Claire Cripps and Nick Pagliaro

Grade 5 & 6

The Level 5/6 students have made a successful return to school and are fully engaged in activities for a super busy Term 4.

In Reading, we have been analysing and comparing a variety of persuasive texts and thinking about how authors structure their writing and use visuals and persuasive devices to express their point of view.

In Writing, we have been creating some persuasive texts of our own! We have learnt more about objective and subjective language and how we can use quotes and statistics to strengthen our ideas and arguments.

In Maths, we have been learning more about Chance and Probability. We have carried out a number of Chance investigations and recorded our data accurately using fractions, decimals, percentages and probability lines. This week we learnt how to find the mean, median and mode of a data set.

A highlight this week has been watching the Grade 5 students give their leadership speeches. We were all incredibly proud of the effort they put in to prepare their speeches and of the outstanding public speaking skills they displayed.

The Grade 4 and 6 students should also be congratulated for listening so attentively and showing respect for their peers. The students and staff will now vote for the 2026 School Leaders, so watch this space for further announcements!