What we’ve been up to:

Our class has been very eager to do a Kris Kringle together this year. This week we drew names out of a basket and students were encouraged to make something for their Kris Kringle. We will be swapping these gifts on the second last day of school (19th of December).

We have been super busy over the last two weeks with transition mornings in our new classes, visiting the Book Fair, and building our board games as part of our integrated project. Transition mornings have given students a wonderful chance to get a feel for their new learning spaces, meet their future teachers, and begin forming connections with classmates. It’s been lovely to see their confidence grow as they explore what next year has in store.

Our visit to the Book Fair added even more excitement to the fortnight. Students browsed an amazing range of books, chatted eagerly about their favourite genres, and made thoughtful choices about what they might like to read next.

Meanwhile, our integrated project has been in full swing as students designed and built their own board games. From planning themes and rules to crafting creative game pieces and testing out their prototypes with friends, the process has been filled with imagination, problem-solving, and lots of collaboration.

Maths

Over the past fortnight in Mathematics we’ve been focusing on how to solve multi-step worded problems. Students have practised highlighting the numbers in the problem and the operations they’ll need to use in order to solve them. For example, ‘Sal works as a vet for 3 hours a day, 2 days a week. She treats 4 animals every hour. How many animals does Sal treat in one week?’. Students identified the important information (3 hours a day, 2 days a week, 4 animals every hour, and one week) and explored solving the problem using tables and drawings.

We also explored equivalent fractions and how they connect to decimals and percentages. Students learned that fractions can be represented in different but equal forms (for example, 1/2 is the same as 2/4), and they practised finding and creating these equivalents using visual models and number patterns. We also looked at how fractions link to decimals and percentages - for instance, understanding that 1/4 equals 0.25 and 25%. This helped students see that these three representations are simply different ways of describing the same value.

Literacy

Over the past fortnight, students have engaged in researching famous Australian inventors, inspired by our inquiry focus on innovation and design. Students explored famous inventions and their creators, considering the impact these innovations have had in Australia and globally. Using our guiding research questions, students investigated:

What was the initial problem?
Were there any challenges that arose during the design process?
What makes the invention unique compared to existing solutions?
How does the invention benefit people or solve the identified problem?

Students planned their ideas carefully and have now moved into the creation stage, designing informative and visually engaging posters to showcase their findings.

In writing, students have continued to use the wordless picture books Chalk, The Lion and the Mouse and Goodnight Gorilla to create, revise, and publish their own imaginative narratives.

Our phoneme program continues to strengthen students’ spelling knowledge. Alongside targeted phoneme work last week, this fortnight we have explored the ‘k’ and ‘oy’ phoneme families. Through active literacy games, spelling menu tasks, dictation, diacritical marking and collecting new vocabulary, students are becoming increasingly confident and accurate spellers.

This fortnight we had three of our students (Ivy, Mia and Amaliyah) attend the Walk Against Family Violence in the city. They were joined by the Rainbow Club and they helped make a banner in preparation for the walk. They also worked with Anna, our Wellbeing coordinator, to create resources for the ‘16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence’, that were shared throughout TPS.

“It was really hot and hard going on the walk, but it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed having the picnic with my friends at the end of the walk and the train ride back. I loved seeing all the accessories and posters that people were wearing to the march” Ivy M

“It felt very supportive of all the people who have experienced violence and I really liked some of the kids' posters. One said, ‘Love Shouldn’t Hurt’. It reminded me of all the people who have experienced the breaking of their boundaries of safety. The train ride was really fun too” Mia

What’s coming up:

Summer Seasons Farewell: Friday 5th December
In our unit focus, students will be finalising their games and sharing their designs with others.
In Maths, we will be working on our partitioning skills to 10,000.

Things families can talk about at home:

Wearing sun smart hats during play time.
Simple machines.
How to give effective constructive feedback.

Here are some photos that didn't make the last issue:

Prep / 1 Steiner