What's happening in our learning spaces? 

FOUNDATION 

As we continue to creep closer and closer towards the end of the year, we are still counting how many days we have been in Foundation…we are practising counting by 2s, 5s and 10s and reading numbers well into the hundreds! 

Over the last few weeks in Inquiry, we have been learning about the special places in our community. As inquiries, we went on an adventure around our beautiful community to discover the different places and looking at all the different plants and animals that live and grow around us. We had lots of fun on our excursion and now we are bringing back our new knowledge into the learning space. As thinkers, we recreated a map of where we went for our walk and located special places like St Fidelis, John Fawkner Hospital, Nonna and Nonno’s houses and even Mr Frazzetto’s dads house! 

On Monday 13th November, we celebrated World Kindness Day across the school to emphasise the importance of positive actions in the community. As readers we read the story “Be Kind” by Pat Zietlow Miller and understood that we are all different and through being kind and showing empathy, we can become closer as a community. We reflected on times we have been kind to others and how we can better our actions of kindness. As writers, we then used the book as inspiration to come up with ways that we can be kind to others at school. We had some wonderful suggestions on how we can be kinder to others at school such as; 

• Help them when they are hurt - Harrison 
• Helping them be happy - Benjamin 
• Giving them a greylead when they don’t have one - Arnold 
• Teaching them if they don’t know what to do - Ruby 
• Saying good afternoon - Lincoln 
• Saying are you alright - Evelyn 
• Using manners like please and thank you - Jude 

On Friday we awarded our Maths Games Day winners their certificates and medals. Well done to the winners Madeline, Benjamin, Anthony and Gabriella! The day was a great success, a BIG thank you to Mrs Monaghan for organising such a fun day for us. 

All our Foundation students should be very proud of their achievements on the day, we are all mathematicians! 

A reminder that Foundation AP will be leading us in Whole School Prayer this Friday 24th November at 9am in the Hall. 

Have a great week everyone! 

Thank you, 

Leanne and Alex 

FoundationTeam

YEAR 1/2

It has been yet another busy and exciting week in the Year 1/2 learning spaces! We have been engaging in so many fun and wonderful learning opportunities as we head towards the end of the year. 

As learners, we revisited Procedural writing and made connections to the mathematical concept of Location. We tuned into the language of Location by reading different picture books, such as Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins. As writers, we wrote sentences to describe where Rosie went on her walk. She went through, around and past different things on her farm. After we had unpacked some of the positional and directional language, as readers and mathematicians, we began exploring simple maps and identified some of the features and locations. We then put our writing skills to work, by recording instructions for a friend to get from one place on the map, to another. As thinkers, we made sure to number our steps, include positional language, such as forwards, straight, turn left and turn right, and include sequencing words. Next week, we will follow our peers' directions! 

As inquirers, we observed pictures of the Great Barrier Reef and shared our first thoughts, wonderings and observations. As communicators, we discussed what we already knew about this special place and if it is natural or man-made. We looked closely at more pictures to identify some of the changes over time and its impact on creation. We then used our skills as researchers, to be resourceful and find out about the Great Barrier Reef. Some of us watched videos and explored Kiddle to find new information, whilst others used non-fiction texts such as fact sheets, books, powerpoints and information reports. As thinkers, we began sorting out our discoveries using a data chart to record the features, changes and threats, as well as what makes it special and how we can care for it for future generations. 

As members of a faith learning community, we continued to unpack Creation through the notion of Stewardship. We read the scripture story about The Good Samaritan and unpacked what events of the story. We connected the characters actions to Stewardship and discussed how this did and did not demonstrate being a Steward of God.  As thinkers, we recontextualised this for students by considering modern scenarios that are similar, such as seeing a person littering, seeing an elderly person in need of some help or a peer hurt in the yard. We shared what we would do as Stewards of God. 

We look forward to another week in 1/2, as the countdown towards the end of the year begins!

1/2 Team, 

Alycia Marsico, Vania Sparano and Vicky Karalis 

YEAR 3/4

As writers, we have been innovating on texts by experimenting with sentence structure and layout. We have brainstormed all the ideas we can see and notice in the images from different picture books with the text removed. We then began to innovate on the text by creating our own excerpt of a factual narrative using a page as inspiration. We had a great time innovating our own pages of picture story books, students then used their chromebooks to publish their page using the image of the book. 

As inquirers, we began to identify what environmental challenge we would like to research. As researchers, we were able to explore websites and videos that were provided to us to find out more information about this challenge. We then identified the positive and negative impacts this challenge has on the world.

As mathematical thinkers, we are learning to identify and represent fractions in different ways. We looked at some images and recorded the fraction, trying to understand the role of the numerator and denominator. Some of us engaged in the Decimat Game, this is where we rolled a fraction dice to identify the decimal number. We then had to shade the decimat by rolling the correct numbers.

Unfortunately our Maths games day has been changed to Wednesday 29th November (Week 9). We would love for you to join us on this day. There will be three sessions, please email or let us know if you are able to attend any of these sessions. 

Just a reminder of the Important dates for Year 3/4 in Term 4

We hope you have a wonderful week!

Year 3/4 Teachers

Belinda Panzarino & Bianka Zorzut

YEAR 5/6

Another busy and exciting week in the SLA, with the end of term (and the school year) getting closer, we have had a lot going on! Christmas Carols practise is well underway and the Year 6's are getting very excited as we prepare them for Graduation.

In Literacy, students have been exploring the comprehension skills of summarising, inferencing and finding the main message using a variety of picture books. Students began this task in pairs. This provided the students to talk aloud about a text they have read which is an important skill to practise and it allows us to see whether our students have a good understanding of the text they are reading. In Writing, the students began planning and writing pages for their yearbook. The Year 6 students are looking forward to receiving these yearbooks at the end of the year and they had a lot of fun this week gathering interesting information about themselves and their classmates. While the Year 5 students have been writing information about themselves in Grade 5 to go in their yearbook for next year.

In Numeracy, the 5/6 students began the topic of Time. We began by revising the features of an analogue clock and the correct reading on an analogue clock to the nearest minute. We then examined digital time, both on a 12 hour and 24 hour clock. The students worked on converting time between a 12 hour and 24 hour clock. The students then began investigating how to calculate elapsed time using a few different strategies. We will continue developing this skill this week along with examining and solving problems surrounding timetables.

In Inquiry, the students are continuing our research project which involves comparing two real-life examples of a natural disaster that has affected two different regions. We are coming across some interesting findings as we continue this research.

We are looking forward to our Year 5/6 Maths games day which takes place this Thursday, 23rd November. A big thank you to Ms. Monaghan who has organised this fun day which allows students to develop their mathematical thinking to engage in and complete team based activities. No doubt it is going to be a fantastic day of lots of learning and fun!

Have a wonderful week!

5/6 Teaching Team