School News 

Prep

On Thursday 2nd May, the Prep students ventured off to Melbourne Zoo for a day of exploration and fun. The annual Zoo excursion is always a highlight for our Prep students and has become an annual tradition that the teachers look forward to every year. 

All of the students were very excited to journey to the Zoo on a ‘big bus’. We were very proud of the safe and considerate behaviours that our students demonstrated during the rides both to and from the Zoo. Both of our lovely bus drivers wanted to pass on to our families that it was a pleasure transporting our students and that they were so impressed with how well mannered they all were. Well done Preps!

Once we were at the Zoo, we enjoyed coming together in our special meeting spot to enjoy some morning tea and be sorted into our tour groups. Each group had a focus animal that they had to complete a small activity pack for. It was heartening to read the information that the students had collected with their groups and it was apparent that they really enjoyed learning lots of new facts. 

Some of the animals that were favourites were: snow leopard, lions, elephants, meerkats, tiger, seals and the very sleepy koalas. The butterfly house was also a hit with the students, however it was very apparent that Mrs. Harrison didn’t enjoy the butterflies quite so much! Some lucky groups also got to venture off to see some dinosaurs! 

We would like to thank the parent helpers who came along on the day to be a support to our students, as well as the education support staff who helped co-ordinate the day. 

Please enjoy some photos from our day!

The Prep Team

Allie Harrison, Kayla Hartrick, Elyce Munnecke and Laina Brebner

Grade 1 & 2

What an amazing 5 weeks of term so far!

Let’s have a look back at the wonderful learning and growth we have done, here are some highlights from our week...

The Earth Crusaders incursion was interesting and full of sustainable facts. Did you know, cotton comes from a plant and can decompose between 1-5 months? Did you know, plastic takes hundreds to millions of years to break down but if recycled properly we can turn it into toys, coat hangers or even playgrounds? We have learnt a lot of sustainability within our community, please ask us about it if you would like to know more. 

In Reading and Writing, we have been exploring procedural text and the features that are within. We have been working super hard to identify and use verbs and adverbs in our procedures. 

In Maths, we have been learning about days, months, seasons, and calendars. We have used music, games, group work and discussions to explore it all. 

In Wellbeing and Friendology we have been exploring what respect looks like, feels like and sounds like. In Grade 2, we have created a 'friend’o’meter' to support our friendship fires and our 'talk it out' strategy. 

As a class we have been reading lots of books and have added them to the Victorian Reading Challenge. We hope you have been enjoying the reading at home too!

Please enjoy some snap shots of our week. 

The Level 1/2 Team

Llinos Poole, Sally Newton, Tim Huntington, Emma Wright and Veronica Paps

Grade 3 & 4

We are flying through Term 2 – already 5 weeks down! The Level 3/4 students have been learning all sorts of wonderful things over the past fortnight. The students have worked extremely hard with completing the four learning tasks for Term 2.

In Reading, our focus has been on reading with fluency and expression – and reading texts the way the author intended. The students participated in a number of reading tasks - including recording themselves reading and self-evaluating with certain criteria, partner reading with peer feedback and a ‘Reading Theatre’, which they loved! We have been reading Dreamtime stories this week, making connections and comparing different stories with a focus on language, characters and finding the moral in the story. 

In Writing, the students planned, drafted and published their Information Reports. The learning task had them choose one of their paragraphs to ‘bump up’. This involved the student proof-reading and editing their writing to try and change/replace words, and improve the paragraph of writing. This was completed online with the use of technology to show the changes made. This week we have been learning about ‘Tightening Tension’ in our narrative writing using the ‘Pebble, Rock, Boulder’ strategy. 

In Maths, we have learnt about geometry, using translations, rotations and reflections (Flips/Slides/Turns). With this knowledge, the students created fun and creative tessellations which included some awesome designs. This week mapping has been our topic and we participated in an outdoor scavenger hunt, where the kids were asked to read instructions, use maps and find clues (and solve Maths problems!) to try and crack the code! So much fun!

In Inquiry, we completed our Learning Task on living things – which included researching a chosen life cycle and comparing it to that of a butterfly.

In Science, we have continued learning about ‘Heat’ in our Physical Sciences unit of work. Students have learnt about different heat sources, such as Electrical, Chemical and Kinetic. They have made thermometers to measure heat and completed an experiment into kinetic energy. 

The Level 3/4 Team

Hayley Peirce, Sarah Jones, Damien Smith, Renée Barnden & Brent Smith

Grade 5 & 6

What an exciting time it has been in the 5/6 classrooms. We have had lots going on, with more fun to come.

Reading time has seen students engaging with a range of informative text and using their analysing skills to unpack the authorial purpose of these texts. We have unpacked the parts of speech present and how they can be altered for a different audience or purpose.

Students have taken to our 'Bumping Up' of sentences with great success. They have become more proficient at locating and using appropriate synonyms as well as altering the structure of their sentences to engage their audience. In particular, the Mission Impossible tasks have been a hit. Students were challenged to alter sentences in under 1 minute and they came up with incredible things. For example, rather than ‘The cat sat on the mat,’ we got sentences like:

‘The massive cat aggressively sat on the hard mat.’ – Brodie S.

‘The black and white cat, sat on the extremely fluffy, pink mat while licking its paws.’ – Ria

Instead of ‘I went to the park,’ we got:

‘The dark playground glimmered in the moonlight as my friends and I walked to the swings.’ – Emilia

‘I waltzed around the park glancing left and right, until I found it…The basketball court!’ – Hudson M.

Maths sessions have focussed on applicable concepts such as the conversion of units of measurements. We have used out understanding of multiplication and division to help us solve problems related to centimetres, metres and kilometres as well as working in millilitres and litres. There is a lot of potential there for some mathematical cooking experiences.

Inquiry time has allowed us to keep flexing our mathematical minds while we created and analysed weather data. The students demonstrated an excellent understanding of technology as they use Canva to help them create various graphs and analyse their data. We also investigated extreme weather and created a concise document for the public to use. You can see some examples of all of our hard work below.

The Wellbeing focus has been on identifying the features of healthy friendships. We understand that not every friendship is perfect and always amazing, but we are learning to identify what we need in our friends and how we can spot, and hold on to, those healthy friendships.

Keep your eyes on Compass for more news about what’s coming up.

The Level 5/6 Team

Sam Younes, Mykaela Oakley, Megan Pepprell, Brendan Van Haaster, Alarna Creed and Ashleigh Wilson.