SCHOOL OF WONDER

Happy middle of the Term!!

It was great to see some families attend the Initialit intro session this week. We are all learning together, and preparing as best we can for the new implementation at the beginning of next year.

Class Structures for the Primary classes in 2025 have been released and these are:

2 x Foundation

2 x Year 1

2 x Year 2

3 x Year 3/4

1 x Year 5

2 x Year 6

As class placements, staffing and learning spaces are confirmed this will be shared. We are working away at all of these and hope to have some further information in due time.

Keep an eye on PAM for any transition information, this is our primary method of communication.

-Emma & Kara, School Leaders

It was wonderful to see so many families gathered at the School of Wonder Assembly yesterday which is a chance to reflect on recent weeks and celebrate the students’ learning as well as looking ahead at what’s on the horizon for the rest of Term 4.

This assembly was led by the Year 1/2 students and each class presented what they had been learning over the past two weeks. A special highlight was the viewing of the Gruffalo video which you can watch below – this was thoroughly enjoyed by families, students and staff in attendance.

We also heard from the incredibly Eco Warriors (some of these students are pictured below) who sign up to help keep the school environment free of rubbish. These students reminded families that it is a good idea to keep lunchboxes as free from rubbish as possible.

The students also heard from Principal Mr Butts who congratulated them on being fantastic learners. Mr Butts commented on how engaged the SOW students are in their learning whenever he pops into class to pay them a visit and thanked students for being so respectful of their learning.

𝙇𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨, 𝙘𝙖𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙖, 𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣!

Nikea's foundation students have created a re-enactment of 'The Gruffalo' by Julia Donaldson. Their Author study focus this week has been Julia Donaldson, students explored a few of her picture story books and the common themes across them.

Students are inquiring into the different ways they can express themselves. 

As part of their author study/ inquiry students re-created The Gruffalo, writing their script and performing the story through a play as a class.

See our future production students in action below:

Foundation students are continuing their inquiry into the different ways we can express ourselves. This week we explored Dr Seuss and his style of writing. We are collaborating in small groups to reenact ‘The Grinch’ through a puppet show.

We read ‘The Lorax’ together. In Religious Education we are learning about caring for God’s creation. We spoke about the Lorax's point of view in the story and how this relates to caring for God’s creation. We wrote about the message of the story from the Lorax’s point of view. 

Dr Seuss is known for his use of rhyme in stories. We have been learning about different onset and rhyme sounds and how we can use this when spelling words.

Year 1/2 students created masquerade masks as part of their Italian studies and participated in a parade on the Turtle Shell to celebrate Carnevale.

The celebration was lots of fun with upbeat music and bursts of colour, getting into the spirit of Carnevale - a huge event in Italy which starts about a month before Ash Wednesday where revelers celebrate across multiple weekends with sweeping parades, elaborate masks and plenty of brightly coloured confetti.

In Religious Education the children have been listening and responding to The Dreamtime stories of the Rainbow Serpent and Tiddalick. They used the mediums of collage and pencil to express their understanding.

We have started our new inquiry learning topic ‘Sharing the Planet’ with a tuning in activity focused on positive and negative choices for the environment.

INQUIRY

This term we have been exploring “Force and Motion” for our inquiry and investigating simple machines. We have done a number of fun experiments where we test concepts such as gravity, magnets, pulleys and friction! We have been able to link this inquiry to our reading focus, where we have been using reading skills to search for new information in a “Force and Motion” text. This has also linked to our writing focus as well - we have been looking into procedural text and writing up steps to our experiments or “how to” make a paper plane.  

RELIGION

During Religious Education students have been learning about the season of  ‘Advent’. Students have learnt that it is the waiting for Jesus’s birth. Purple is the traditional colour used to symbolise this time of year, through table cloths for our prayer table and represented in church. Along with candles of hope, peace, love and our pink candle meaning joy. Students have enjoyed making Advent Calendars and other symbols of Advent such as wreaths, stars, the nativity set, the Jesse tree and the angel. 

Christmas Card Competition

Students have been really engaged during Week 6 to complete a Christmas Card design for our State MP Kim O’Keeffe’s official Christmas Cards. It has been great to see the students use some fantastic ideas and creativity to come up with a design for the cards. There will be a lot of competition for prizes. Great work done by all students!

World Kindness Day

13 November is World Kindness Day. It is dedicated to promoting and celebrating acts of kindness. Some of the Year 3/4 students discussed kindness and different ways people have been kind to them or how they have been kind to others. We made a list of synonyms for kindness and then created a word cloud to reflect this. 

SOW Assembly

Next SOW assembly - Monday week 9 - Kara and Emma to lead w some special helpers.

Arriving at school: drop off for children is from 8:30am. This is when staff are on duty. Prior to this any staff onsite are preparing for the day ahead, duty of care requirements mean children onsite require supervision and doing this takes staff away from their important preparation time.

Collection from school: 3:15pm-3:30pm. This is when the North Yard is staffed. It is our duty of care from 3:30pm to relocate children still onsite into the admin entrance to await collection. After school is not a play time for down ball, sandpit, ball/running games etc. Play after school should only take part with parent/carer supervision.

Statewide Transition Day

The Statewide Transition Day is on Tuesday 10 December, 2024

𝙄𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙖𝙇𝙞𝙩 is a three-year program, covering the first three years of school (Foundation to Year 2) and it is designed to be delivered to whole classes by classroom teachers.

InitiaLit takes a holistic approach to literacy instruction incorporating instruction in systematic synthetic phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. This integrated approach, which addresses each of the Five Big Ideas of Reading, ensures that children are given all the tools they require to learn to read successfully.

At St Anne's College, hundreds of texts have arrived and are being organised, sorted and stored ready for 2025!

Please support our staff, and remember that drop off for children is from 8:30am. This is when staff are on duty. Prior to this any staff onsite are preparing for the day ahead, duty of care requirements mean children onsite require supervision and doing this takes staff away from their important preparation time.

Kara McCann & Emma O’Keeffe - School of Wonder Leaders

kmccann@sackialla.catholic.edu.au

eokeeffe@sackialla.catholic.edu.au

We are committed & dedicated educators

Teaching and Learning:

Our aim as Educators is always to improve student learning outcomes for all our learners. We continue to strive to improve our professional practice to ensure that our learners get the very best learning opportunities and outcomes. Our SOW team works collaboratively to provide thought provoking learning experiences to our learners. Our learner assets (collaboration, communication, self-management, thinking and researching) are life long skills that set our young people up to life long learners and to continually question, explore and challenge their thinking. Please direct any teaching and learning inquiries to Kara McCann kmccann@sackialla.catholic.edu.au

Wellbeing:

Wellbeing is a holistic term that encompasses all aspects of a student's life, including their physical, social, mental and emotional state. It is often defined as a sustainable state of positive mood and attitude, resilience, and satisfaction with self, relationships and experiences at school.

Wellbeing at St Anne’s is driven by the themes of doing our best, allowing everyone to succeed. Please direct any wellbeing inquiries to Emma O'Keeffe eokeeffe@sackialla.catholic.edu.au