Teaching & Learning  

We have been excited to explore the Department of Education's new English and Mathematic learning sequences.    Texts have been carefully selected to be suitably challenging for students, enabling them to engage with Australian as well as world authors, classic texts, First Nations writers and texts exploring contemporary themes.  

The Year 3 - 4 students are currently reading 'Brindabella' by Ursula Dubosarsky & Andrew Joyner.  It explores key themes of friendship, loss and nature.  Set in the Australian bush, it is a lyrical and unforgettable story about a boy and the untameable wildness of a hand-reared joey.  

The students will be exploring poetry in the coming weeks using the mentor text 'This is home - Essential Australian poems for children'  by Jackie French & Tania McCartney.  Our students will read and respond to Australian poems, analysing how poetic techniques like rhyme, repetition, contrast and sensory detail create meaning.

The Year 5-6 students are reading 'Blueback', a beautiful story about family, belonging and living a life in tune with the environment, from one of Australia's best-loved authors, Tim Winton.  The students will explore how writers use voice to convey different points of view and identify the author’s message through the characters’ perspectives.  

Our mathematics focus this year is ensuring students not only learn new knowledge and skills but transfer these to their long term memory.  We are developing instructional routines to ensure students have the opportunity to consolidate and apply learning through our daily reviews.  This includes revisiting and reviewing learning from prior topics to combat the 'forgetting curve'.  

You can also support your child by helping them learn number facts to enable them to freely recall and apply them to solve mathematical problems.  Please see our whole school counting checklist and ensure your child spends some time each week practising.  

Examples:

Addition and subtraction facts e.g. 6 + 4 = 10 or 10 - 6 = 4

Multiplication and division facts, 2 x 4 = 8, 8 divided by 4 = 2