Classroom & Curriculum News

1/2RS's Parallel and 3D object towns

Our class was absolutely thrilled with the applause they received during our assembly in Week 4! The children worked so diligently to create their wonderful towns, and we will be displaying them outside our classroom for everyone to admire. Please feel free to stop by and have a closer look at their fantastic creations.

Most importantly, this activity wasn't just about creating beautiful towns — it was an opportunity to put our mathematical learning into practice. We can now confidently explain what parallel lines are and understand the difference between 3D objects and 2D shapes. It has been wonderful to see the children apply their mathematical knowledge in such a creative and hands-on way!

1/2RS Daily Workouts

We have budding soccer and football players in our class, along with students who are curious about how their bodies work, why their backs might ache after spending too much time on the lounge, and why they feel so alive after spending time working in the garden!

To get our bodies moving and our brains ready for the day, we have been exercising after our morning roll call and circle routine. We spend just five minutes completing a range of fitness activities, including crunches, bridges, planks, knee lifts, running on the spot, star jumps and more.

The children have been learning to notice what happens to their bodies as they exercise. We can feel our hearts pumping faster, our breathing changing and our bodies warming up. We then notice the difference after stretching and cooling down.

This quick workout and stretch helps us head straight into our Maths lesson feeling alert, energised and ready to learn! It has been wonderful to see the children embracing movement and discovering how good it can make them feel, while seeing their bright eyes and wonderful engagement in their learning.

1/2 Value our mathematics resources

In 1/2, we love using hands-on resources during our Maths lessons. Using things such as counters, blocks, number lines, shapes and other mathematical equipment helps your children in seeing, touching and exploring mathematical ideas rather than simply working with numbers on a page.

The wide variety of hands on resources avaiable in our classrooms help our students understand why Maths works, explain their thinking and build confidence before moving towards solving problems more independently. We believe that when children can explore Maths in a practical way, their learning becomes meaningful and easier to understand.

The Joy and Importance of Reading

We are very fortunate to have two 1/2 classes full of children who love books! Reading is such an important part of our learning in 1/2, and we know that giving our students regular opportunities to read helps build the strong foundations they need to become confident and capable readers.

Our literacy learning is informed by the Science of Reading, which recognises the importance of developing strong skills in phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. However, reading is so much more than learning to read the words on a page. Through books, children discover new ideas, learn new vocabulary, build knowledge, develop their imagination and begin to understand the world around them.

One of our favourite moments is when we are able to put everything aside and simply enjoy some quiet, independent reading time. The classroom becomes wonderfully calm as your children settle into their books, explore stories, revisit favourite characters and discover new ones. These opportunities can sometimes be rare in our busy school days, which makes them all the more special.

We love seeing our students develop not only their reading skills, but also a genuine love of books and reading for pleasure. 

1/2 Bookweek 

Our Year 1/2 students thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful books Once I Was a Giant and Dear Broccoli during Book Week. As always, dressing up was one of the highlights, and the Book Week Parade was a fantastic opportunity to celebrate our love of books and reading.

Inspired by Dear Broccoli, we also created our very own “Where’s Broccoli?”adventure, as our little broccolis travelled around the world! Have a look at the photos... can you find them? In the morning we enjoyed our incursion with the storytellers and then in the afternoon an afternoon with the author of Dear Brocolli, Jo Dabrowski and learnt about using our imaginations to create our story characters. 

School Assembly Student Awards 

Semester Two Class Captains - congratulations, and great assembly 1/2RS!

Be Yourself Day in Year 1/2

Year 3/4 Class News

The last month has been a very busy one in Year 3/4! We have been refining our skills in reading analogue and digital time. Although it can sometimes be confusing to distinguish between quarter past and quarter to, we have made great progress in this skill.

As we continue our learning about decimals, we are making great progress in understanding tenths and hundredths and making connections between decimal representations, drawn models and fractions.

 We have also started our new book focus for the term, The Wild Robot. We really enjoyed reading Storm Boy too! Both of these novels have allowed students to explore themes such as friendship, belonging, courage, resilience and our connection with the natural world, while continuing to develop their language and comprehension skills.

It was awesome to see the creativity of the costumes across Year 3/4 during Book Week! 

As part of our celebrations, we were thrilled to welcome the Newport Storytellers. Students really enjoyed the live storytelling, where characters and plots came to life. This was a fantastic opportunity for children to see how stories can be shared in many different ways and to be inspired in their own oral and written storytelling. Jo Dobrowski also shared her writing journey, talked about how books are created and connected with students about their own ideas and favourite stories.

Our Term 3 Inform & Empower session was once again insightful. This session focused on Speaking Up and Seeking Help Online, where students explored how different online situations can affect people's feelings and the importance of speaking up when they or someone else needs support. Students learned the difference between snitching and help-seeking, recognising that asking a trusted adult for help is a positive and responsible choice when someone is being treated unfairly or feels unsafe.

On Be Yourself Day, we really enjoyed making a range of paper chains as a way of expressing ourselves. It was wonderful to see students working cooperatively and creatively with each other to bring their ideas to life.

Finally, it is sadly time for us to say goodbye to Mr Cunningham. We have definitely enjoyed having him teach us over the past five weeks. We are very grateful for all that he has contributed to our classroom and wish Mr Cunningham all the very best for his future teaching career!

PREP M- News and Learning

Be yourself day was a great day in Prep M, we dressed in our favourite clothes and made wonderful chains. We are stronger together. 

During Maths, we have been learning about measuring and working out what is heavy or light, long or short, full or empty. 

When learning about capacity, the Prep children used a variety of containers and worked out which containers have large capacity or small capacity. We worked together to sort them out and move any that did not belong. 

The Prep students have experienced their first Book Week at St Augustine's and we had an amazing time!!

The Colours of Home by Sally Soweol Han is a beautiful picture book about a young girl named Bomi who moves from Australia to a new country. At first, Bomi misses her old home, but she begins to notice familiar colours and things in her new surroundings that remind her of Australia. Through colour, memories and nature, Bomi slowly learns that home can be found in more than one place. The story celebrates change, belonging, family and the connections between different cultures. 

The Prep children dressed in their favourite colours inspired by the book. 

Our Book Week activity was all about our home and what we loved the most about it. 

Students painted their page in their favourite colour then drew a picture of their house and wrote a sentence to describe how truely special their colours of home are. 

Year 5/6 PJ and  5/6 J

The Year 5 /6 's have been learning many amazing things lately at school.

We start with congratulating our Confirmation candidates and  we celebrated this special day on Sunday 9th August. Both classes learnt about the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit during this time. We are currently learning about Missions and how many incredible organisations are within our community that provide a need for those who are seeking assistance through a charity such as St.Vincent De Paul and their renowned Winter appeal, CARITAS and our need to seek justice and act with compassion for those facing injustices in the world. 

The students have been presenting their homework projects on inspirational people and Saints and learnt about their qualities and achievements and the difference these people made to their communities. Well done to all for your research and presenting!

In Maths we have been covering Fractions and Decimals and learning how to use numberlines to help us understand how to benchmark and plot these according to greater than,equivalent,less than and the language needed in this unit. We are currently studying measurement and the conversion and equivalence of different units of measurement. 

We are also alternating each week at 3 pm between Reading for Fluency and Quick fire Maths with a focus on multiplication tables and basic number facts.

In Literacy we have finished a novel study on the book 'Once' by Morris Gleitzman. The students covered many topics and themes each week and focused on an Information text on Poland and then on a country of their choice,using the sub headings such as Geography, Location ,Culture, History,etc.

During Bookweek the students dressed up and paraded in their costumes based on their class books and engaged in their activities and celebrated the love of books and reading.

We have also been very busy getting ready for our whole school concert by learning our songs and dance moves. Thank you to all families for assisting with costumes for both Bookweek and our school concert.

Respectful relationships was really fun, we did a trust blindfold activity on the playground, which ended up being very funny.

We are looking forward to the Whole school twilight Market on Friday 28th August between 4- 8pm, Fathers day breakfast on Friday September 4th and also our Gala sports day on Thursday 3rd September.

We congratulate all of our students on their sporting achievements and well done to those who made it through to Zones and District in Athletics.

Some students are playing in finals or have already played and we wish them Good luck in their sporting pursuits.