PRIMARY (F-6)

School Leaders Report - Kara and Emma

Week 8, Wow! Where did the time go? And what an adventurous 8 weeks it has been. 

It’s been incredible to watch our leaders of the school (the Grade 6 students), step up and take initiative to run our school assemblies. We are looking forward to seeing them in action again this Monday as we conclude our final assembly of the term.

Fun Friday was off with a bang in the primary school today as the college acknowledged and celebrated our diverse community as we work towards Harmony. 

Harmony Week is an annual celebration of Australia’s cultural diversity and the benefits it brings to the Australian community. This year Harmony Week was held on 17-23 March. This includes the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (IDERD) today, Friday 21 March. 

Harmony Week is a time to celebrate that Australia is one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world. It is about inclusiveness, respect and belonging for all Australians, regardless of cultural or linguistic background, united by a set of core Australian values.

It was great to see the different ways that students understood and expressed in their work the acceptance for different cultures and religions. 

Have a fantastic weekend as we look forward to kicking off Term 2 with a bang, and enjoy this week's edition.

MORNING ROUTINE - You may have noticed the change in the morning routine in Primary school. In working with Knowledge Society - as part of Magnify - each learning space has a consistent routine. Consistency is predictable, and enables students to have success on arrival to school. Children may choose an option from step 2 or step 3; they may change their choice each day depending on whether they feel they need calm, quiet and settling time, or feeling enthusiastic with energy to burn!

Reminder

Please see Mardie or Chloe at the front desk to arrange an appointment at a mutual time with Kara or Emma regarding any concerns, queries or wonderings. We appreciate your assistance with this.

Foundation students are now attending school five days per week and are feeling confident and happy in their learning space.

This week students have been working on the letters ‘m’, ‘s’, ‘t’ and ‘a’. We have been reading ‘Bogtrotter’ written by Margaret Wild and learning how to use interesting words like hopeful, staring and gloomy.

Adalind thinks St Anne’s College is great because she loves learning her letters on the whiteboard and loves art and craft. Angad likes to play with Robbi. Ava likes to paint pictures.

In R.E. students are developing an awareness of the signs and symbols associated with Lent and Easter. We are learning Easter is the most important celebration in the Church and we celebrate Jesus is with us. We went for a learning walk to find all the crosses in our school.

Harmony Day was celebrated today, with students wearing a touch of orange. We have been talking about how we respect everyone and include people from different cultures.

Foundations will be engaging in a Native Bee workshop in Term 2 to connect with their inquiry topic. 

The following is a list of materials we are looking to collect for the workshop:

• Bamboo (and the more brown, dried out, semi-dead stuff is better than green stuff) 
• Pithy stems (stems with a soft, spongy centre) like lamiaceae, lantana, any dead flower stems, kangaroo paw, dead agapanthus stems, native reeds etc.
• PVC pipe
• Tin cans or other recycled hollow tubes that can be used as an outer casing to hold bamboo
• Paper bark or something like bark to wrap the PVC pipes/containers
• Clay/sand 
• Thin wire/string
• Besser blocks or ceramic pipe
• Safety glasses

Over the past two weeks Year 1 students have been exploring the text Edwina the Emu, expanding their vocabulary while learning about this unique Australian native animal. As part of their engagement with the story, students created beautiful water color illustrations that reflect the text, bringing their understanding of the book to life through art. 

During Inquiry, students completed their first unit task ‘Who We Are’ ’while collaborating with their Year 2 buddies on a project demonstrating their understanding of “I can show how my choices affect my health and wellbeing.” Their creativity and teamwork were truly impressive! 

Year 1 students in Lauren's class worked with Year 3/4 Cindy/Emma who shared their knowledge around Seesaw and help with up loading of images and information. It was a lovely way to finish off a busy school week. 

This week, the Year 2 students have been busy revising the spellings of long vowel sounds. We also read two persuasive texts and discussed their key features. 

In Maths, students have been learning about quarter, half and full turns, as well as the difference between clockwise and anticlockwise movements.

In Inquiry, students completed their Unit One task. They continued to work alongside their Year 1 buddies to create a project that illustrated their understanding of the statement: “I can show how my choices affect my health and wellbeing and explain why.” We were blown away by their creativity and collaboration! To celebrate their hard work, we invited the Year 5s to a mini expo to show off our projects and share our learning.

Maths

The children have now finished their learning on time. They have been working on reading the clock to o’clock, half past, quarter past, and quarter to. They have also started to explore elapsed time and are learning to understand the difference between activities we do in the morning (AM) and evening (PM).

Harmony Day 

The children celebrated Harmony Day with a range of activities. They researched different facts to learn more about the day and decide what to include in their work. Some wrote informative texts explaining what Harmony Day is, while others created posters to share its message of inclusivity and respect.

To further explore the idea of Harmony Day, children had the creative freedom to design or create something that represented the meaning of Harmony Day. They used their own ideas to showcase the themes of inclusivity, diversity, and belonging.

Religious Education

The children listened to the story of the Passover and reflected on its meaning. They also explored Caritas and the important role it plays in supporting communities in need. As part of Project Compassion, they learned about where donations go and how they can help to make a difference.

We would firstly like to congratulate all the Year 5 students for giving their best over the past two weeks to NAPLAN. They completed four tests; 

- Writing, which was typing our stories on the iPad

- Reading

- Conventions of language (spelling and grammar)

- Maths

Each of these tests took approximately 50 minutes to complete, with all students trying their best and rolling with any challenges (such as tech difficulties) that occurred at the time. 

Religious Education

Our R.E focus has shifted to Lent as we celebrated Ash Wednesday and wait for Easter. We have been engaging with the Caritas resources and exploring the Theme ‘Uniting Against Poverty’ and almsgiving and how we can all make changes that will have a positive impact on others. Some students have set themselves the challenge of saving water, by turning the tap off while brushing teeth, or taking two minutes less in the shower. Your child should be able to explain to you how these can have a positive impact on others and our Common Home. 

Maths

Our Maths focus has been multiplication. We have been fine tuning our fluency with card and dice activities as well as expanding the strategies that we can use to complete multiplication sums. This week there was a connection to our Term novel ‘War Horse’ when we all wanted to know how tall the horse was when it was described as ‘16 hands’. We first had to find out how many centimetres was in a ‘hand’ (10.16, we used 10cms) and then multiplied this by 16, which we came to 160cms. This gave us a better idea of how tall the horse was. Students were challenged to use whatever strategies they could to try to solve this equation.  

English

Our routine has been a bit out of whack with NAPLAN this past fortnight, but we have continued to practise our spelling with a focus on adding suffixes ‘ous’, ‘al’ and ‘ion’ and how the base word might need to change, such as dropping the ‘e’, changing the ‘Y’ to and ‘i’ or doubling the consonant. We have almost come to the end of our class novel ‘War Horse’ and are eagerly awaiting the ending. We have explored a wide variety of vocabulary and discussed how different the language we used back in 1914 is a bit different to the way we speak today. 

Visual Arts

HEAD-DRESSED TO IMPRESS

The Year 5 students have been working on an exciting art project, creating head-dresses out of cardboard which will later be covered in paper mache. 

The students shared their progress having almost finished the ‘bones’ of their head-dresses. We cannot wait to see how these incredible creations turn out after the paper mache stage! 

Project Compassion Easter Raffle 

This term the Year 6 students have organised an Easter raffle for all that wish to buy tickets. The tickets will be sold by Year 6 students throughout the rest of the term, and students can also purchase a ticket at reception. Tickets will be $1 each for a chance to win one of three prizes. We encourage students to bring correct change to buy tickets. All the money raised will go towards Project Compassion to help many different people in need. The raffle will be drawn at the Stations of the Cross performance on April 3.

By Zander and Henry

The Silver Donkey

In Year 6 we started our new novel study, ‘The Silver Donkey’ by Sonya Hartnett. The Silver Donkey is a book about two little girl’s who find a man under a tree. The man was blind and had run away from the army because he desperately needed to reunite with his family and his sick brother. This is an old book made in 2004. We are currently up to chapter 5, ‘The First Tale.’ So far it is a really good book and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the First World War.

By Millie Studd

YEAR 6 LEADERSHIP SPEECHES 

We certainly know the future is in good hands after hearing the Year 6 students present their leadership speeches last week.

Several students presented eloquent speeches on why they would be best suited to leadership positions across a variety of areas to their fellow students, staff and families. The different leadership areas include social justice, sport support, ecological stewardship, tech support, cultural inclusion and peer support. 

Congratulations to the Year 6 students for their creative and compelling presentations!

This term in Performing Arts the students are learning about Drama!

Grade 1 and Grade 2 students have been acting out important roles in famous stories such as Wombat Stew, Possum Magic and the Rainbow Serpent. They have been learning how to use their bodies and facial expressions to show important parts of the character they are trying to be. They are currently participating in small group activities to practice performing with other people.

Grade 3 and 4 students have been preparing performances in small groups, based on a stimulus, such as the fairytale Cinderella, or a random object from the ‘Mystery Box!’ They are currently in the process of creating a short puppet show which aims to teach a lesson about our school values to young audiences. They are choosing their puppet and characters, writing the script, rehearsing, filming their performances and will showcase them in class at the end of term.

Grade 5 and 6 students have been enrolled in ‘Spy School’ throughout the term. They have had to complete many missions, including creating mimed performances to music and creating tableaux of what spies might look like in a crowded area. They have recently started their next mission, where they had to crack a code that revealed important documents had been stolen from the principal’s office! They have been tasked to recreate the surveillance footage from the scene. Students have blocked and rehearsed their performances, and will be filming, editing and showing them by the end of term.

We remind all that the college opens at 8:30am. This enables educators time to prepare for their day ahead. We appreciate your support in helping our educators be successful. Yard duty staff begin at 8:30am to monitor play spaces before the school day begins at 8:55am.

Upcoming Dates

Please refer to the calendar on PAM for upcoming dates for activities and events.