Classroom & Curriculum News

 SAKGP

This fortnight we have been reviewing our plans for the garden.  Thank you to the parent committee who have generously provided much needed funds for plants. We are so greatful for your support and encouragement.  Before confirming and purchasing our range of fruit trees and plants, Year 5/6 took a walk around the garden to consider the elements that affect our garden such as protection from wind and sun, overhanging trees, watering available or to be installed and additional features we will be implementing.  One of those features is our scarecrow, which is still a work in prgoress.  We are in need of some materials such as coffee hessian sacks (x2), for the body and head and small stakes for the arms and neck. Any donations would be appreciated. Please admre the creativity and thought behind the students plans for the garden layout.

A big thank you to Ms Mazzeo for winning a grant for us, which will  further enhance the learning space.  Part of this grant is a large wooden gazebo and BBQ. This will look amazing alongside our brand new wood fired pizza oven that is still stored in the sports shed. The introduction of an outdoor cooking kitchen, will not only support garden kitchen experiences but also be available for fund raisers and whole school special celebration days . Please keep an eye out in future newsletters to see the garden develpoment.

This fortnight we prepared some delicious garlic and Indigenous herb potato wedges. Year 5/6 learnt about brushed potatoes, and spent a great deal of time ensuring their potatoes were sqeaky clean, before cutting them into chunky wedges and rubbing the herby oil they prepared all over the potato pieces. Thirty minutes later out of the oven came hot crispy on the outside and soft on the inside wedges that were quickly devoured alongside a Indigenous bush tomato and mountain pepperberry relish. As students waited for their wedges to cool (oh so slightly), they entertained themselves by decorating their brown paper bags. Such a simple menu - hot wedges in a brown paper bag on a cold winters day, had everyone very silent, thoroughly enjoying their hard work.

This week we prepared Margherita pizza. Students love working with dough, and thankfully it is a dough that is forgiving in regards to rough measurements and alot of kneading. After we let our pizza dough rise and had some time in the garden, we returned to roll the dough out and top our pizza. Some groups prepared a pizza together, others wanted to prepare individual creations. Please have a look at our pizza, including the teachers potato and rosemary one.

We have also spent time digging in the garden, which is everyone's favourite. Dirt flying everywhere, pink cheeks and amazing team work has been observed while the students are prepping the garden beds for the new trees. Some students also worked on cutting and placing signs that were prepared last term by Year 3/4 students and now some seedlings have beautiful personalised labels.

Year 1/2

We have been busy in the past few weeks with swimming on Thursdays and Fridays.  Students walk to the station and catch the train to Altona, then walk a short distance to the swim centre. Thank fully the pool is warm inside and everyone is having fun praticipating in their swimming lessons. After changing back into school uniforms, feet dried, socks and shoes on, we head back up the road to catch the train back to Yarraville station and walk back to school. Year 1/2 have been amazing and are so excited to be out and about with their peers. Thank you to parents for ensuring they all have the necessary bits and pieces, as well as extra lunch items for each swim session. We appreciate all you do, and we are so proud to see our students developing the life long skill to be able to swim. A big shout out of thanks as well to the parents who have joined us on the swimming journey, we know it eats into your day, but your support is so appreciated. 

In mathematics we have been practicing our addition strategies to add two digits numbers together. The importance of lessons has been to focus on the straetgy we use to solve the addition problem. Currently we have been exploring partitioning, bridging to 10 and jump strategy.  Practising our skip counting and times tables - 2's, 5's and 10's are also a daily activity.  Year 1/2 are becoming confident with choral rehersal or individual practice, and we encourage all students to keep practicing these at home overe the school holidays, as they support further learning opprountities to add, subtract, divide and multiple varying numbers.

Brain breaks

In 1/2 we love brain breaks. These are utilised throughout our lessons to keep our brains focussed on learning and to feel revived and alert to new concepts and understandings. Throughout each session we particpate in a different style of brain break, depending on the lesson and how the room is feeling. A range of brain breaks love are dancing, pilates, yoga, stretching, mini work out, quizzes, pair activities, mindfulness and music. Please ask your child which type of brain break is their favourite

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Year 1/2 Religious Education - Pentecost Comics