What's happening?
Foundation
Thank you to our amazing helpers with corridor reading and Monday writing! There are still gaps, so feel free to add your name if you’re available. The extra help is a good support in building our young learners confidence with reading and writing.
This week in literacy we are learning about /r/ and /u/, and next week is /b/ and /h/. Reversing ‘b’ and ‘d’ in reading and writing is common. We teach students a range of strategies to assist, and encourage you to remind your child if they have stated/written the incorrect one. But it does take time, exposure and practise. We continue to be impressed with their writing skills, and it is lovely to see their confidence growing.
This week are finishing up with our Place Value unit in Maths Groups. However, this is a very important topic and will be addressed again in Term 3 and 4, as well as in our Maths Warm-ups. We have now moved onto Measurement (Time), looking at days of the week, duration of events and sequencing events in the day.
Next Wednesday 8th May will be our annual ‘Breakfast at School’, celebration. We are so excited to celebrate with the Foundation students. Each student will get some toast, fruit and even a pancake! If you have any questions, please contact your child's class teacher.
Please also remember the Mother’s Day and Special People stall will be held on Friday 10th May. The students are able to bring in $1-$7 to purchase a gift. It will also be great if you could send them in with an extra shopping bag to collect and carry their items in.
Grade 1
The Year 1’s have settled back into the return of school and showed great enthusiasm when participating in Athletics exercises during Grade 1 Sport this week.
Students are completing our writing topic on Recounts and we had some wonderful examples written about their Super Zu experience. Now, we will be moving to Procedural writing with our Weather Inquiry unit providing opportunities to write Science based procedures this term. In word study the students have just learnt the FLOSZ rule and are launching into why a “c” and a “g” can make a soft sound.
In Maths we have moved into Patterns with an initial focus on colour and shape before looking at number patterns created by skip counting. The students were all enthusiastic during the first lesson this week and loved seeing that patterns can be found everywhere around our classrooms and school. This could be a good topic of conversation at home.
As mentioned for Inquiry we are focused on the weather and have spent that past two weeks looking at the changing weather throughout the sky, and interpreting weather forecasts. Please keep an eye on homework folders for a note about our ‘Weather Reporter’ homework task, which will be sent home this Thursday.
Keep up the reading and Red Flag Word practise at home to assist your child’s development. We still have spare days for Parent Helpers if you are interested in helping with reading, that would be wonderful.
Grade 2
This fortnight, we have really enjoyed integrating our Inquiry topic, ‘All Mixed Up’ (which focuses on chemical science) and our learning within the ‘English’ strands of the curriculum. Students have explored a range of procedural texts and their features, and are developing their skills with writing their own procedures. We wrote a procedure titled ‘How to Make a Bubble Mixture’ and then had fun making and blowing bubbles.
Students are learning to apply their knowledge from our ‘Grammar Project’ lessons by expanding and making their sentences more interesting with adjectives.
As part of our ‘Word Study’, students have been using the suffixes -ed to indicate past tense.
In Maths, we are halfway through our Subtraction topic, in which students have been exploring the relationship between addition and subtraction, and how they can use addition to help solve subtraction problems.
We began a new round of ‘Rotations’ last week which allows students and teachers from the four grades to mix and work together, learning more about coding, design and building challenges and mindfulness activities.
Students no longer require their hat at school for this term (“1st of May, hats away!”).
Thank you for your support with homework: Regular reading aloud, sound pack practise and ‘Red Flag Word’ spelling.
Optional extras: ‘Nessy Reading and Spelling’ and ‘Sunset Maths’ (Essential Assessment).
Grade 3
Inquiry/Core Knowledge: As part of our unit, ‘We Are One’, this fortnight we have explored culture, ‘Welcome to country’ and ‘Acknowledgment of country’, and how ‘The Dreaming’ may help First Nations Australians make sense of their world.
Reading: We have been learning to identify the main idea of both narrative and non-fiction texts relating to our topic, by figuring out ‘who’ or ‘what’ the passage is about and then identifying the most important idea about the ‘who’ or ‘what’.
Writing: Students are learning more about information reports, with a focus this week on using conjunctions to write their facts in compound sentences. Next week, they will explore introduction and conclusion writing. In our grammar and syntax lessons, we have been working on expanding simple sentences by including adverbs, and also the ‘who/what, when, where, why, how’. In our spelling lessons, we have been looking at the graphemes oa/ow (boat and snow), and ir/ur, as well as, prefixes, suffixes, and the ‘1.1.1 doubling rule’.
Maths: We are finishing our subtraction topic this week with students demonstrating their understanding of the relationship between addition and subtraction, as well as their ability to choose efficient strategies for solving different types of subtraction problems. Asking your child to show you and explain some of the strategies they know for subtraction would be a great way for them to consolidate their knowledge.
Wellbeing: Our wellbeing focus this fortnight is on calming and coping strategies, followed by relaxation techniques.
Homework: Thank you for your support with establishing homework routines. We are encouraging students to ask a grown-up to check their homework with them before submitting, and give feedback so that they can spot and fix errors, or make changes as needed.
Grade 4
Wonderful learning continues to happen in Grade 4. Many of our students are showing wonderful curiosity as we delve further into our Science Inquiry. They have been asking terrific, though provoking questions as they continue to participate in hands on activities as well as reading and writing tasks that centre around building their background knowledge and making meaningful connections with their world.
Reading & Inquiry: The students have been immersed in reading about plants and different animal lifecycles. Many in depth discussions have been taking place across all classes which have centred around our big questions such as: How do the parts of a flower contribute to pollination? How do different types of animals change throughout their lives? What is the lifecycle of a bee?
As our Inquiry is science based, the students have been developing their observation skills. They have just planted grass seeds in glass jars and will be monitoring the growth of these in the next couple of weeks. Students have begun writing & drawing what they see & describing the stages of growth using the vocabulary that they have been learning through their reading. They have also looked more closely at flowers using magnifying glasses and learning about the different parts that are responsible for pollination.
Explanation writing: After the completion of a pre-assessment writing task by the students, we identified specific areas of explanation texts to direct our explicit teaching towards. Our focus has been on learning particular language features such as sequencing words (eg. first of all, next, following on, eventually, finally) which are used to indicate the stages or process within an explanation. We have also looked at what adverbs are & when to use them. The students have also chosen an animal or plant life cycle to research in class.
Numeracy: A focus on Multiplication work has begun across the cohort in Maths. Students have been learning and building their proficiency with recalling multiplication facts as well as learning different methods and strategies to multiply larger numbers such as partitioning (eg. 49 x 5 = 40 x5 = 200, 9 x 5 = 45, 200 + 45 = 245) and using a visual model such as a grid to partition and multiply each part of a number.
Homework:
- Reading 5 x week. Students should be recording their reading in their diary and we ask if you could please sign these at the end of the week.
- Drawing flowers & plants.
- Due: Tuesday 7th May
- Multiplication fact practice
Reminders:
- Healesville Excursion is on Thursday 16th May. Permission & payment is due by Friday 10th May.
- “Nude Food” on a Tuesday continues this term. We encourage our students to try and bring their snacks and lunch in plastic free wrapping with the incentive to not only reduce the amount of disposable rubbish to help our environment, but to be the recipients of the ‘golden lunchbox’ which recognises the class with the highest percentage of students who have ‘nude food’ for the week!
Grade 5
Maths
During the past fortnight students have continued developing their understanding of multiplication written strategies and how to apply them to problem solving questions. Students have been working on their knowledge and understandings of factors and multiples and their ability to show their working when solving multiplication questions involving larger numbers multiplied by single digit number and when multiplying larger numbers by two digits eg 46 x 32.
Writing
Students have explored what a good response piece of writing looks like by exploring our WAGGOL and unpacking the structure and features of response writing. This week’s sessions have been linked with our inquiry watching with students beginning with watching ‘Ruth’s Story’, a story about an indigenous lady who tells her story and reflects upon the stolen generation. Students took notes and used the planning template to begin writing a response piece as a class.
Reading
In reading, students have begun reading our year level text ‘Rabbit Roof Fence’ which is linked to our inquiry unit topic ‘Closing the Gap’. Over the past two weeks student have been unpacking their knowledge of the topic and themes that will come up in the text as well as spending time reading chapters of the text whilst further developing their verbal and written comprehension skills, knowledge and understanding of vocabulary and improving their reading fluency skills.
Inquiry
Students have continued to develop their knowledge and understanding of Australian Colonial and Indigenous history.
Last week students unpacked the meaning of colonialisation and its impacts as well as developing background knowledge and understanding of the stolen generation. This week students have continued to work on developing their knowledge and understandings of the impacts on the stolen generation and completed interview questions to demonstrate their understanding of how children and families where affected.
Grade 6
Literacy
Students have continued their work on information reports this week researching, planning and writing a text based on a famous person of their choice. Next week students will research, plan and write an information report on the Solar System which links to our Reading/Inquiry topic.
In Reading, we have continued working on our ‘Astronomy: Space Systems’ unit. This week students have considered the questions ‘What is the universe?’ and ‘What are galaxies?’. Students have also learnt about the way Earth moves in space.
Mathematics
In Mathematics, we will be completing our unit on Chance and Probability this week. Students will be revising their work in class before completing their post-test on Friday. In week 4, students will commence our next concept on ‘Shape’.
Positive Peer Relationships Incursion
On Tuesday, Grade 6 students took part in a ‘Positive Peer Relationships’ incursion provided by Unleashing Personal Potential (UPP). The incursion focused on building personal and social skills to enhance the quantity and quality of students’ interpersonal interactions.
Year 7 Transition 2025
In week one, Year 6 to Year 7 Placement Packs were sent out. Parents received a Compass notification and application forms were sent home with your child. These forms must be returned by Friday 10th May. Families will be notified of student placements on Wednesday 17th July. Please ensure you read the instructions carefully when completing the forms.
If you have any questions, please contact the Year 7 transition coordinators (Audrey Ulrich & Nathan James).
Interschool Sport
Students will commence their Term 2 Interschool Sport this Friday 3rd May (Week 3). Our first round will be at home against Parktone. Good luck to all our teams.
Term 2 Dates
Please check Compass and Focus for further information regarding Term 2 dates relating to Grade 6 students.