Junior School News

Important Reminders

As per our school's SunSmart policy, all students will be required to wear hats as of next week, Monday 11th September. 

Learning in Action

Literacy

Grade 1:  This fortnight, Grade 1 students have continued learning about the key features of narratives, including beginning, middle, end, setting, characters, problem, and a solution. In writing, students have been focusing on writing complete sentences that are not only interesting but include capital letters, full stops, subject, verb, adverbial when, and adverbial where. We are looking forward to seeing students apply this learning about writing detailed and interesting sentences to their writing next week when they write and publish their own narratives. Our vocabulary words for the past 2 weeks have been ‘century’ and ‘futuristic’. 

Grade 2: Over the last fortnight, the Year 2 students have continued to look at the structure of narratives. Focussing on the orientation (setting/characters), problem and solution. They have written two of their own narratives and worked hard to include events that lead up to the problem and solution. They have emphasised the importance of making predictions as we read, as well as making inferences to further understand the story and/or work out the possible definition for an unknown word.

Library

Grade 1: The Year 1 students were tasked with analysing the data on the graph from the previous library session. Here are some of their observations

• Year 1s love ‘The Best Hiding Place’ the most and like ‘Bev and Kev’ the least - Summer, Isla, Tommy
• ‘The Best Hiding Place’ received 28 votes - Anders, Vivian, Vitoria
• ‘The Best Hiding Place’ got the most votes - Harry, Harper J, Ryder W
• ‘Bev and Kev’ had the least amount of votes because it only got four votes - Luca, Ruby
• There were five books to vote for - Cooper T, Fin 
• Every book had a different amount of votes - Elisa, Elouise
• All the students had their own opinion on which book to vote for - Max, Silvana
• ‘Lionel and Me’ came second - Lincoln, Evvie, Eli
• ‘Jigsaw’ got the third most votes - Campbell, Mason
• No books had the same amount of votes - Amelia, Jaxx, Elise 
• One book has the most votes because people like it a lot - Ella, Maxime, Isaac
• The graph tells us which book won the best vote - Alfie, Oliver, Amelia
• ‘Market Day’ had three more votes than ‘Bev and Kev’ - Leo W, Hugo, Madeline
• ‘Bev and Kev’ did not win because they did not get a lot of votes - Poppy, Wynslow, Jet
• ‘Bev and Kev’ had the least amount of votes on four - Heath, Maddison, Liam
• Jigsaw had ten votes - Harris, Alexis, Zac
• ‘Lionel and Me’ got more votes than ‘Market Day’ and ‘Jigsaw’ combined - Tyrus, Hurley, Millie
• ‘The Best Hiding Place’ came first because they had the most votes. They had 28 votes’ - Jude, Noah, Ava, Leo K
• ‘Lionel and Me’ came second because they had 24 votes - Charlie, Sophie, Arlie
• ‘Lionel and Me’ came second because they had less votes than ‘The Best Hiding Place’ - Finn, Blake, Caden
• The Year 1s think ‘The Best Hiding Spot’ is the best out of the five books - Winnie, Rory, Mason, Harper

We have also started looking at end pages in a picture story book. End pages have a purpose and that is to provide clues about the story. The students have been working in their groups to make predictions about the story, based on the end pages. Before you read, have a look at the end pages… not just pretty pictures!

Grade 2: The students have listened to more books that were shortlisted for the Children’s Book of the Year Award by the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA). ‘Tiny Wonders’ by Sally Soweol Han and ‘Dirt by Sea’, written by Michael Wagner. The students are working well in their triad group to discuss what they noticed in their read-aloud text and what they enjoyed in the book. Next week the students will have listened to both texts and be able to compare similarities and/or differences they notice in each text. ‘Dirt by Sea’ introduced some students to a text in comic form for the first time. They were intrigued to find out what panels and gutters were in a comic strip and that these all had specific labels. They continue to focus on their speaking and listening skills as they each take a turn.

Year 2 Library is on a Monday. Please return books that you are done with as the students cannot borrow if they have the maximum number of books out on their library record.

Maths 

Grade 1: Fractions have become the main focus for grade 1 students for the remainder of this term. Students have learnt that fractions can be equal parts of a whole. To demonstrate this knowledge, they have folded and cut different regular and irregular shapes in half. They also used concrete materials such as unifix and teddy bears to show half of a collection.

Students have increasingly become more confident identifying different time durations i.e. 1 minute is 60 seconds, 60 minutes is 1 hour and 24 hours is 1 day.

Grade 2: The students have continued to look at division problems with a focus on worded problems. The students have also looked at the features of 2D shapes and discussed fractions. Using language such as: half, quarter, eighth, collection, equal and for some students - thirds and fifths.

Year 2 students continue to be very excited about Maths Masters. Here is the link to the belts and activities to help your child achieve their next goal (copy and paste the link if link doesn’t work directly). If time permits at home, your child might like to work on an activity for 5 or so minutes, 3 times a week.   https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HrbYUBgO5DwoOHFoQEmLt1dsYm1oksyo

Inquiry

Grade 1:  This fortnight, students in year 1 reflected on their learning for this term. Students finished adding detail to their Celebration Morning timeline poster, illustrating what families looked like, how they communicated and how they went about their learning. It begins with Indigenous Australians 65000 years ago, along the River Nile to Ancient Egypt, into the peasant fields in Ancient China, through the jousting Medieval times, dodging the cane at school in the 1800s, into 1900s and today. Our learning has culminated in the students making predictions about what families, communication and learning will look like in another 100 years. According to some students, teachers will be replaced by robots; lights will turn on with the click of a finger; teleporting will finally come true; families will fly around in flying cars. Let’s wait and see!

Grade 2: Over the last fortnight, students have looked at the various toys and games that have been popular over time. They have reflected on the History unit, thinking about the changes that have taken place in the past, present and those that they predict for the future.

Wellbeing

RRRRs

The students have worked on two sessions over the last fortnight:

The opposite of violence is respect

• Being helpful, respectful, cooperate with others
• Identifying how people feel when their friends play with them in a friendly, fair and respectful way
• Identify strategies that peers can use to solve problems in a respectful way

Respect my space, respect my body (some students may participate in this session in the last week of term 3)

• Learning ways to tell people when they do not like the way their body is being treated by others
• Learning ways to seek safety or help when in the presence of violence or inappropriate forms of personal contact

Preview for Learning

Literacy

Grade 1: Next term, the Grade 1s will be continuing their focus on narratives but through the lens of our Author’s Study on Julia Donaldson. We will also be learning about persuasive writing, examining how writers express opinions. 

Grade 2: Next week, students will finish off their narratives. They will also watch a film and read the text: Stick Man, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Allowing students to make connections and comparisons between the same narrative in a different text type, film and book. Students will also get to watch the movie Shrek to enhance their ability and understanding of the narrative planner template they have been using for this unit of work.

Library 

Grade 1: Next term our library sessions will be linked closely to our inquiry unit of sustainability.

Grade 2: Next week, the students will listen to the other read aloud text from the shortlist for the Children’s Book of the Year Award, voted by the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA). They will engage in deeper discussions in their triad group in order to compare and contrast the orientation, problem and solutions of the stories they have listened to. They will highlight the differences and any preference for which text type they have read; a typical picture story book as opposed to a narrative presented in the form of a comic (‘Dirt by Sea’ by Michael Wagner).

Maths 

Grade 1: Students will now be expanding their knowledge of fractions beyond halves. They will learn how to identify and represent ¼ and ⅛ within a shape and collection. 

Students will then complete a range of activities in order to reflect on their understanding of key units from this year. These will include games on subtraction, addition, division and skip counting.

Grade 2: Students will be extending their knowledge and ability to work with fractions and shapes. 

Inquiry:

Grade 1: Next week we are looking forward to sharing our learning with our parents and special visitors on Celebration Morning.

Grade 2:Next week, students will have the opportunity to finalise their unit of work by completing their reflections on their learning in regard to how technology has changed over time and how it has affected people. 

Wellbeing

RRRRs & Friendology:

Students will conclude this term with a reflection and discussion about what they have covered throughout the term in relation to the RRRRs sessions and the Friendology curriculum. If the class teacher feels that any topics need revision to further support the students in their class this will also be conducted in the classroom.

Student of the Week

Congratulations to our Grade 1 and Grade 2 award winners.