PREP

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday and enjoyed some special family time. It’s hard to believe we are now beginning our very last term of prep! What an exciting journey it has been so far – full of learning, growing, and making new friends.

This week we are beginning Stage 5 of Little Learners Love Literacy, with our focus on the digraph ‘ck’ which is used after a short vowel sound. This stage also includes learning to read multisyllabic words, learn about possessive apostrophes and the suffix ‘ed’ (used to form the past tense word of verbs).

We will be busy creating some wonderful crafts over the next few weeks, in readiness to showcase at our school Learning Expo. This is going to be a lot of fun, with our crafts based on our Inquiry topic, ‘Special Places.’

There will be many special events to look forward to this term.

Wednesday October 29th Learning Expo from 4pm-6pm

Monday 3rd November Pupil Free Day

Tuesday 4th November Melbourne Cup Day Holiday

Friday 7th November Messy Patch Excursion

Friday 21st November P-5 Activity Day

Friday 5th December Prep Prayer Gathering

We are looking forward to a wonderful term!

Liza Alexander lalexander@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Elissa Rodger erodger@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

GRADE 1

MoPA Excursion

Our students had a wonderful time on our excursion to the Museum of Play and Art (MoPA)! It was a fun-filled day of creativity, discovery, and hands-on learning, with our focus being our Inquiry topic: Energy comes in different forms.

Term 4 SunSmart Reminder

A reminder that Term 4 is a “Hats On” term — all students are required to wear their school hat when outdoors. Please also ensure your child has sunscreen applied before school. If your child requires a particular brand or type, please send it along clearly labelled in their bag.

Art Show – Wednesday 29th October, 4–6pm

We’re excited to invite all families to our upcoming Learning Expo! This is a special opportunity to celebrate our students’ creativity and see their amazing work on display. Come along between 4:00 and 6:00pm to enjoy the colour, imagination, and talent of our young learners.

Leah Martin lmartin@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Rebecca Murray rmurray@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Judy Carr jcarr@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Paula Parish pparish@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

GRADE 2

Welcome back to Term 4!

We can’t believe we’re here already! We have lots of exciting events coming up this term, so it’s important to keep a close eye on ClassDojo to stay up to date.

Literacy

We have been blown away by the reading progress of everyone in our class! Our new take-home readers are now up and running, so please ensure blue reading folders are sent to school on Mondays. This allows us to change books and send home any necessary learning tasks.

Mathematics

We are wrapping up our unit on Fractions this week, where students have been learning to identify and represent ½ and ¼ of wholes and sets of objects. Next, we’ll begin our unit on Time, where students will learn to read times to the hour, half past, quarter past, and quarter to. As an extension, we’ll also explore elapsed time.

Excursions

We are excited to announce that we’ll be heading to the Ballarat Wildlife Park on Thursday 11th December (TBC). We’re also hoping to squeeze in a few more fun activities before the end of the year! Keep an eye on ClassDojo for updates, and we’ll let you know when permissions become available on PAM.

Prayer Gathering

Looking ahead, our final Year 2 Prayer Gathering will be held on Friday, November 21st. We look forward to celebrating this special occasion together as a school community.

Joke of the Week

As part of our Speaking and Listening program, we are absolutely loving our “Joke of the Week” sessions! Each week, students have the opportunity to prepare and present a joke to the class, helping build confidence and oral language skills. ClassDojo will keep you updated on the theme for each week’s jokes.

Emma Roberts eroberts@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Matt O'Dowd modowd@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Amanda Delorenzo mdelorenzo@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

GRADE 3

Welcome back to Term 4! Our Grade 3s have settled in beautifully and have hit the ground running. It’s been wonderful to see everyone return refreshed and ready to learn.

In Maths, we’re revisiting Place Value, making sure we have a solid understanding before moving into more complex concepts later in the term. In Literacy, we’re continuing with our Structured Literacy Program, focusing on building strong reading, writing, and spelling foundations.

Our idiom of the week is “beggars can’t be choosers.” Quiz your child at home and see if they can explain what it means! Our two focus words this week are guilt and negative, we’ve had some thoughtful discussions around what these words mean and how they’re used in different contexts.

As we move through Term 4, we’ll be completing a range of assessments in preparation for end-of-year reports. This process has already begun. We remind students that these assessments are simply tools to help teachers understand what they already know and what they’re ready to learn next. There’s no need for stress or worry, it’s all about learning, not judging.

It would be wonderful if this message could also be echoed at home. We want every student to feel calm and confident coming to school, even during testing periods. If you notice your child feeling anxious or reluctant, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, we’re here to support them.

We look forward to Deb returning at the start of week 4.

Jade LoRicco jloricco@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Deb Holland dholland@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

GRADE 4

Can you believe it’s Term 4 already?

We can hardly believe our wonderful students are almost ready for Year 5! Before we get there, we have a jam-packed term full of learning, excitement, and fun ahead.

We kicked off the term by exploring location and symmetry. Students wrapped up the unit by creating stunning symmetrical mandalas and working in small groups on a school-wide scavenger hunt using grid maps. This week we have begun exploring fractions, some students are really trying to nail equivalent fractions while others are looking at improper fractions and mixed numerals.

In Literacy, we’re diving into information texts. Our focus ties in beautifully with our Geography unit, as we explore how to research, structure, and write informative texts that teach others about the amazing world of Habitats.

Our Geography unit is already off to an exciting start! Students will be heading outdoors to explore our local biome - including the gardens, lake, and Red Rock - to investigate the fascinating creatures and habitats all around us.

This term’s Religion focus is on Gift, the special gifts given to us by God and the Holy Spirit. We’re also very proud of Matt's Grade 4 class, who are preparing their Prayer Gathering for this Friday. We hope to see some families there to share this special moment!

We’ve begun our GEM (Gratitude, Empathy, Mindfulness) learning journey with a focus on Social Awareness. Students are learning to notice and celebrate not only their own gifts and talents but also those of the people around them. We’ll be exploring this through discussions, games, and reflective activities — tying beautifully into our Religion theme of Gift.

Important Dates

October

Friday 17th – Year 4 Prayer Gathering

Thursday 23rd – Swimming Program begins

Wednesday 29th – Learning Expo, 4–6pm

Friday 31st – Year 4 Prayer Gathering

November

Monday 3rd – Pupil-Free / Report Writing Day

Friday 14th – Mission Day

Friday 21st – Prep–4 Activity Day

December

Tuesday 2nd & Wednesday 3rd – Learning Conversations

Wednesday 10th – End of Year Liturgy, 6pm

Thursday 18th – Students’ Last Day

It’s shaping up to be a busy, joyful, and memorable end to the year — we can’t wait to share it all with you and the students!

Matt Absalom mabsalom@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Maegen Potter mpotter@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Susie Scott sscott@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

GRADE 5

Welcome back to all our wonderful Year 5 students for the final term of the year! It’s hard to believe we’re already in Term 4 and what a busy term we have ahead.

Our swimming lessons begin next Thursday, 23 October. Please remember to bring bathers, a towel, and pool shoes such as thongs or Crocs each session.

A big well done to all students who represented our school in the Athletics Carnival last Friday. We had some outstanding results from our Year 5 group, and we are so proud of everyone’s effort and sportsmanship.

We have been exploring measurement focusing on length, mass, and capacity. Students have enjoyed lots of hands-on activities while learning to choose the right unit of measurement and use key vocabulary and abbreviations correctly.

We’ve started reading our new class novel, The Last Bear by Hannah Gold. Students are already loving the story! In writing, we’ve been learning about relative clauses and how to identify them in our reading and use them in our own writing.

Our new Economics and Business unit has begun for Inquiry. Students have started exploring the difference between needs and wants, using examples from everyday life.

In Religion we’ve started learning about Solidarity and how we can show care, compassion, and fairness towards others in our daily lives.

Congratulations to Rachel Downard and her class on a beautiful Prayer Gathering to start our term, celebrating Mission Month and the Sacrament of Confirmation. Our next Prayer Gathering will be led by Rachael Cahill’s Year 5 class on Friday, 24 October and we look forward to sharing this special celebration with you.

Rachel Downard rdownard@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Rachael Cahill rcahill@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

GRADE 6

The Grade 6's are currently having an amazing time exploring Melbourne on their Grade 6 Camp!

Important Dates:

Monday 3rd November - School Closure

Tuesday 4th November - Public Holiday

Friday 14th November - Mission Day

Tuesday 2nd December - Learning Conversations

Tuesday 9th December - Trinity & CSC Orientation Day

Wednesday 10th December - Graduation 6pm

Friday 12th December - Adventure Park Excursion

Jess Downard jdownard@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Jodie Hassett jhassett@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Katie Monaghan kmonaghan@smcolac.catholic.edu.au

Administration News