What's happening in our learning spaces? 

FOUNDATION 

As the year is coming to an end, Foundation AP and LW have been busy little bees! We are still learning to count how many days in Foundation, mastering numbers up to hundreds! We have been practising counting by 2s, 5s and 10s all the way to 170 last week. 

On Monday 20th November, we acknowledged World Children’s Day, with three cheers to the children at our morning assembly! We discussed the importance of promoting togetherness and an awareness on how to improve children's welfare. To celebrate, we wore our pyjamas on Friday and enjoyed quality time together while we ate those delicious zooper doopers.  

As members of the Catholic Faith community, this week we collaborated and  unpacked how God created heaven and earth, plants, animals and people. The Creation Story from the biblical Book of Genesis describes the seven days of creation in order. As thinkers, we gathered our first understandings of how we believed how the world was created. Then after reading the Creation Story, we recorded what we knew now with the knowledge we learnt throughout the week. As writers, we furthered our understanding by writing our own prayer of thanks about the different things we are thankful for God creating.

As writers, we furthered our understanding by writing our own prayer of thanks about the different things we are thankful for God creating.

As mathematicians, we have extended our learning of measuring the capacity of objects into a new and exciting unit! Students made amazing connections to the mathematical concept of Mass. We had such fun whilst working with interactive and hands-on activities that compared items around the classroom. We have learnt new words to describe the weight of things such as light/heavy, lighter/heavier, lightest/heaviest and the same as and equal. Using the balance scales this week was so much fun to see how the heavier items drop to the bottom and the lighter items hang in the air! 

On Friday, Foundation AP hosted our Whole School Prayer for the first time ever! We are so proud of all the students who practised their readings and were so brave and courageous speaking in front of the entire school. Well done to those in Foundation AP.

We look forward to Foundation LW when they host the next Whole School Prayer on Friday 8th of December. 

Have a great week everyone! 

Thank you, 

Leanne and Alex 

FoundationTeam

YEAR 1/2

This week in 1/2 was certainly a very exciting one! 

As part of The Resilience Project, we had time and opportunity to explore how different jobs in the community can help others. As thinkers we brainstormed a list with our peers and talked about how each job helps people who are in the community that we live in and people who live around the world. We had time to reflect on our class discussion and choose a job that we would like to do when we grow up. We recorded our thinking in our TRP journal. 

As members of a faith community, we are tuning in to the liturgical season of Advent. We engaged in the See-Think-Wonder thinking routine and activated our prior knowledge about what we already know. To provoke our thinking, we were presented with a provocation of an Advent wreath, candles and pictures. Below is some of our first thinking: 

• Families spend time together during Advent. (Eva. D)
• People listen to the stories of Advent when they go to Church. (Veronica)
• The white candle represents Jesus, the pink candle represents joy and the purple candles represent hope, love and peace. These candles are lit during Advent. (Hunter)
• Advent is at Christmas time. (Giorgio)
• We light the five candles during Advent (Isabel)

We also had the opportunity to celebrate World Children's Day last week by acknowledging the rights of children to health and education around the world. As researchers we engaged in finding out about the Pyjama Foundation to learn about how people work together to positively impact children's education. On Friday we wore our pyjamas to school to raise awareness of disadvantaged children. We also brought along a gold coin donation to raise money for the foundation and to show gratitude and support. 

As mathematicians we have been finding out about time and learning to tell time on analogue and digital clocks. Together as a class, we collaborated to create a large class clock. As thinkers we discussed the features of a clock including the placement of the numbers and identifying the minute and hour hand. We have been making and reading half past, quarter past and quarter to times. We even made connections to fractions to help us understand these concepts. 

Thank you families for helping us to learn how to read the time at home, it has definitely been a big help! 

We look forward to another wonderful week of learning in 1/2! 

1/2 Team, 

Alycia Marsico, Vania Sparano and Vicky Karalis 

YEAR 3/4

World Children's Day & National Fairy Bread Day/ Pyjama Day

We have had a wonderful week celebrating these two very special days. On Friday we spent time making Fairy Bread as a way of acknowledging the day and supporting the Pyjama Foundation. The Pyjama Foundation is a charity that provides children and young people in foster care the opportunity to change the direction of their lives with learning, life skills and confidence. We engaged in finding out about this cause and had the opportunity to enjoy some delicious fairy bread. To end our day we were also treated to a free Zooper Dooper to celebrate World Children’s Day.

As writers, we are learning to create our own factual narrative based on an environmental challenge. This week, we drafted the first pages of our narrative thinking about the setting, characters and storyline. 

As mathematical thinkers, we are learning to represent fractions in different ways. Mrs Monaghan supported some of the Year 3/4 students to record and represent fractions using unifix blocks. 

Home Learning

Our final home learning of the year is due on Friday 1 December. We thank you for supporting your child in engaging in the fortnightly learning opportunities. Please continue to engage in reading with your child and supporting them in documenting this in the reading diary. 

Just a reminder of the important dates for Year 3/4 in Term 4:

Year 3/4 Teachers

Belinda Panzarino & Bianka Zorzut

YEAR 5/6

We had a wonderful week in the SLA last week! We are gearing up to some very exciting days ahead for our students, in particular our Year 6’s! On Thursday they will compete in their final Sports Day here at St Fidelis, followed by GRADUATION on the 9th of December. The students will then have their Year 6 Big Day Out on the 13th of December and Carols on the 14th. Our future leaders (our Year 5 students) will soon be presenting their speeches applying for 2024 Leadership Roles and meeting their new buddies this Monday! It’s all happening!

In Literacy, our students have been creating their very own yearbook for their graduation. They have created individual pages that provide a snapshot into who they are right now as well as fun pages of memories, photos and most likely to...  We look forward to sharing some of their yearbook pages with you soon!

Last week in Numeracy, the students competed in a Maths Games Day run by Mrs Monaghan. What a fantastic day we had working collaboratively in teams and completing a range of challenging tasks! The students split into teams of 4 and in the morning session were tasked with competing against other teams in a variety of physical mathematics tasks. From water measuring capacity, human bingo, race to find the answer and make that shape the students ran, twirled and jumped to win points for their team. 

After recess our students then battled other teams in 1 vs 1 strategic games. This was a fierce competition where students played games like paddocks and connect 4.  After racking up lots of points in this part of the day the final round involved the teams answering as many worded problems as they could before the time ran out. The points were tallied over the whole day and our winning team was……

Team 3! James, Ethan, Kiara and Selena. 

Congratulations to our winners and also all of our students on a fantastic day. All the teachers involved were so proud of how well you worked with your teams and the positive attitudes everyone had throughout the day. Thank you also to our wonderful Parent Helpers, Sandra, Elizabeth, Sylvia and Joanne, who came along to assist us on the day. 

In Inquiry, the students are continuing their research project which involves comparing two real-life examples of a natural disaster that has affected two different regions. We are coming across some interesting findings as we continue this research.

We look forward to another jam packed week of fun this week! The countdown is on to the end of the year!

Have a wonderful week!

5/6 Teaching Team