Students have returned to school after the holidays with lots of stories to share and excitement to be back together at TPS. We have begun new units across all subject areas and have already had an amazing incursion with some of Gardening teacher Emily’s coworkers from Royal Botanical Gardens Victoria! Mainstream and Steiner students all had a go at four different activities, including watercolour painting of plants with artist Claire Mosley, listening to stories about how Indigenous People looked after Country with Jakobi, creating plant pressings and learning scientific details about plants with Emily, and getting to see images of seeds and plant parts on a high-powered microscope with Bec!

This is in preparation for the children to complete a project around the 20-year anniversary of the Children’s Garden at the RBG. 3/4 students will be creating signage for the garden, some of which will be printed and placed in the Children’s Garden for all to see.

An important reminder that the paper copies of the CAMP FORMS are due to be returned, and that permission also needs to be given on Compass. We are trying to get an idea of numbers to give to the camp, and appreciate your support in getting these forms back to classroom teachers ASAP.

Maths:

We’ve started the term in Maths by creating detailed maps to find treasure around the school. Students created a draft on white paper, and then transferred this to grid paper. We used BOLTS to ensure we included all the features of our maps - this handy mnemonic helps students to remember to include a Border, Orientation (direction), Legend, Title and Scale.

We’ve also begun a new unit on multiplicative thinking as we explore different ways to approach multiplication, starting with counting collections and skip counting using arrays.

Literacy:

In Writing, students have been writing procedural texts to match their treasure map created in maths. They have talked about how the steps in a procedure must be in order, and follow a logical sequence. Each step begins with a verb (doing/action words), and is a short, easy to follow instruction.

In Reading, students have begun researching our new Unit Focus topic, Great Southern Lands, which explores countries in the Southern Hemisphere and how they are similar and different to Australia. So far, we have been developing our knowledge of climate and climate zones by reading non-fiction texts. We have been practising our clarifying skills to help us understand all of the new vocabulary we’re discovering.

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

In Writing, students will continue research and create an in-depth information report about a country of their choice in the Southern Hemisphere.
In Maths, we will be learning about multiplicative thinking and how it relates to division and sharing.
In Reading, students will begin working more independently within their groups, by each taking responsibility for a different role to help one another build comprehension.

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