Grade 5/6 Cottage by the Sea camp

On Monday the 15th of August, 39 Grade 5/6 students made an early start to the day to jump on the train to start our camp. After a few stops and some changes, we arrived at Cottage by the Sea at around 1:30pm. Students were excited to check out the facilities which included an indoor slide. On their beds they also had many hand knitted gifts that had been made for them.

During our camp, students visited Queenscliff and checked out the 360 Tower and the Queenscliff Marina. We went for beach walks where we went to lighthouses, walked along piers and checked out some rockpools. We also went to Bounce in Geelong where we went crazy on the tramps and rockwalls.

The Marine Discovery Centre was amazing and we learned about many different marine creatures. We got to check out the touch tank, where there was a huge range of different creatures. Our trip out on the boat with members from the Marine Discovery Centre was a definite highlight. During this time the boat gathered seaweed from the bottom of the ocean and lifted into tubs on our boat. Then we sifted through the seaweed and found crabs, plankton, shrimp, mussels, fish and much more. We visited a man made island where seals were playing and hanging out.

Although the weather was cold, we all got into some wetsuits and jumped in the ocean. We did some swimming and boogie boarding which was great fun.

Cottage by the Sea is an amazing camp. They provided us with this camp totally free of charge. The instructors who worked with the children all day were fantastic, caring people who made an effort to build a rapport with every student in our group. The camp worked with us to provide the best possible camp that we could for all our students. This was a camp that the children will never forget!

Rochy Playtime

On Thursday 18th July we welcomed our Kinder friends to Rochy Playtime. This program began in Term 2 to help 4yr old Kinder children feel comfortable in a school environment. During term 2 and 3 we welcome all 4 yr old children who are attending a school next year (regardless of where the child is enrolled at for 2025), to participate in a range of activities and meet some of our fabulous staff. These sessions run for 1 hour on Thursday afternoons from 2.10pm to 3.10pm.

On Thursday the students worked with Beck and Mrs Pascoe to make curly snakes. The children were amazed with the watercolour pencils and the colourful effects they could achieve. To conclude the session the children had a play on one of our very popular playgrounds.

If you have, or know of someone who has a 4 yr old kinder student and is attending school next year, please encourage them to join our fun activity sessions. This week students will be having fun with Mrs Mangan and our gymnastics equipment.

Curriculum overview

Literacy

In Literacy right across the school, students are reading and creating functional texts. Students in Prep – 2 will create their very own information reports on a chosen animal. It will be great for them to learn more about animals and see them at the Melbourne Zoo in week 4. Our grade 3-6’s, will make the most of the Olympics being on and learn through exploring a variety of informative texts about the Olympics. In Writing they will publish their own information text which is connected to the Olympic theme.??? All year levels will also explore and create procedural texts, this could be anything from a recipe to instructions on how to build something.

At home: you can support literacy at home by identifying texts in your everyday life that are informative, and show children the regular use of this genre of reading and writing. Reading regularly and talking about reading. Exploring different and new words you hear to build vocabulary.

Numeracy

In Numeracy our preps will continue to use objects to help them solve addition equations as well as exploring division through sharing. They will also be introduced to the language of measurement, so they are able to compare objects (longer/shorter, heavier/lighter). The 1/2 students are also looking at measurement and using different strategies to show division.

In 3/4 Numeracy they will be working on time – learning how to convert units of time and being able to solve time problems. The focus will shift throughout the term and another focus will be statistics. Students will use data and display it in a variety of ways. They will compare different displays and evaluate the most effective display for different data sets.

In 5/6 Numeracy, they will continue to follow the Olympics theme and participate in a mini metric Olympics. Students will use their knowledge of measurement to measure their results in different events. They will also look at graphing and recording medal results from the Olympics. They will look at making predictions from the data that they have gathered.

At home: you can support numeracy growth through everyday activities like calculating the change when you by something at the canteen, telling the time and working out how long until dinner etc. With the Olympics coming up you could discuss their times or measurements in Athletics and compare them to your own efforts, simply looking at the Olympics and the medal tally – Maths is everywhere!

Inquiry

Our Prep – 2 students will learn about animals and their habitats and as mentioned previously, they will enjoy a day at Melbourne Zoo.

3/4’s will again learn about their inquiry topic through a whole day of learning. The first one is this week (Thursday) where they will explore different materials that they can use to grow things in. Our 3/4’s will also be working towards designing and creating a garden for the space behind out Ninja Course. We are excited to see what they come up with!

5/6’s Design and Technology inquiry unit has seen students create their very own arcade game in two days this week there has been lots of excitement around this and all students have been able to test them out today!

Below are photo's of the 3/4's working on their garden designs.

Below are photo's of the 5/6's creating and sharing their Arcade Games.

Diary Dates