Middle Learning News

Hi Families!

We've had an exciting term in our learning space! I'm incredibly proud of the academic progress our students have made. Mid-year testing results have shown growth in phonics, reading, spelling, writing and mathematical skills. Socially, there's been a noticeable boost in everyone's confidence. 

-Connection Circle-

This term, we’ve changed what our whole-class discussions look like. This involves sitting together in a circle. Coming together in this way has fostered face-to-face interactions and allowed for more dynamic conversations. We begin and end each day in this way. 

 It’s been a small but significant change to our classroom culture. 

-Post Box-

Another activity that has been a hit this term involves the Post Box. Students write letters to one another, applauding them for their efforts or thanking them for something. Each week, our postman, Hunter, reads out the letters with such enthusiasm! 

 It’s delightful to hear the kind words being shared.

-Focus Student-

Jane’s focus day spanned a few days amidst the busyness of swimming last week! We kicked off with a Noughts and Crosses championship—congratulations to Noah!

Additionally, she led the creation of a turtle, which inspired the development of our beautiful under-the-sea habitat.

We wrapped up with a focus on positive sportsmanship during a game of dodgeball!

We started Hunter’s focus day with some positive interactions through board games: Deal or No Deal, Checkers, and What am I. The session focused on being a self-umpire, emphasising participation with positivity and honesty. 

Students also applied their self-umpiring skills when playing his chosen game, Marco Polo.

Hunter also picked pizza for our shared lunch celebration. 

-End of Term Celebration-

To end our wonderful term together, we made pizzas. Students worked in groups to follow the pizza dough recipe, demonstrating a high level of patience and the ability to evenly share tasks among all group members.

-Literacy-

To wrap up our literacy learning this week, we have been revising our phonics from the term. Students chose the ir/er/ur/or phoneme for extra practice, along with the long u sound (u, u-e, ue, ew, oo). They read decodable books containing these sounds and participated in spelling investigations to choose the correct spelling options.

In our writing tasks, we focused on adjectives (describing words) to enhance the detail in our pieces. Students read "Tiddler" and "The Rainbow Fish" to identify describing words used in these texts. Using their turtle from Jane’s focus day as inspiration, students wrote adjectives describing the features and personality of their turtle. To conclude our writing for the term students began writing a short narrative involving their turtle, incorporating the adjectives they had chosen.

-100th Birthday Celebration- 

Through our wonderful connection with Nagambie Aged Care, we were asked to create 100 birthday wishes for a resident turning 100! This provided an opportunity for quick learning about the term "century" and we created a timeline of the last 100 years.

-Mathematics-

This fortnight, we have focused on mapping, location and direction skills which beautifully tied in with our current inquiry. Students applied their understanding of left and right, as well as north, south, east, and west, to give directions to specific locations within our area. Each group hid an item and created a set of directions for others to follow.

-Olympics-

Thank you to Shan and our leaders for our St. Joey’s Olympics! A beautiful way to end the term.

I wish everyone a safe and restful break,

Take care

Miss Gab