Educational Achievement
Reading
Growing Our Vocabulary
The more words children know, the easier it is for them to understand what they read, share their ideas and learn new things. This is why building vocabulary is such an important part of learning to read.
During the latter half of 2026, explicit teaching of vocabulary is a focus for our teachers. We are paying particular attention to Tier 2 words — interesting and useful words that children may not use every day, but often come across when reading, writing and learning at school. Words such as compare, predict, investigate, enormous and fortunate are examples.
At school, teachers are deliberately choosing important words from the books and topics they are teaching and spending time talking about what these words mean, how they are used and connecting them to words children already know.
What can you do at home?
There are lots of simple ways you can help build your child's vocabulary.
Read together. Reading books aloud exposes children to lots of new and interesting words.
Talk about new words. If you come across a word your child doesn't know, stop and talk about what it might mean.
Make connections. Ask, “What other words do you know that mean something similar?” For example, enormous means very big.
Use new words in everyday conversations. If your child learns a new word, try using it again later in the week.
Ask questions. Instead of simply asking what happened in a story, try questions such as “Why do you think that happened?”, “Can you describe it?” or “What do you think that word means?”
Every conversation and every book is an opportunity to learn a new word! By talking, reading and exploring language together, you can help your child build a strong vocabulary that will support their learning across every area of the curriculum.
Classroom Music
Jess Green, Jess Ciampa and David Hewitt form the multigenre ensemble, Zeeko. Since 2009, Zeeko has created environmentally and socially conscious music performances for children. They have toured Australia extensively for Musica Viva Australia, performing over 600 concerts to well over 100,000 school children in metropolitan, regional, remote and indigenous communities.
We are so lucky to have had the band "Zeeko" and their show, "Two Wheel Time Machine" perform for us on Tuesday (8 September). A huge thank you once again to our marvellous music sub-committee who have funded this concert through their hard work fundraising this year.
In classroom lessons, I have been working with our students on some activities around the music of this group. This familiarity will enable the students to interact and engage more actively during the concert. Student participation and interaction is a big part of Musica Viva concerts.
In world of Goondiwindi Junior and Senior Voices, we have welcomed several new faces into our rehearsals this fortnight. We are learning this year's Together Sing piece called "We Are Here" and a few new pieces just for fun. We continue to grow our skills in using our singing voices through learning simple rounds and warmups at the beginning of rehearsals.
News from the Library
Thank you for another wonderful term!
As we wrap up the term, a little reminder to please make sure all library books are returned by this Friday, 11th of September.
Thank you for all your support throughout the term. We hope you have a wonderful, relaxing break filled with plenty of fun, laughter and family time!
We look forward to seeing everyone back next term!