Learning & Teaching 

Learning and Teaching - Vira Pirrotta

THE INSTRUCTIONAL WATERFALL CHART 

The Assessment Waterfall Chart, a powerful tool, is designed to empower educators in comprehensively assessing student progress, thereby fostering a positive impact on their academic journey.

The Assessment Waterfall Chart, a structured approach to understanding student achievement, was developed by the esteemed Lynn Sharratt. As a renowned educator and author, her expertise lends credibility to the effectiveness of this tool. 

Over the past two years, our dedicated staff have been instrumental in successfully embedding this model as a pedagogical approach to our Learning and Teaching at St. Fidelis.

Over the last year, through the newsletter, celebrations of learning afternoons, and parent/student learning conversations, parents have seen how we have begun to embed this approach at St. Fidelis. 

Over the next few issues of the newsletter, I will revisit each part of the chart in more detail with photos and examples to continue to develop your understanding of the chart and better understand what will be presented at our learning conversations, which are part of our reporting process at St. Fidelis. 

REPORTING at St. Fidelis 

Our reporting focuses on communicating the learning and teaching at St Fidelis Parish School so that students, teachers and parents can work together to improve student learning. We communicate information about students’ learning achievements to parents in the following areas: academically, physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.  We communicate with children and their parents on learning achievements to set future goals and inform parents about learning and teaching. At St. Fidelis, we link our assessment and reporting procedures to our learning and teaching practices to discuss their child’s learning achievements with parents.  

At St Fidelis’ we issue reports to parents twice a year, in June and December, to formally record students’ progress in different curriculum areas.  

Other ways we report are listed below:

• Meet and Greet conversations at the beginning of the year 
• Written report -mid and end-of-year 
• Parent Curriculum Overviews 
• Learner Self-Assessment
• Program or Integration Support Group Meetings, if required
• Information sessions
• Sacramental Parent /Child workshops
• Classroom wall documentation
• Weekly School newsletter
• National Assessment Plan-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)
• Celebrations of Learning 

Reporting Timeline 

Friday 3rd May - Curriculum Overviews emailed to parents via Audiri 

Monday 17th June - Semester Reports made available to parents 

Wednesday 19th June- Parent/Teacher/Child Conversations 1:30 pm - 7:30 pm

PARENT HELPERS 

Parents who have completed the parent induction program can begin working in the learning spaces as of Monday, April 29th. Your child’s teacher will contact you with their timetable. 

Please ensure you have a current Working with Children Check and have completed a Code of Conduct form at our school office. These are essential safety measures to ensure the well-being of all our students. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation in this matter. 

If you would like to volunteer your help this year, please see the flyer for all the induction session details.  Supporting Learners.pdf

If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at vpirrotta@sfmoreland.catholic.edu.au. 

LITERACY NEWS - Bernadette Parnis

Our Foundation students continue to bring home high frequency words on a weekly basis so that they can learn to recognise and read these words.

What are high frequency words?

High-frequency words are commonly occurring words that appear in written English. These words are used frequently in texts and are foundational to literacy and language development. High frequency words are words that you come across frequently. It's important that children are able to read these words, pronounce them correctly, spell them and understand what they mean within a sentence.

Some high frequency words can be sounded out. However, many are not only hard to read but also difficult to write because of phonic irregularity, for example, ‘saw’, especially in the early stages of reading making them difficult to sound out. 

Recognising and being able to read high frequency words supports children’s confidence as being able to read and recognise these words can make reading and writing less challenging.

Did you know that there are 16 words which make up around a quarter of every piece of writing? I wonder if you can list the words. 

Following are some fun suggestions that may support students with learning the words. 

Stay tuned! Information about the ‘Premier’s Reading Challenge’ to come soon.

Bernadette Parnis

Literacy Leader 

FAMILY ENGAGEMENT - Leanne Wenckowski

Storytime  is back at St Fidelis for 2024 

Each Monday afternoon during the school term, you are invited to Storytime. Come and listen to a story, enjoy completing a craft activity and have a play with some friends. Toddlers and pre-schoolers welcome. Please enter via the Saunders Street gate.  Parents/carers are required to stay for the Storytime session. For further details please contact me via my email lwenckowski@sfmoreland.catholic.edu.au

RSVP: Please email me if you are attending so I can prepare resources etc.

Leanne Wenckowski

Family Engagement Leader

NUMERACY NEWS - Colleen Monaghan

I am including a list of the strategies and their definitions for you. These strategies are important for students to grasp and understand. They are used in various addition problems depending on the numbers being added. 

Addition Strategies

Strategies are listed from the earliest strategies up through the standard algorithm.  Many are used side by side, but it is important to understand that the variety of strategies are used to build a deeper conceptual understanding and move to a more procedural model backed by conceptual understanding of addition.  Keep in mind that mastery of the standard algorithm of addition is not expected until grade 4, however students will begin practising the standard algorithm along side other strategies earlier than grade 4.

Beginning Strategies

Students begin their understanding of addition by modeling out the actions in a joining situation.  They may draw pictures, use counters or cubes, use their fingers, or even use five or ten frames.  Students will need exposure to different types of addition problems such as add to, put together, or compare problems where they could be looking to find either a sum or a missing addend in the problem.  Students also need practice with equations where the missing sum or addend is on the left side of the equal symbol as opposed to the typical sum to the right of the equal symbol.  The equal symbol does not signify "the answer is" but rather the expressions on either side of the equal symbol represent the same value.

One major concept that students work on early in addition is making combinations of 5 and then 10.  As students learn these combinations, it strengthens their ability to compose (put together) or decompose (take apart) numbers.  This in turn helps with their fluency and building their tool box of more efficient strategies.

Counting Up & Counting On

What is the difference between the Counting Up and Counting On strategies?  The Counting Up strategy is when students count all the numbers as they are adding.  For example, when adding three plus two, they would say "one, two, three...four, five".  The Counting On strategy is when students hold on to one number and continue counting on the number added.  For example,  when doing the same problem, adding three plus two, the student would say "three...four, five".  Students typically start with Counting Up and gradually move on to Counting On when they can hold one value as a group - typically the larger value.

Number grids are a great way for students to start looking for patterns in addition.  It begins to build an understanding of place value as students begin looking at what they notice about the tens and ones places.  Number grids are uniquely set up in rows of ten to model our base ten number system.  As students move across a row, they should notice the digit in the tens place stays the same until the end of the row and the ones place increases by one.  As they move up or down a row, they should notice that the ones place stays the same and the digit in the tens place either increases or decreases by one.

Doubles and Near Doubles 

The strategy of doubles and near doubles utilizes a students understanding of halving and doubling quantities.  It then builds on the known doubles facts to find near doubles (doubles plus one or doubles minus one). For example, if a student knows the fact of 7 + 7 = 14, they can use that fact to support adding:

•   6 + 7
•   7 + 6
•   8 + 7
•   7 + 8

7 + (7  - 1) = 14  - 1 or 7 + 6 = 13

7 + (7 + 1) = 14 + 1 or 7 + 8 = 15

Open Number Line

We are all familiar with the number line that young children use.  Typically it begins at zero and counts up by one.  An open number line is a blank number line that can be used for any values along the number line that would be useful in solving problems.  Typically tick marks are not included on the open number line and as number are added to the number line, they may not be to scale.  The open number line is useful in making a representation to record steps of mental computation.  

Compensation

Compensation is a strategy, often carried out in mental math, where one or more numbers is adjusted to make easier-to-use numbers for mental math.  For example some value may be taken from one addend and given to the other addend to make the problem easier to solve.  In the problem 59 + 32, 59 is only one away from 60 and 60 would be easier to add to than the 59, so taking one away from 32 (leaving behind 31) and giving it to the 59 (making 60), gives us the problem 60 + 31.  The problems 59 + 32 and 60 + 31 are equivalent, but 60 + 31 is something that most could consider easier to solve mentally.Compensation decomposes (takes apart) or recomposes (puts back together) numbers to make addition easier to solve mentally.  Students need to understand how numbers can be broken apart and put back together to strengthen their number sense skills.

Making "Friendly" Numbers

Making "friendly" numbers refers to changing a number in a problem to one that may be easier to use for written or mental math.  These numbers may include landmark (like 25, 50, 75, etc.) or decade numbers (like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc.).  "Friendly" numbers may be used in other strategies such as compensation and open number lines.  This strategy can also be used on its own, by adding to or subtracting from one of the addends and then removing or adding back in the amount to the sum.  For example, when solving 36 + 56, 36 is 4 away from 40, so by adding on 4 to the addend, means that 4 would need to be removed from the sum.  By adding 4 to the 36 and using 40 + 56 = 96, then removing the 4 that were added, 96 - 4 = 92, so 36 + 56 = 92.  It is important to keep in mind that the type of problem or the numbers used in the problem can lead to different strategies and the bigger concept is around number sense.

Partial Sums

The partial sums strategy utilizes place value to add each place value individually then bringing the sums within each place value together to make a final sum.

Standard Algorithm

The  standard algorithm for addition is the strategy most adults think of when asked to add numbers.  Historically, it is a set of procedures that we were taught in our own schooling.  It is an efficient strategy, but it is strictly procedural.  When students can utilize more conceptual strategies to build their understanding of addition, they then can connect the procedures to that conceptual understanding.  Mastery of the standard algorithm is expected by the end of grade 4, however students will be introduced to this strategy much earlier as they are connecting strategies to build deeper knowledge.

I hope this helps you in working with your child at home.

Colleen Monaghan

Numeracy Leader

ITALIAN NEWS - Rosa Fokianos

BUONGIORNO! 

Bentornati a tutti! (Welcome back everyone!)  Hope you all had a lovely term break as well as an extra long Anzac day weekend that has just passed. 😀

Term 2 is always a busy term, (as they all are) but more so this term for Italian. There are some special dates coming up that you may like to put in your diaries as a reminder:

• giovedì 9 maggio (Thursday 9th May) - Grade 5/6 excursion to the LUME to see the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition. I have already been to see this exhibition and I’m sure the children will enjoy it very much. Permission notes were given out for this last week and I also mentioned to the Grade 5/6 ‘s, if any parent would like to volunteer on the day, to email me or the child’s class teacher. Volunteers must have a current Working with Children’s Check (sited by the school), completed a Code of Conduct form (available from the front office), as well as have participated in a parent helper induction session, (these courses are held regularly, one will even be held this week on Wednesday 2nd May).
• domenica 2 giugno (Sunday 2nd June) - Festa della Repubblica / Italian National Day (more information on this later in the term)
• giovedì 20 giugno (Thursday 20th June) - St Fidelis’ Italian Day (maybe start thinking about an Italian day costume for your child/children to wear on the day)!

Apart from the above events happening this term, I’d like to also take this opportunity to inform the St Fidelis parent community about the children’s Italian learning for this term. As always, I will be revising various language structures taught throughout the year, as well as the following for this term: 

Foundation: The students will be learning to…

• Follow simple classroom instructions through gestures. 
• Contribute and participate in songs and games using keywords related to colours.
• Identify then state their favourite colour and justify their response.
• Continue to ask for permission to do things

Grade 1/2: The students will be learning to…

• Express their feelings and emotions using appropriate questions and answers.
• Notice that Italian words end mostly with vowels to mark gender and number.
• Experiment with pronunciation and intonation throughout each session.
• Continue to follow classroom instructions in Italian. 

Grade 3/4: The students will be learning to…

• Exchange information about how they are feeling and why?
• Identify days of the week and months of the year and use this information in real life contexts, for example, Oggi è lunedì, il ventidue aprile.
• Continue to experiment with pronunciation and intonation throughout each session.
• Use digital technology to reinforce their language learning.

Grade 5/6: The students will be learning to…

• Expand their cultural understanding of Italy by investigating its regions, landmarks, festivals and famous Italians such as Leonardo da Vinci. 
• Notice that there are different dialects in Italian, which is reflected in the place of origin within Italy itself.
• Research, then create an Italian travel itinerary to consolidate their cultural understanding. 
• Use digital technology appropriately to assist with their research.

Throughout the term, the children also start each session with a prayer including saying Il segno della croce, the Sign of the Cross, (Foundation have just started this term), as well as learning the Ave Maria (Hail Mary) and Padre Nostro (Our Father)  in italiano.

One final point I’d like to mention is in regards to Italian labels around the school. I keep putting up new ones around the school building and classrooms, so I wonder if your child has been able to report back to you what new sign they have found and what it means? Buon divertimento!  👀🙂

Until next time…buona settimana! (Have a good week).

Signora Rosa 🌹