Educational Achievement
Reading
We know that reading every day is very important to not only develop and practise reading skills, but to also build vocabulary and background knowledge. While your child is reading aloud to you, ask them some questions to get them thinking!
Before they start reading:
- Why did you choose this book?
- What do you think the book is about?
- Who do you think will be some characters in the story?
While they are reading:
- What has happened so far?
- What do you think will happen next?
- Why do you think the character said or did that?
- Describe the setting to me. What do you think it would look like?
After they have finished reading the book:
- What was your favourite part of the book and why?
- What did you learn?
- What was the problem in the book and how did it get resolved?
Click the link below to assist your beginning reader at home.
Curriculum
This term in English, most of our year levels are learning how to persuade an audience for a specific purpose.
Some things you can do at home to support this learning include:
- Use high modality persuasive language- definitely, absolutely, must as opposed to maybe, perhaps, could (which are low modality)
- Take a stance- ask children what their preference is and have them give you some reasons
- Justify your reasons- do you want something special for dinner? Practise justifying your reasons why instead of 'I want to'
- Talk about the difference between a regular question and a rhetoric question- a rhetorical question is used to get you to think, rather than to answer. Some examples: How would you feel if...? Do you think it is fair for...? Could you imagine a world where...?
Music
Music and movement play an essential role in early social development by helping children build the foundation for social skills such as communication and cooperation, and enhancing emotional and cognitive development.
In the Music Classroom we are always moving, performing rhythms on different parts of our body and with different actions, performing actions to songs and playing games. We love to play games and it gives us the opportunity to repeat songs over and over in order to practise our singing in a fun way!
So many of our games are social and involve choosing a partner, holding hands in a circle, taking turns and enjoying being together as a class.
In Choir, we are doing some serious rehearsing with some extra times thrown in. We only have a couple of weeks before we perform at the Goondiwindi Eisteddfod, so we have been polishing our songs and getting our actions synchronised for the big day. The students will receive a permission note with details about the day in Week 4 and need to return this by August 1.