Magnify

Term 1 Week 4

New to Magnify in 2026

All Sandhurst schools will introduce InitalWrite to help support student growth with their writing skills. Students in Foundation and Year 1 will include InitialWrite into the Literacy block. It is a scripted program to support students with learning how to write. Foundation students begin with oral sentence development and moves towards writing sentences. Year 1 students have a daily sentence to write that focusses on what they have been learning about for example combining simple sentences into complex sentences. Time is then allocated into the Writing time of the literacy block to complete lessons with slides and student tasks. Year 2s will implement this program next year.

This year our Foundation students will begin the year with a language screener. The OxEd Language Screener has 4 parts to administer one to one. Mrs Kym Cox and Miss Georgia Gattuso will administer this screener on the Wednesdays when Preps come in for testing in the coming weeks. The teachers will then receive a report for each student to show areas to focus on. This will be shared with parents during the term. Those children who need more support can access intervention called NELI, which stands for Nuffield Early Language Intervention. The NELI programme provides our school with a way of identifying early language difficulties and is proven to improve children's language skills and behaviour in schools.

New to Years 3/4 and Years 5/6 is Ochre Science. There is a scope and sequence of topics to be covered to ensure our students access a good foundation of science knowledge.

New to Year 3/4s is SpellEx. This is a whole class program which provides explicit instruction in spelling concepts, terminology, rules and conventions. This will also be included in the Literacy program alongside Ochre English

Magnify Around the Classrooms

#magnifysandhurst

Here’s the latest update from the Junior Area regarding all things Magnify. Final testing has been completed and units of work finished off.

Foundation

The Preps have been learning about rhyme. They have been completing rhyming chains, identifying rhymes and adding rhymes to a sequence. In writing, they have been learning about the concept of a word and how words are made up of sounds and letters. Their teachers have modelled the correct way to form sentences with a capital letter and a full stop. They have also been learning about syllables and have practised clapping, segmenting and counting syllables in words.

Gr 1

Grade Ones have been learning about the following sounds: /ch/, /th/ and /oo/ (moon, book). The children have been enjoying the story book, “Josephine Wants to Dance,” by Jackie French and David Whately. Josephine is a Kangaroo who wants to dance, despite the fact that kangaroos are supposed to hop. The children have learnt new vocabulary from this text: swayed, sobbed and leap. They are about to start a new storybook called, “Reach for the Stars.” During their writing lessons, they are reviewing sentence parts; pronouns (he, she they), reviewing characters and will be reviewing three-part sentences.

Gr 2

Grade Twos are reading “The Snail and the Whale” by Julia Donaldson. They have been introduced to new vocabulary through this text: shimmering, towering and slithered. They are learning about proper nouns and common nouns in grammar and during their writing lessons, they are expanding simple sentences to include adjectives and even adverbs to make the sentences more interesting. In spelling, they are revising the bossy ‘e’ spelling rule, particularly how the bossy ‘e’ changes a short vowel into a long vowel (or a vowel that says its name) and that the ‘e’ doesn’t make its own sound.

Foundation

In Mathematics, Grade Prep children have been copying and continuing a three-part colour pattern. They have been ordering daily events and learning the days of the week.

Gr 1 

In Mathematics, Grade Ones have been counting forwards and backwards to 120. They are learning to represent two-digit numbers on ten-frames and write the numeral. They are also learning to represent multiples of ten with bundles and write the numeral.

Gr 2

In Mathematics, the Grade Two children have been working on the topic of Place Value – revising place value to 100s using base-10 blocks, writing 3-digit numbers in numerals and words and ordering 3-digit numbers.

Gr 3 and 4

In Literacy, students are working on writing a persuasive piece of writing. This writing aims to convince the reader of a certain point of view. Adverts and newspaper columns are good examples of persuasive text. Though there are many techniques to write persuasively, most persuasive texts include a central argument, evidence to support the point and a conclusion, to summarise the text.

In Mathematics, students are learning the importance of place value in understanding numbers. Students learn to recognize, model, represent and order numbers to at least 10000 and beyond. They also will partition, rearrange and regroup numbers to assist calculation and solve problems.

In Science, students are learning to describe why we need a thermometer to accurately measure heat. they investigate the importance of thermometers to accurately measure temperature and gain a basic understanding of how different types of thermometers work. They will also learn the importance of choosing a thermometer with an appropriate scale for the task. We treat temperature here just as a measure of how hot or cold something is.

In Humanities, students will have an awareness of community to a national scale. They will identify three key national flags that represent Australia, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander communities. The features of the flags and their symbolism are considered in understanding the significance of these communities in Australia’s identity.

Gr 5 and 6

In Mathematics, the Grade 5’s are currently focusing on factors and multiples and will be working on identifying factors and multiples of different numbers using various strategies.

The Grade 6 students are focusing on prime, composite, square and triangular numbers and will be working on identifying which numbers are prime and composite, and using different strategies to work out square and triangular numbers.

In Literacy, the Grade 5 students are continuing to work on their OCHRE unit that centres around the novel ‘War Horse’ by Michael Morpurgo. This story is told from the perspective of Joey, a farm horse sold to the British Army during World War 1.

During this unit, students will also be focusing on narrative writing.

Our Grade 6 students are continuing their OCHRE unit that centres around the novel ‘Ghost in my Suitcase’ by Gabrielle Wang. This story is about a 12 year old girl, Celeste, who travels to China to spread her late Mother’s ashes, and discovers that her grandmother is a traditional ghost hunter.

During this unit, students will also be focusing on persuasive writing about whether or not they believe that understanding family history is important.

In Science, our first topics for the year are ‘Animal Survival’ (Grade 5) and ‘Reversible & Irreversible Changes’ (Grade 6).

During the Animal Survival unit the Grade 5’s are focusing on animal habitats and animal adaptations.

During the Reversible and Irreversible Changes unit, the Grade 6’s are focusing on the three states of matter (solids, liquids and gases) and what makes a change reversible and irreversible.

In Humanities, the Grade 5 students are learning about ‘Australia in the 1800’s that explores the significant period of Australian colonisation in the 1800s, examining the causes of British settlement and its far-reaching impacts. Students investigate different perspectives of colonial life, including examination of First Nations experiences, while learning about key events and individuals who shaped colonial Australia.

The Grade 6 students are learning about ‘The Globe’, focusing on global features of the Earth, including hemispheres, latitude and longitude, the equator, Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and the Arctic and Antarctic Circles.