Curriculum

Water Safety Week

Many of our students recently participated in our Water Safety program at Westminster Pool. This was a fantastic opportunity for students to build confidence in the water, learn new skills and practice water safety.

G1 (Early Years IELC - Reception to Year 2) - Ms Shelly & Ms Georgina

Over the term, students have been learning about healthy eating through a variety of language-based activities. They are learning to identify and name a variety of different foods, categorise them into their food groups and understand what is needed to have a healthy and balanced diet. 

Students have been learning about different healthy food ratings. Through hands-on activities, they have explored Health Star Rating (HSR) food ratings, sorting foods by their nutritional value using the HSR and applying this knowledge to design a healthy lunchbox using playdough. 

In Writing, students have enjoyed following instructions to recipes or simple paper crafts with a food theme. They have deconstructed and reconstructed procedural texts to understand their structure, focusing on elements such as title, materials and steps. Students have also participated in simple role plays and games to practice 'kitchen' verbs. By the end of the term, our aim is to successfully write, copy or trace a procedure on How to Make a Sandwich.

Y1  (Early Years IELC - Reception to Year 2) with Ms Alisha

This term in science, students have been learning about the characteristics of weather and how it affects their daily lives, including what they wear and the activities they can do for different weather conditions. They have made daily weather observations, created wind meters to measure wind strength, and described features such as temperature, cloud cover, wind, and rain.

In English, we have been learning how to write book reports, focusing on key elements such as titles, authors, characters, settings and plots. Students are also developing their personal responses by writing about their favourite part of a book and explaining why they liked it. A highlight of the term was dressing up as the crayons from The Day the Crayons Quit for our Book Week parade.

R1 (Reception and Year 1) with Ms Danielle

This term has been both busy and exciting. We have warmly welcomed four mid-year Reception students and a new Year 1 student into our class. The children are enthusiastically embracing our class routines, procedures and expectations. Each day they continue to strengthen existing friendships and cultivate new ones.

English: Personal Response Writing

In English, we have been focusing on developing skills in Personal Response. Students share their thoughts and feelings about something they've read, watched or experienced, such as a book, movie, class activity or special event.  Students practice expressing their opinions clearly, building confidence in their ideas and enhancing their writing and vocabulary.

STEM: Exploring Engineering Through Imagination

In STEM, students learn about the roles and responsibilities of engineers. We read the book Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis which celebrates the power of imagination. The story follows a young pig who creatively transforms a simple stick into various objects, demonstrating how imagination can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Inspired by the book, students design prototypes that transform a stick into another object using recycled materials to bring their ideas to life. 

R5 (Reception and Year 1) with Ms Kim & Ms Alice

R5 has been working on addition in maths. We have also been working towards completing our information reports on the iPad using Book Creator. 

Many really enjoyed their first experience at the pool - particularly loving the home-made coral reef on the last day. Getting our faces wet to look through the goggles was a big accomplishment for some of us!

O2 (Special Options - Reception to Year 2) with Ms Tegan

Literacy

Students have been continuing to focus on phonics, learning our basic phonemes and beginning digraphs. We are enjoying using the small whiteboards to write words and simple sentences. We have been enjoying reading the Narrative story ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Students are identifying characters and quoting simple phrases from the text. One of their favourite activities was exploring the story tables.

Maths

This term, students have been focusing on More and Less, Shape and Money. They have been exploring More and less through counting, how many in the jar and dice estimation-based games. They have enjoyed exploring money and how we use money to buy things. Some of their favourite activities include coin rubbing and playing shops. Students are learning how to use money to buy items and practice being a shop keeper.

Topic

In Science and Technologies, students have been exploring Materials and what things are made of. They have explored and played with a variety of materials to see how they are the same and different. They have also explored what houses are made of. We connected this to our literacy work, focusing on the text ‘The Three Little Pigs’. We enjoyed making the different little pigs houses and discovered that the brick house is the strongest (and more fun to make).

B2 (Year 2) with Miss Louise

Students in our B2 classroom have been focusing on Australian Birds. 

We are learning to write informative texts. We have read fluency reads with facts about the emu, kookaburra, galah, rainbow lorikeet, cassowary as well as many other birds. We have even seen some of these birds at school.

Our learning goal is to write an information report. We have had a go at writing facts about the cassowary. We had to write notes and then sentences. Once they had been edited, we did a published copy. We made a cassowary to go with our facts. 

In Health we have been learning about the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling. We listened to a read aloud called The Mess we Made. We found out how our waste can affect our planet. We have embarked on a class project to collect and recycle 10 cent containers. We have brainstormed what we would write in a letter to the other classes, composed our letter and delivered them to the classes. We have decided that some of the money we raise from the 10c containers will go towards an endangered bird at the Adelaide Zoo, as well as some towards an account at school to help other students on special days.   We are excited to see how much we can collect! 

G2 (Year 3 & 4) with Mr Mac & Ms Kathryn

In our class, we are deepening our literacy skills by writing information reports about droughts. This work is closely linked to themes raised through our novel study Runt. 

In Mathematics, we are developing problem-solving strategies with addition and subtraction, while also learning to tell the time to the nearest minute. 

Our science learning is hands-on and exploratory, as we investigate forces and magnetism. We are experimenting with how these forces affect objects in everyday situations.

G3 (Year 3 & 4) with Ms Claudia

G3 have been busy learning how to write an information report. Using information from our mentor text Runt and other research tasks, the class wrote an information report on drought. Students are now applying their learning about information reports to research and write their own on a topic of their own choice. These topics range from planets, animals, famous people, landmarks or favourite sport teams. 

In maths, G3 have been learning measurement and money units. We have learned how to measure objects using measuring tools and using formal units. 

G4 (Year 3, 4, 5 & 6 Special Options) with Ms Nadine & Ms Liana

As Ms Nadine is on leave, students of G4 have welcomed Ms Liana to their class for the remainder of the term. They have also been learning about money and fractions in Maths, as well as ways to keep their bodies healthy in Health. A key part of this learning is how to make balanced food choices across the day.

Y3 (Year 3, 4, 5 & 6 IELC) with Ms Linta

We have had a busy and exciting time in Y3 with lots of hands-on learning and special activities.

As part of our Procedure Writing unit, students enjoyed making fairy bread and creating an Indonesian paper kite. These activities helped them practice following and writing clear instructions step by step.

Y6 and Y7 (Year 5 & 6) with Mr Tim, Ms Alanah & Ms Karen

This term in Health, students have been exploring how our identity and development changes as we grow, and learning strategies and resources to help manage these changes in positive ways.

As part of the Child Protection Curriculum (Focus Area 3 – Recognising and Reporting Abuse), students have also been learning about bodily integrity, naming body parts and understanding what abuse is. We have focused on recognising safe and unsafe situations and identifying trusted adults to talk to if they ever feel unsafe.

In HASS, Year 5 students are looking at Financial Literacy with a focus on needs and wants.  They spent time looking at the cost of going to the Adelaide Royal Show, and determining how they could reduce this cost.  Moving forward we are looking at how to make good choices about saving.

Year 6 have begun their work within the $20 BOSS program.  Developing and creating a market stall to sell goods during term 4. This program provides students with $20 to spend to create a stall with the intention of making this money back (plus $1 interest to be paid back to the Young Change Agents who lend us the money), as well as some profit to be used to support social justice within the community.

Year 6s are also beginning to prepare for Graduation in Term 4!   

Year 5s are beginning to think about the design for next year’s Seniors tops.