Prep

What’s Happening in Prep: Weeks 7 and 8

What’s been happening

It’s been all about Australian animals in Prep this fortnight! We have been learning about adaptations, habitats and diet and have each chosen an Australian animal to research and draw as part of our science project. We also went on our first school excursion to Moonlit Sanctuary where we got to meet all sorts of reptiles and mammals. We even got to feed wallabies and see some baby joeys in its mother's pouch.

What will be happening over the next fortnight

Wellbeing

Revisiting strategies/ tools to help us move closer to the green zone

Phonics

Identifying the soft g and c sounds (Gentle Cindy rule)
Recognising suffixes – ed and ing

Reading

Decoding words and blending to read smoothly
Recognising how adjectives can be used to describe a noun
Making connections between stories and our own experiences

Writing

Segmenting words into syllables and writing sounds to match
Using dotted thirds to write upper and lowercase letters correctly
Writing and editing a piece of work
Expanding simple sentences with an adjective

Maths

Recognising, ordering and identifying the value of Australian coins
Representing simple everyday financial situations involving money
Comparing objects to decide which is heavier or lighter
Creating and copying patterns
Skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s

Inquiry

Big Question: How do living things grow and change?

Over the next fortnight, students will be exploring the following lines of inquiry:

What are some features of animals and plants?
How do living things grow and change through their lives?
What are the different habitats of plants and animals?

Homework

Continue looking through Decoding Detective and Word Wizard book as well as take home readers. Students are encouraged to participate in daily reading. If students record 100 nights of reading in their journal, they will enjoy a pizza party hosted by Mr. Tapp. Please encourage students to read the same book multiple times per week as this is valuable to their learning and assists with their fluency. Please note that reading pages from the Decoding Detective/ Word Wizard exercise book counts as a reading entry in the student journal.

Optional: Mathletics and exploring the Prep-2 homework rubric located inside the students reading pouch.

Reminders

Friday 30th August – Footy Day
Friday 30th August – Father's Day Breakfast

Year 1

What’s Happening in Year 1: Weeks 7 and 8

What’s been happening

The students have delved into the wonderful world of literature during Book Week. Students read a variety of different texts and books with their classroom learning peers and their school peers. The highlight of the week was certainly when students dressed up as one of their favourite book characters and got to parade around the school, showcasing their amazing books and characters.

What will be happening over the next fortnight in Year 1

Wellbeing

Students will consider their emotions through the Respectful Relationships program.
Students will develop their reading skills more during silent reading time.

Literacy

Literacy encompasses spelling, reading and writing. The students will be focusing on:

Spelling: Students will learn when to use the different long vowel ‘e’ sounds <ee> <ea> and <ey>. For example, team, seen, donkey.
Writing: Students will unpack texts and books by looking at the characters, the story pattern (start, middle and end) and the details in various stories. Then students will use this knowledge to write their own texts.
Reading: We will be looking at mentor texts to identify the parts of a story. Students practice their reading with a text based on our spelling pattern a number of times throughout the week in a variety of ways, including choral, echo and cloze reading.

Maths

Students will build upon their understanding of fractions. The students have already looked at ½ and will build on this knowledge by looking at 1/3, ¼ and maybe even 1/8. If you are cooking at home, it would be a great opportunity for Year 1 students to practice their fractions!

Students will then move on to learning about how to read an analogue and digital clock. We will begin with o’clock and half-past times before moving towards quarter-to and quarter-past.

Inquiry

For our Science unit, students will be exploring how materials can change. Students will be making something that is neither a solid nor a liquid. Students will also be exploring how variables work when conducting experiments.

Homework

Keep practicing spelling and reading the memory words that were sent home.
The students have been looking at time in the classroom, it would be great if students could practice this more at home!
Read every day to add to your 100 days of reading challenge and the Premier’s Reading Challenge.
Mathletics passwords are in the front of reading journals. Students can practice what we have been learning in class.
Additionally, students can choose a homework activity from the Prep - Year 2 homework rubric.

Here is a list of suggested books students may like to read at home besides their Take Home Readers:

Ella Diaries
Hey Jack!
Pizza & Taco
Little Lunch
Billie B Brown
Spooky House
Captain Underpants
Dog Man
Ninja Kids
Paddy Mills – The big book
The Runaway Kitten
Bad Guys
Hot Dog
The Treehouse Stories
The Faraway Tree
Ella & Olivia
The Beach House
Big Dream
Olivia’s Secret Scribbles
The Tiara Club
Geronimo Stilton
How to Train Your Dragon
Dragon Girls
Rainbow Magic
Curry Career
School of Monsters
The Boy who never gave up
Harry Potter
Ninjago
Weirdo (Ahn Do)

Year 2

What’s Happening in Year 2: Weeks 7 & 8

What will be happening over the next two weeks in Year 2

The Year 2 team have enjoyed Book Week and seeing all of the amazing costumes that the students came dressed in. Over the next two weeks the students will begin building their arcade games, enjoying the creative process.

Wellbeing

During the next two weeks of the term the students will be working on identifying the people in their lives from whom they can seek help from when dealing with problems that are too big to solve alone.

Reading

Students will be focusing on making and adjusting predictions and using the text to confirm what predictions were made and whether they were correct and congruent.

Writing

The Year 2 students will be replying to their Beaumaris North Primary School Pen Pal during our writing sessions. Students will begin exploring the concept of procedural texts and creating a set of instructions for their Arcade Games. During the next two weeks students will be working on their ability to write sentences that flow and make sense for the reader. By building on this skill the students are ensuring that their game instructions are clear and concise.

Maths

Students will continue to develop their knowledge and language around analogue and digital clocks and calendar events. Other taught concepts will be revisited during our warmup activities in the classroom.

Inquiry

Throughout Term 3 the Year 2 cohort will be focusing on Design and Technologies as their unit of Inquiry. The Big Question for the unit of Inquiry is: How do forces create movement in our daily lives?

Over the next two weeks students will begin designing and creating their arcade games.

Reminders

"UV hits 3, hats must be,

From August till April, protect with glee.

When May begins, hats can rest,

Under the sun, enjoy the best."

Reading Rockets/ Take Home Readers

The Reading Rockets program will continue in Term 3. The Year 2 teachers will continue to check reading diaries on a Monday morning and will be adding to the Reading Rockets tally in the classrooms.

Box donations STILL welcomed!

We would still love for box donations to be brought into the classrooms. After Week 8 we ask for no more donations to be brought in. Thank you.

Year 3

What’s Happening in Year 3: Term 3 Week 7 & 8

What’s been happening in Year 3

The students have been participating in Design and Tech throughout the term. They have been challenged to design a new park for the Bayside community. Last week, students were allocated their different design teams for the project and were also given a mission to complete while on our excursion to CERES.

Our excursion to CERES was amazing! We participated in three different activities that included indigenous perspectives and the features of native plants.

What will be happening over the next two weeks in Year 3

Wellbeing

How to maintain a positive and growth mindset.
Recognising and celebrating character strengths.
Strengthening our existing relationships and building a supportive and team environment within our classroom and in the yard through small groups, whole class and whole year level activities.

Reading

We will be continuing our work on inferring when reading texts.
Comprehension strategies will be used to build literal and inferential meaning when reading transactional texts.

Writing

We are learning about suffixes and prefixes during spelling sessions.
We are also learning about how we expand our vocabulary so we can include more complex words in our writing.
Students will be continuing to focus on transactional texts.

Maths

For the next two weeks we will applying learnt strategies to complete multiplication and division problems.
Worded problems will also be included to help students apply these strategies to real-life situations.

Inquiry – Design and Technology

Big Question:

How might we design a community park that is sustainable, inclusive and reflects Indigenous perspectives?

Our excursion to CERES environmental park encompassed many aspects of our big question. The students will be able to apply their first hand data and observations from this visit to their playground designs.

Homework

Students are asked to continue to read every night and to complete Mathletics tasks set by classroom teachers. Students have some optional activities to complete from the Homework Grid in their homework books.

Reminders

Diaries are expected to come to school every day with their reading recorded and ready to be checked by the teacher. We are keeping a tally of individual reading and as a class to hopefully win the prize of a pizza lunch!

Important Upcoming Dates:

Father’s Day Breakfast & Footy Day Friday 30th August
Friendship Lunch Thursday 5th September
Open Classroom Friday 6th September 3pm - Tree Planting
Last Day of Term Friday 20th September - 2:30pm Early Dismissal

Year 4

What’s Happening in Year 4: Weeks 7 and 8

What’s been happening

We had a fantastic week celebrating book week. Every Year 4 student put a lot of effort into their outfits. We celebrated ‘The Magic of Reading’ by creating a ‘BookFlix’ recommendation wall in every Year 4 classroom. This is a space for each student to recommend a favourite book to a peer. They needed to explain why they enjoyed reading their selected book, why they would recommend it to someone else and who their favourite character was.

This coming Friday 27th August, we have another exciting event on the horizon; Footy Day! All students are invited to wear their team’s colours. The following Friday 6th September, we have an open afternoon planned for our ‘Tree Planting’ event. Further details on Compass.

What will be happening over the next fortnight

Wellbeing

Social scenarios; the students have been unpacking some difficult social scenarios during group time. This is to build a tool kit of strategies to help students solve social problems if they arise.
Affirmations and positive self-talk.
Reading books with the theme of neurodiversity.

Literacy

Reading fluency sessions with a focus on inferencing, text connections and unpacking comprehension questions.
Focus on fluency through a range of whole, paired and independent activities.
Spelling – focusing on the suffix ‘-ly’; used to modify an adjective into an adverb.
Working on simple, complex and compound sentences.
Novel study – Nim's Island
Biographies.
Completion of ‘Free Write’ passion projects.

Maths

Numeracy Ninja’s - Daily numeracy fluency sessions.
Fractions and Decimals.
Recognise common equivalent fractions in familiar contexts.
Make connections between fraction and decimal notations.
Count familiar fractions on a number line.
Represent familiar fractions on a number line.

Inquiry

Weathering and erosion
Earth’s surface
Weathering forces.

Homework

Daily reading recorded in diaries.
Allocated and outstanding Mathletics tasks.

Reminders

Week 7

Footy Day and Father’s Day breaky - Friday 30th August
Diaries and Mathletics tasks due on a Friday
Hats needed to be brought to school.

Week 8

Diaries and Mathletics tasks due on a Friday.

Year 5

What's Happening in Year 5: Term 3 Week 7 and 8

What will be happening in Weeks 7 and 8 in Year 5

What a fortnight we have coming up! This week the students attended the Mini Boss: Studio Podcast incursion where they worked in small groups to create a short podcast episode. They learned to use the program Audacity to record, add sounds and edit their podcast. This is the same program they will use to record their podcast in class, it was great to have a run through and learn how to use it. On Friday we have the annual Fathers’ Day breakfast and Footy Day. The students are looking forward to the Teachers vs. Students football game.

Week 8 is Bike Ed Week. Students will participate in 1 session of the program each day, Monday-Thursday. They will learn road rules and how to ride their bikes safely on the road. Please check that your child’s bike is in good working order and the tyres are pumped up ready for the start of the program. Students have been asked to bring their bikes to the Herbert Street side of the SALC and park them in their designated group area each morning. If your child needs to leave their bike at school overnight during the program, we will provide space in the SALC for them to leave their bike. All students are asked to take their bikes home at the end of the program on Thursday afternoon (5th Sept.) We are looking forward to a great week of riding.

To finish the fortnight, we will plant trees around the school for the open afternoon. Please come and join the students to plant their trees/plants on Friday 6th Sept at 3pm.

Wellbeing

Students work on resilience, respect, relationships and responsibility.

Literacy

Students will practise reading fluency (accuracy, rate, prosody) through repeated oral strategies and information texts related to Earth and Space Science curriculum.
Students will study the features of an imaginative podcast through the study of our mentor podcast ‘Macaroy Uncovered’ by ABC.
Students will identify and explain how analytical images like figures, tables, diagrams, maps and graphs contribute to our understanding of verbal information in factual and persuasive texts.
Students will continue planning, drafting and editing their podcast stories.
Students will investigate how complex sentences can be used in a variety of ways to elaborate, extend and explain ideas.
Students will recognise and write less familiar words that share common letter patterns but have different pronunciations.

Maths

Apply properties of numbers and operations to find unknown values in numerical equations involving multiplication.
Apply properties of numbers and operations to find unknown values in numerical equations involving division.
Students will solve problems involving division, choosing efficient written strategies.
Students will estimate, construct and measure angles in degrees.

Science

Chemistry

What is matter?
What is the difference between solids, liquids and gases?
Why do materials behave the way they do?
What causes changes to matter?

Earth and Space

What makes up the solar system?
Why is the sun so important?

Homework

An updated Year 5&6 Homework Rubric is linked to your child’s class Microsoft Team.

Students are expected to be reading every night and completing assigned Mathletics activities over the fortnight.

Reminders

27th August Mini Boss Studio Podcast Incursion

30th August Fathers’ Day Breakfast/Footy Day

2nd – 5th September Bike Education

6th September Tree Planting Open Afternoon 3pm

Year 6

What’s Happening in Year 6: Week 8 & 9

As we have passed the half-way mark of the term, the students have their eyes firmly set on their performance of Willy Wonka. We enjoyed our Book Week last week with a host of characters descending on our Book Week Assembly.

What will be happening in Week 8 and 9 in Year 6

The next few weeks will be as busy as ever with continuing performance rehearsals and finishing our reading of the class text ‘Us Mob Walawurru’. We have around 20 students taking part in a Sustainable Schools conference and two students taking part in a Goldstein Youth Forum at the Parliament of Victoria.

Wellbeing

We are exploring the impacts of gender stereotypes on individuals and the way we interact with others based on their gender.

Literacy

Spelling – Latin bases
Classes will be looking at different picture storybooks with cyclical endings and planning their own stories based on recurring timelines.
Students will write and illustrate their own picture story books using writing skills we have been developing throughout the term.
Sentence level writing- students will be forming different types of complex sentences.

Maths

Students will continue to focus on measurement
Students will be working with elapsed time, 12- and 24-hour time
Students will be learning about supplementary and complimentary angles and reviewing previous outcomes on measuring angles
Maths Olympiad/Maths Games 4 in Week 8

Inquiry

Big Question: How is energy generated and transferred and how can we generate electricity in sustainable ways?
What are the different forms of energy?
How is energy transferred and transformed?
How do circuits conduct electrical energy?

Homework

Students are expected to be reading every night and completing assigned Mathletics activities over the fortnight. Diaries with reading recorded will be checked weekly and Mathletics tasks should be completed by Friday 13 September.

Reminders

Week 7

Friday 30th August – Father's Day breakfast and Footy Day (dress up in footy/sport team colours)

Week 8

Thursday 5th September – Sustainable Schools Festival

Thursday 5th September – Goldstein Youth Forum

Week 9

Tuesday 10th September – Reach Empathy Workshop

Thursday 12th September– Southern Schools Radio Show

Parent Club

Father's and Special Friends Day Stall

Reminder: Father's and Special Friends Day Breakfast

Save the Date - Parent Social Night