Learning News

Learning News Term 4, Week 6 2025

Learning News

Last fortnight, our students were hard at work in writing. All classes completed a Cold Write Assessment, where they produced a persuasive piece arguing for or against having class pets. This focused activity allows us to gauge their current persuasive writing skills. Our Stage 3 students piloted an exciting new initiative called 'Writer's Insight' from Armidale Catholic Schools. This program uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyse student writing against the NAPLAN criteria, providing teachers with detailed data. This data is invaluable for helping us better understand and cater to each student's specific learning needs in writing. Additionally, all classrooms continue to produce wonderful creative writing pieces, drawing inspiration from their engaging mentor texts.

Miss Summerell

Leader of Pedagogy / Mathematics Specialist Teacher

K/1

We enjoyed honing our writing skills this past fortnight.  We read the book The Imagineer and focused on the main character and the sequence of events (beginning, middle, end).   We learned new descriptive words and key words like magnificent, problem and create.  We practised retelling stories and telling our own personal narratives (stories) in a clear sequence.  We learned to plan our own story using a simple structure: Character, Problem, Solution.   We wrote our own narratives, focusing on three parts, beginning, middle and end.

Mrs CraffordK/1 Teacher

Year 2

Over the past fortnight, Year 2 students have been exploring how writing can be a powerful way to represent personal histories and family traditions. We began by sharing the beautiful book, Sea Country, written by Aunty Patsy Cameron and illustrated by Lisa Kennedy. We discussed how the author shared details of her Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and her deep connection to Country, showing us how writing can preserve and celebrate heritage. Following this, the children focused on learning to sequence events logically. They applied this skill to plan and write a short paragraph about a significant family artefact or tradition. The students enjoyed sharing these unique glimpses into their family lives and have produced some thoughtful, personal pieces of writing!

Miss Rasche 

Year 2 Teacher

Year 1

What a fabulous fortnight we’ve spent with Gerald the Giraffe from Giles Andreae's wonderful book, Giraffes Can’t Dance! This story has sparked some truly creative writing and deep thinking in our Year One class.

We kicked off our exploration by diving into character descriptions, discussing not just what Gerald looks like, but also how he thinks and feels. The students produced some fantastic sentences using expressive adjectives to describe Gerald’s shyness and eventual joy.

We then blended fiction with non-fiction by investigating real-life facts about giraffes. We learned about their long necks, their diet and where they live, which helped us understand the difference between a character in a story and an animal in the wild.

Finally, we used Gerald's journey to understand what makes an interesting character—someone who faces a challenge, shows emotion and changes by the end of the story. The key takeaway? Just like Gerald, everyone has a unique rhythm, and it's okay to be different!

Miss Lyall

Year 1 Teacher

Year 3 

Year 3 is launching into a text called “Kicking Goals with Goodsey and Magic". This unit centres on the powerful story and deep friendship of Aboriginal AFL legends Adam Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin. A key focus is the importance of friendship and being a positive role model. We also discussed the topics of racism and resilience and using culturally appropriate practices like a Yarning circle for reflection. 

Mrs Davis 

Year 3 Teacher

Year 4

Year 4 are now finishing off their narrative unit, inspired by their novel, 200 Minutes! They are currently tackling an awesome challenge: writing a totally new, action-packed ending to one of the stories. The big focus has been on planning and brainstorming—gotta get that plot straight! Tthe class is learning the secret to hooking readers by ending their tales on a super suspenseful cliffhanger. Looking forward to reading their final stories. 

Miss Martin

Year 4 Teacher

Stage 3

The unit focused on our novel ‘Worse Things’ is now complete and the students have enjoyed the experience of reading a novel written as a free verse poem (spoiler alert, it has a very unexpected ending!).  We have looked at the structure and conventions of free verse poems and have tried our hand at conveying emotions and different perspectives in our own free verse poems on events from the book, as well as considering multi-modal presentations (the combination of words, colours, images, symbols etc).  

We hope you enjoy them.

Great work Stage 3.  

Mrs Shepherd

AP/Stage 3 Teacher