Classroom News

In the Classrooms

A fly around the classroom

This term we are exploring learning in our ability groups rather than our year groups. This allows students to excel and grow at their level.

Throughout literacy we are exploring developing ideas, choosing topics and adding details, to ensure our writing is specific and our ideas are ordered. We will also be exploring grammar and punctuation focusing on capitalizations, commas, question marks, exclamation marks, homophones, homographs and the processes involved in editing and publishing our writing. It appears the most popular writing topic in our school is cats!

We will also have a focus on spelling. Children will be given opportunities to practice and enrich their vocabulary through creating their own spelling lists along with a list including commonly misspelled words and spelling patterns with a particular focus on phonics (listening to the sounds in words). Shortly there will be Spelling City parent information sheets for the children to take home where the children can practice their spelling at home once or twice a week. This is not compulsory as children will have these opportunities during the school day.  

Early primary students are beginning their reading and spelling journey and have already mastered the sounds /s/ /a/ /t/ /p/. They are beginning to hear sounds in words, blend these sounds together (precursors to reading) and say the sounds in words (segmenting- precursors to spelling). Over the next few weeks students will be bringing home readers that help to support your children in practicing their blending and segmenting skills. Further information will be included with these books to help support your child with these skills. 

This term we are encouraging children to read every night and record their reading in their reading journal. A school party will be the reward if all the children can read a combined 400 nights this term. If all the children read for only 25 nights this term that would be 450 nights, making 400 an achievable total.

During the next couple of weeks the whole school will be exploring and developing a deeper understanding of place value. This means understanding the base ten system (numbers 0-10) and counting through decades, hundreds, thousands and beyond. It also means we are exploring small and large numbers using MAB blocks to deepen our understanding of ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. In the younger years we are practicing our counting, forward and backwards from 0-20 and subitising (recognising small collections instantly). The children have been enjoying playing Tenzi with dice.

Bluearth

Today (Thursday) was our first day with our new Bluearth coach, Ross. The kids enjoyed games such as Space Invaders, Jump, Rock, Bridge & Tree Tag and hot potato. The children love these sessions as they are an opportunity for them to practice gross motor skills, corporations and resilience. We will be practicing what Ross shows us in the off week of his visits.

Inquiry

During inquiry this term we will be focusing on natural disasters with the early childhood children having a focus on fire safety and and the upper primary eventually researching natural disasters that have occured within the world in modern history. The expected outcome of this inquiry unit will be for the children to present their natural disaster of their choice as a Breaking News TV segment.