Learning & 

Teaching

Reminder!

It's Science Week!

This week is St Joseph's School's Science Week! To find out more about how we are celebrating go to the STEM New page in the newsletter.

August 19th - St Joseph's School Book Day! 

Next week is Book Week and St Joseph's will explore the wonders of books by investigating the different stories in the short-listed books for the 2022 Children's Book Award. 

On Friday, August 19th students will break into house groups and engage in fun and inspiring activities connected to one of the short-listed books. To help celebrate this day, students are asked to come dressed as their favourite book character. 

We will have a short parade to share our characters in the morning and then move into our activities. All parents and families are welcome to come along and join our book celebrations!

August 24th - Family Maths Afternoon! 

This will be an afternoon of learning about what maths learning looks like at St Joseph's. We encourage all parents to come along and learn about our maths fluency bricks, multiplication boxes, explicit written strategies and problem-solving. Students will present their learning at each year level and parents will have the opportunity to gain an understanding of Maths learning from Foundation to Year 6 and beyond with our extension learning. All are welcome!

Building Blocks of Mathematics

In the last 2 newsletters, we introduced you to our Mathematics Fluency Brick walls. These were designed to ensure all students are equipped with the basic foundations of Maths in Counting, Addition & Subtraction, and Multiplication & Division. These were designed using current research into how students learn Mathematics and skills build as they move through each brick. This week, we are exploring the Multiplication and Division Brick Wall.  

When learning Multiplication and Division, students start with basic skip counting and grouping. They then move to more complex strategies that help them to mentally manipulate numbers and solve problems in the most efficient and accurate way. Below is an example of an activity your child might do if they were working on Brick 37. "I can use the area model to model larger multiplication problems."

Ask your child which skill they are working on and how they can get to their next brick. If you would like to support your child at home, talk to your classroom teacher to learn about which skills your child needs and how you can practise these. Alternatively, click below tovisit your child’s Home Learning Page where teachers have added ideas for practising at home.

Click on the links below to go straight to your child's Home Learning Community page.