What's happening?
Foundation
What a busy few weeks! Our Foundation students have been very busy with all of our incursions and activities! We very much enjoyed our first dance lessons with Miss G on Wednesday as part of our ‘Healthy Me’ topic. These will continue for the next two weeks. We also loved having ‘Market Fresh’ visit us. We learnt about where fruit and vegetables come from and how they get to our homes. We also got to try some delicious fresh fruit and vegetables!
The past few weeks in literacy we learnt about /f/ and /l/. This week we are focusing on /v/ and /y/. Remind your child that when we make the /v/ sound it tickles our bottom lip! The letter ‘y’ is very special as it can be a consonant (at the start of a word e.g. yam) or a vowel elsewhere (e.g. my, mummy). Next term we specifically focus on ‘y’ as a vowel, the sounds it makes and why. It would also be great if you could have a quick chat with your child on the way to school each Monday about their weekend and what they did. This helps with their recount writing. We continue to be impressed with their writing skills, and it is lovely to see their confidence growing.
Measurement (Time) has just been completed in Maths Groups. We will review this topic again later in the year. We have now moved onto Addition and unpacking the different vocabulary, symbols and mental strategies.
As the weather gets wetter and colder we encourage you to pack spare pants and socks, and a warm (named) navy jacket.
We are also after shoe boxes in the coming weeks for our ‘Peg People Houses’. Please send along a named box as soon as possible.
Grade 1
Last week in Grade 1 we wrapped up our topic of Patterns and have now begun our new topic of Chance. Given that it is an applied Mathematics topic we have made significant changes to some of our Maths groupings, to ensure that the needs of all students are appropriately catered to.
In our Word Study lessons, we have been focusing on using ‘Long Spelling Right After a Short Vowel Sound’, which includes spelling choices of ‘-ck’, ‘-tch’ and ‘-dge’. Keep an eye out for these sound cards in your sound packs over the next couple of weeks! We ask that all families please continue to practise the Sound Pack and Red Flag words at home, whenever possible. You will find a list of red flag words, for reading in spelling, in your child's reader folder. If you are stuck on ideas on how to incorporate these activities into your daily reading routine, please feel free to contact your child’s teacher!
Over the next couple of weeks the Grade 1 students will begin making clay sculptures during their art lessons. If you have not already done so, please ensure you send in your child’s art smock (labelled) as soon as possible.
Grade 2
Our Grade 2 students have been doing a wonderful job of demonstrating their knowledge and skills as we work through a range of assessments across the different learning areas. They should be very proud of the effort, focus and persistence they have shown during this busy time!
During our ‘Syntax Project’ lessons, students have been learning how to enhance their writing by starting sentences with subordinating conjunctions such as before, after, if, when, even though or although.
As part of our ‘Word Study’, students learned more about the jobs of ‘final silent -e’ with a focus on recognising ‘final silent e’ as a signal to say the vowel’s name in a v-c-e syllable, like in ‘broke’ and ‘confiscate’.
This week, we were excited to begin our poetry unit. Students have started with ‘Acrostic’ poems, discovering the effectiveness of a good ‘brainstorm’ before attempting to write. Next week, we move on to ‘Diamante’ poems and focus on using nouns, verbs and adjectives effectively and within a particular structure.
In Maths, we are working through our data and graphs topic. Students have been learning to pose relevant questions, gather data and record using tally marks, display data in a pictograph and bar graph, interpret the data and make relevant statements.
As part of our inquiry into the ‘states of matter’ (solids, liquids and gases), students explored how matter changes when heated or cooled and recorded the steps in their investigation using a ‘science report’ template.
We completed the final round of our current ‘Rotations’ this week which allowed students and teachers from the four grades to mix and work together, learning more about coding, symmetry, tessellations and participating in a design challenge.
Thank you for your support with homework: Regular reading aloud and ‘Red Flag Word’ spelling.
Optional extras: ‘Nessy Reading and Spelling’ and ‘Sunset/Jetpack Maths’ (Essential Assessment).
Grade 3
Halfway through the term already! The Grade 3 students are looking forward to all of the exciting upcoming events in the remainder of the term.
Reading: Last week, the students completed five benchmark tests which cover questions on all twelve reading comprehension strategies. This week, we are focusing on the reading comprehension strategy of recalling facts and details. The students have read a range of texts relating to our inquiry topic and answered questions by locating directly stated information from the text. Our mentor text this week is 'Welcome to Country' and our vocabulary focus words were acknowledge, presence and nurtured.
Writing: Students have finished up writing their information report on an Australian animal and are now choosing a Famous First Nations person to focus their next information report on. In our grammar lessons, we have continued to learn how to combine and punctuate sentences using coordinating conjunctions. In our spelling lessons, we are looking at rules to add suffixes such as the 1.1.1 doubling rule and the final e suffixing convention.
Maths: In our applied data concept, the students have collected data from surveying, tallied up the results and organised this into categories and created displays such as bar graphs and pictographs.
Inquiry: Over the last two weeks, we have explored the languages of our First Nations peoples and learnt more about the significance and meaning of totems. The students researched how to say hello, decided what they would like their totem to be and designed a symbol for it.
Why not say "Hello in an Aboriginal Language?
Wominjeka means Hello/Welcome in the Woiwurrung language of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation - the traditional owners of Melbourne.
Wellbeing: The students have practised relaxation techniques as well as explored solutions to problems. The students have recognised that problems are a normal part of life and identified strategies to use to solve them.
Grade 4
It’s hard to believe that we are at the halfway point of Term 2. The students have been completing a variety of mid-year assessments during the past two weeks. The Grade 4 teachers are so proud of our students for completing these and it’s been wonderful to see some great growth in their learning so far this year.
Literacy: Word study lessons have seen us look at different spelling choices such as oi, oy, er, ir and ur & general rules of when to apply these. We have also covered some morphology work of adding suffixes -es or -s to words & the rules we apply when using these. Grammar lessons have focused on the use of adverbs in sentences and expanding sentences to include detail and descriptive information. Students have completed mid-year benchmark reading comprehension assessments on CARS & STARS. After each assessment, the students receive immediate feedback on a graph so they can visually see which reading skills & strategies they correctly applied and the strategies that they can still learn about and apply to their reading. Students have begun writing an information report about an explorer. There have been some very engaging and well-written introductions.
Numeracy: We concluded our focus on multiplication after lots of hard work and great learning over the past four weeks. We are now moving on to some measurement concepts such as length and area for the next two weeks. Students will apply their multiplication skills to convert different units of measurement such as millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres. Activities involving measuring different units of length and calculating perimeter are examples of what students will be working on in Maths lessons. Applying multiplication to find the area of rectangular shapes will also be explored.
Inquiry: The students have continued to learn about different British explorers of Australia, their reasons for their expeditions and what they discovered. The research for their information reports has deepened their understanding and developed their knowledge of timelines and the chronological order of events of an explorer’s journey. There have been lots of fantastic discussions and questions from very interested and inquisitive students as we continue to delve deeper into this Inquiry topic.
Homework: Students should be completing their Word Study homework via SeeSaw or in their homework book each week. Although we have concluded our work on multiplication in class, continued practice of multiplication facts is strongly encouraged. Please ensure that your child is reading & recording this in their diary each week.
Grade 5
Grade 5 teachers have been so proud of all our wonderful students for the persistence, resilience and growth mindset they’ve shown during a very busy period of assessments in time for reports. Also, please be on the lookout for some notes coming home in preparation for our Grade 5 camp occurring early next term. Writing – Collective noun poetry has been our major focus during writing sessions for the last couple of weeks. Our creative writer’s have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the structure and features of this type of poem and have worked towards planning, drafting, editing and publishing some incredible pieces.
Comprehension – Grade 5 students have explored cause and effect during our comprehension sessions and have identified and described real-life examples as well as examples from our mentor text ‘Jandamarra’. Students also thought deeply about why it’s important to understand the relationship between cause and effect when reading different texts.
Maths – Maths groups have concluded our topic of chance and learned about different ways to represent the chance of an event occurring. Students worked with fractions, decimals and percentages and conducted some very fun chance-based experiments. Groups are now moving onto multiplication and division. We encourage all students to ensure they are practising their basic number facts and times tables at home.
Inquiry – Over the last few weeks our students have learned about activist Eddie Mabo and his accomplishments. They’ve also researched an Indigenous Australian activist of their choosing and shared their findings with their peers. National Sorry Day is the next concept we’ll be learning about with students working towards creating a wonderful classroom display.
Grade 6
Writing
Students are finishing up their information report writing block this week. They are writing an information report on a Space themed topic related to their Inquiry topic. Topics include the International Space Station, dwarf planets, Neil Armstrong and the elements of Space.
Mathematics
In Mathematics, we will be close to completing our work on Shape this week. Students enjoyed a variety of activities including isometric drawing, building 3D shapes from 2D nets and shape themed problem-solving tasks.
Inquiry
The Grade 6 classes have continued their ‘We Dream of Space’ theme covering the solar system, galaxies and universe. This week’s focus was learning about the technologies used for Space exploration.
Interschool Sport
Last week, the Grade 6 cohort faced Mentone Primary in Round 1 of their Winter Sport programme. Commitment, dedication and most importantly, good sportsmanship were evident across all sporting teams. This coming Friday will be a 'bye' week. All teams are going use this opportunity to build their skills further in preparation for Round 2. Round 2 will be played at home against Parktone Primary.
Term Dates and Events
Please check Compass for further information regarding end of term dates and events relating to Grade 6 students.