Middles

It’s hard to believe the term is almost over. It has been a busy term and one in which we have seen every student experience success. They have learnt so much and continue to amaze us with their abilities.

It was wonderful to see many families at our sports night on Friday - Well done to the Medici team on their win and to every student for participating enthusiastically.

Students have been working hard in class to complete persuasive texts in writing. Students were thrilled to receive a reply from Mr D after writing their letters to him with suggestions to improve the school. This week we have been working on the use of apostrophes in literacy.

In Maths we have concluded our units on data and interpretation and next term we will commence units on addition and subtraction and time. We have been working on problem solving and reading written problems to determine what it is asking of us.

Students are personalising the Inquiry topic by working in pairs and researching an area of interest related to physical, mental and spiritual health. They will present their work in Term 2.

In Religion our focus has been on Holy Week and learning more about the events of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday and Good Friday. We will celebrate Jesus’ resurrection in Term 2 with a prayer service on Wednesday 24th April at 2.30pm. Parents are welcome to join us.

The sacrament of Reconciliation will be happening this Thursday 4th April at 7pm in the Church. We ask that families be there by 6.45pm. All families are welcome to join us as we celebrate this important sacrament.

We wish you a peace filled Easter and a wonderful holiday.

Jarrod, Carla, Tania, Sophia, Vicki

Seniors

In Literacy, the students have finished their class texts, Pookie Aleera is not my boyfriend (5/6S and 5/6LA) and James and the Giant Peach (4/5A). They have made predictions, searched and used information from the text and used questions to unpack thinking about the text. We focused on building group discussions and listening to different opinions.

In Religion, the students have explored the different gospel accounts of Holy Week. They read and compared the different accounts and pieced together all the different events. We have now been looking into the stations of the cross. Student have visited the church to look at the stations and participated in a prayer session focusing on them. They have also explored how different artists have depicted the stations and their ideas and techniques. Students will be creating their own stations of the cross this week.

Have a safe Easter break with your families and we look forward to seeing you back in term 2!

The Senior Team,

Stephanie, Anne-Marie, Stephen and Sally

Juniors

Hello Families,

Thank you all for such a wonderful first term. The students have worked so hard throughout the last ten weeks. It has been great settling into our homerooms, getting to know each other and coming to school with crazy hair! We hope you all enjoy the Easter break and we look forward to launching into Term Two after Easter Monday.

In English, the students have been learning about different types of poems, which we will continue in Term Two. This has brought up conversations about rhyming words and/or syllables. We have been answering literal questions about text and making connections between the text and ourselves. In this final week, we have been using the events of Holy Week in our Literacy block to remind us why this is such an important time in our Church’s calendar and to follow Jesus’ journey.

Thank you to the students and families who attended the 1/2JR and 1/2B Class Mass on Sunday 24th March. We were very lucky to help celebrate a baptism, with Father Shabin inviting the children at Mass to sit close to watch first hand.

In Maths, we are learning about Time, specifically days, weeks and months. Examples of such questions include: “Can you tell me what day comes after Tuesday?” “What month will Easter be in this year?” “How many months are in a year?” “What date is your Mum's birthday?” Next term we will be using clocks to tell time (analogue and digital). Maths sessions begin with a number warm up, such as estimating and counting (forwards and backwards), adding collections or ordering numbers. Any way you can imagine integrating counting into your child's day is also valuable and would benefit their number sense.

After the Immersion stage of our Inquiry unit, the children came up with many fabulous ’wonderings’ about what they would like to learn more about. In Week Nine they participated in the Building stage of the unit with sessions on the brain, the Power of Yet, Jesus’ family and their own families. This week each class began the Personalising stage where the students learnt how to ask more ‘thick’ questions, research information and present what we had learnt.

We hope you have had a great week and happy holidays!

Kindest regards,

Naomi, Tracy, Julia, Renee, Bethany and Jason

Preps

Hi families,

Firstly, we would like to say a big congratulations to all families and Preppies, you have all survived the first term of Prep! Well done.

It has been a very busy term, getting to know each other, making friends and figuring out the daily routines of being at school.

This week in Literacy we have continued looking at initial sounds in words to help us identify and sound out words. We have also been having a go at writing familiar words such as ‘the’ and ‘and’. The students have also had a go at being writers and illustrators. Each student has been working on writing and illustrating their own books titled ‘All about me.’ We have explored the different parts of a book such as the title, pictures and pages.

In Maths, we have been continuing our learning about numbers from 0-10. We have been focussing on using our knowledge of 1-1 correspondence to help us write, read and match numbers to 20. We have also been exploring ways to copy, continue and make simple patterns. The students have been involved in hands on learning and have enjoyed working together.

In Inquiry, we have started our new unit ‘Healthy Bodies and Healthy Minds’. We have been learning about how we can keep our minds healthy and discussed our different emotions. Students have been articulating the different colour zones they are in and how we can get back to the ‘Green Zone’ (happy, calm and content).

In Religion, we have been learning about the different events of Holy Week including, Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday and Good Friday. We are looking forward to Friday and seeing all the kids dressed up and participating in our reflection of these events.

Thank you for a great term. We look forward to a big Term 2.

Safe and happy holidays.

Amanda and Hayley.

St Mary's School

Issue 5 · 04 Apr 2019

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