PRIMARY SCHOOL
A Reflection On Term 3
It has been a long cold Term 3, but I think everyone would agree that, with all the activities that have been taking place, the term has appeared to go very quickly! We are now into Spring and hoping for some finer and warmer weather and the opportunity for some downtime during the holidays.
The Primary School involved themselves in Book Week last month and the highlight of this week was the dress-up day. Staff from all sections of the school spent some time reading to the children and we also had a visit from children’s author Amani Uduman. The children also enjoyed finding the missing character each day and our daily reading tallies spurred us on with our reading. The Primary School set the goal to read 1,000 pages over the week. This goal was obviously seriously underestimated! The final tally was an amazing 257,286 pages read!! Well done everyone!
It was great to spend time with our two Prep classes at their Fathers’ Day Breakfast recently. The Preps did so well hosting the event, singing their songs and presenting the things they had made. It was great to see how much they have grown and matured over the year.
Our Year 3 students are getting very excited about their Cardboard Arcade which will be held during the last week of the term. This is always a highlight of their year, and also for the whole Primary School, as each of the classes get to see what has been constructed and also participate in the games and activities which the Year 3 students have designed.
On Friday last week our Chaplain, Warwick Grant, led our Primary School in a Chapel Assembly. He focused his message on three lines from the Lord’s Prayer which is our theme for this year. The three lines were, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done as it is in heaven.” It was lovely to see some of our Year 4 students acting out some skits to elaborate on the meaning of these lines in the Lord’s Prayer. A number of our Year 5 students also wrote prayers and shared them with the audience. Thank you to the parents who attended the Chapel Assembly. It is always great to welcome our parents to our assemblies, so please feel free to come along at any time if you are able.
I pray that, as you head into the holidays, that you will have some opportunity for some relaxation and rejuvenation and that you will stay safe in all you do. I wish you every blessing as you prepare for the last term of this year. God bless.
Tim Farmilo
Acting Head of Primary School
Collaborating To Create
In digital technologies there are many opportunities for students to work together in pairs. In these photos the prep students are using iPads to create simple stories using a fantastic app called Scratch Junior. They start by selecting to either create characters or choose from a list of pre-defined ones. They can create or modify existing characters by using drawing tools and even use the camera to add extra details. Next, they can select or draw a background and add more characters to complete the scene.
Working in pairs, students are given instructions on how to work together with others by ensuring that everyone has a ‘turn’ or contributes to the imagined story. These visual and interactive tools provide students with different ways of capturing and communicating ideas which aren’t always easy to verbalise or draw using standard tools. Ideas can be quickly modified or developed over time. Creative ideas are like seeds that need time and the right conditions to grow. Who knows what will become of their ideas in the years to come?
Gary Ong
Digital Technologies Teacher
Prep Celebrates!
What fun we have had over the past couple of weeks in Prep! Last week, we loved celebrating “Book Week” with the rest of the Primary School. Some of the highlights of this special week were: counting the number of pages we read each day, enjoying a “Reading Picnic” in the MPH with our friends, meeting and listening to Amani (our guest author who is also a parent at St Andrews) and dressing up as our favourite book character.
This week the celebrations have continued as we prepared a special gift for our Dads. We took a photo, made a key ring, drew pictures of our Dad, wrote a personalised card and thought and wrote about why we love our Dads. On Friday morning we arrived at school very early to enjoy breakfast with our Dads too!
Sonia Sires
Prep Teacher
Toot Toot! The Year 1 Puffing Billy Adventure!
The Year 1 students had such an awesome day out on Puffing Billy. We were blessed with such a beautiful day exploring more of God’s handiworks. The day started with a one-way journey from Belgrave station to Lakeside station. Even though we couldn’t dangle our legs out the window it was still so much fun to feel the freezing wind between our little fingers. We then explored the newly built Lakeside Visitor Centre where we learnt about the history of Puffing Billy and got to build our own train station out of blocks. We even got to dress up as different characters who worked at Puffing Billy! We ended our day with a beautiful walk around Emerald Park Lake. We are thanking God for such a glorious day!
Natalie Nheu
Year 1 Teacher
Year 5
As always, we have been very busy in Year 5; what else is new? We love getting out of our seats to learn and investigate. In Maths, we finished off our Measurement unit by estimating the lengths of different locations. We often use formal measurement like centimetres, metres, inches and so on, but what informal units of measurement could we use? Could WE be a unit of measurement. Grade 5s got to estimate how many of themselves were the length of the classroom. We didn’t know the 5L classroom was the length of 6 Samuel Ls!
We have also been deep into our Space unit, learning about our Solar System and planets. Grade 5 have enjoyed making their own and justifying why it deserves a place in the St Andrews Solar System.
Natalie Low
Year 5 Teacher