Learning Areas

Kindergarten

Language Enrichment Program

Each Wednesday we have Hale who comes in and organises language games for the children to participate in the games. For example, learning about she/he, prepositions, opposites, asking and answering questions, describing what they see.

The aim of the program is to develop oral language skills. 

Learning that takes place includes increasing their vocabulary, concept knowledge, improve their grammar, expressive and receptive language, comprehension, and sentence structure. 

Through the implementation of the program, we have noticed, children participating more and building confidence, building their sentence structures, improving their listening, following instructions and concentration skills.

From these activities we extended the learning by including a shopping area with scales to learn about weight, shopping list to match grocery items, introducing money to buy food. Also include counting and number recognition, Shopping list and other games to continue and extend vocabulary, using sentences, taking turns, listen to instruction and following directions.

 Prep

Each year we take small groups of students to visit the local kindergartens where they attended.  This gives the students the opportunity to reconnect with their kinder teachers and to see how far they have come in their learning. It also benefits the kinder students as they get the opportunity to talk to our students about what school is like and to meet some of the teachers they might be with next year. These visits have begun, and the students have been very excited to show the kindergarten students all the exciting learning we have been doing at school. 

We would like to ask for your assistance to help walk with us to and from the kindergarten for the remaining visits:  

Shirley Robertson Children’s Centre   17th June 10am The Grove Children’s Centre    22nd June 9am 

You will of course need to have a current Working with Children’s Check and have attended the Information session about volunteering at school. Please contact Abbie through Compass if you can volunteer.

In Integrated, we are continuing to work on our unit of My Family. As a part of this unit of work, the students will be creating a class museum about their families. Thanks to all families who sent in a photo of an object that is special to your family and child. The prep class museum will be conducted on Thursday June 23th from 3:00pm - 3:30 pm to showcase all the work the students have been doing. The museum will take place in the foundation learning area and the students are very excited to show all the hard work they have been doing in Integrated this semester. 

From Abbie, Joe, Lexie and Sengul 

 Grade 1

In Grade One, students have been developing their understanding of addition and subtraction. They have explored the concept of ‘part-part-whole’ by breaking whole numbers into parts, combining parts and finding missing parts. Students have enjoyed using hands on materials such as counters and unifix cubes to help them model their understanding and have been supported to record their findings using drawings and number sentences. Next, the students will be learning about how to solve simple addition and subtraction word problems. 

Students have also continued to focus on creating narratives in Writing. First, they developed a plan for their writing including who the characters are, what the setting is and the plot. We have focussed on writing complete sentences including a capital letter at the start and punctuation at the end. 

Coming up in Week 8, students will be making a diorama for a minibeast of their choice as part of our Integrated Studies unit. They will focus on representing the habitat of their minibeast in creative ways. Please remember to give your child a box to bring to school if not already. This would ideally be a shoe box, but a tissue box will also be suitable. 

We look forward to seeing all of the students’ creations! 

Grade 2

Hurray, and the resource suitcase from Melbourne Museum arrived!

We opened and looked through it then investigated the minibeast and

some other animal bio facts.

We identified 4 different micro-habitats:

Underground - On the ground - Above the ground, and In the air.

Some children were very creative in the playground and created minibeast habitats.

There was so much enjoyment in studying the minibeast topic this term.

Grade 3/4

In the 3/4 area, we have been learning about and working on information reports such as Explorers, Natural Disasters and more!

The 3/4s have been researching one of the following explorers:

• Captain James Cook
• Matthew Flinders and Bungaree
• William Dampier
• Abel Tasman and the Duch explorers
• Nicolas Baudin

Everyone has chosen an explorer to research  and started researching a few weeks  ago.  We organised our notes into a graphic organiser, as that was easier to put into subheadings later. We researched, researched, and researched! We had to include these subheadings: Life on the Sea, How their Actions Affected Australia, and many more! We worked really hard on our projects, and we are going to present them soon! 

Some things we learned along the way were; note-taking skills, how to transfer information into a doc, and even tech features in our projects, such as transitions and animations. 

After we researched, we started our projects. During our projects we had to include a glossary, timeline, contents page and impact on Australian history. These topics have been really interesting to learn about! We have also been doing different information reports like our chosen ones. All the students got to choose a topic they are passionate about. We have also done given topics which were just as interesting! 

After our hard work towards our slideshow we finally get to present. This term we have been focusing on information text and some of the topics we have wrote about are:

• Natural disasters
• Humpacks 
• Shelter
• Animal Adaptations in the Australian Dessert

… and more!  After we have completed our presentations, we will firstly mark our own work with a rubric with 3 different categories and 3 stars to mark us in. When we present we present to our class and teacher and then receive feedback.

Grade 3/4 has also been writing in our Gratitude Journal each week. Last week, during Reconciliation Week, we watched some videos and discussed how we can write our own Acknowledgement of Country by thinking about how we can be respectful of the history and the land and animals of traditional owners.

This week we talked about a special person in our life that we are grateful for.

9/6/2022

A person who is special to me is my Grandma. 

She is special to me because she is quite a softie. 

Out of all of the Grandmas I could get, I got one of the best. 

She is not just a softie, she's a pretty decent gamer! 

Out of all the family members grandma is the second best in my opinion.

(Also in my opinion I’m the best which is why grandma is second best).

By Otis Lawlor

Grade 5/6

An Update to the PBL The Island Project

Over the past few weeks, the 5/6 students have moved away from our communities on the island of Cennet and have formed new groups, where we have been engaged in a number of other ‘jobs’. 

The Anthem Songwriters have been working on creating the national anthem for Cennet. We started off with listening to national anthems and wrote down the main things we would need to include. It took a long time, but eventually we figured out the tune for the anthem. Then we fitted the lyrics into the tune, and ran through it a couple of times by singing it through to make sure there weren't any faults. Everyone was relieved when we had finally finished the anthem!

The Island Builders have been creating a 3-dimensional perspective of our island Cennet. Based on Evie’s winning map, we have used papier-mâché and scrunched up paper balls as its base . We have used clay to mould the buildings, trees, sculptures, mountains and some of the overhanging cliffs along the coast. We have been very focused on the painting of the ocean which is looking fabulous with all the blending of all the different blues and greens. Small buildings and trees along with large skyscrapers are being designed by the group to be glued on soon. The mountain range along with all the different altitudes of the landscape have been designed perfectly. Cennet is looking like a paradise.  

The Town Planners are using a digital simulation platform called Simcity. We have each created a city based on whichever community we are in in Cennet. At the beginning it was really hard for everyone to work out how to build things, but once we worked it out, we have all helped each other and it’s been amazing. We’ve used the budget part of the program to make sure we have enough money and resources which has been fun too. And in the end, although it was hard, everyone has done a good job.

The Politicians of Cennet have been working on a lot of things recently. Last week, we had an election to see who would be ruling over all. Rahil rose over everyone, winning the vote, and he and his oligarchy became the Supreme Chancellors of Cennet. In the past week, we have been working on a constitution that includes most of the main rules and responsibilities that will be in force in Cennet. We have also have selected a cabinet which includes the three Supreme Chancellors and a Deputy Commander, an Attorney General, a Treasurer, Ministers for Foreign Affairs, the Environment and Sustainability, Defence and Indigenous Affairs. There also three State Leaders for Bellemond, Perusahaan and Cimobola.

The Media team have recently been working on reporting the latest news of Cennet. At the start, we were all discussing what we were going to create, how we were going to do it and what we were going to put in it.  We all chose things like podcasts, news reports and advertisements. We then split into small groups and began creating - some of us had to learn how to record and edit for podcasts and others had to draw or type things. Overall, the creations of the media team are really coming together and look amazing. 

The Flag Makers have been making a flag for Cennet. We have been stitching and it was a hard thing to do because a lot of people (including me) in our group don’t know how to sew. But in the end we managed. The things we used to make our flag are sewing needles, cotton, thread, scissors, a sewing machine and pieces of cut cloth. It was fun, although hard, to do stitching. 

The Natural Historians have been working on creating flora and fauna models. We have been making them out of clay, glue, cardboard, papier-mâché and many other materials. The collaboration in this project is very important and in this group it has been amazing. We have also been working on the plaques for the animals and plants that we are going to have on display. 

At the Presentation Night on Thursday, the 16th of June, we are very excited to be able to share all of this amazing work, as well as our personal portfolios, with all the members of our school community. 

We hope to see you there!

PE

Division Cross Country

On Thursday 9th June, Orpheus Sidiroglou, Andrzej Szczepanik and William Ostberg represented Moreland Primary School at the Division Cross Country Championship.

All students did an amazing job with Orpheus finishing 3rd and Andrzej finishing 7th qualifying for the Regional Cross Country Championship. William finished 15th and will be an emergency for the next race. Well done to all and good luck to Orpheus and Andrzej in the next race.