Learning & Teaching 

LITERACY - Vira Pirrotta

Reading at Home 

At St. Fidelis we aim to foster a passion for reading and hope that together your child will develop  a love of reading. Parents play a vital role in their child’s learning. Reading at home has significant benefits  for the reader that must not be underestimated.  

We encourage parents to be positively and actively involved in your child’s reading by establishing good home reading habits and routines. The most successful readers have support both at home and at school. Reading is a foundation for success so let’s not underestimate the importance of reading at home.  

In order to establish good reading habits and routines, parents/guardians are encouraged to:

• set aside a dedicated reading time and quiet space in order to promote the importance of reading
• read a wide variety of texts, e.g. picture storybooks, newspapers, comics and magazines
• promote reading for enjoyment as well as for learning

Your child will be selecting books from the coloured tubs to take home and or choosing books from their classroom libraries to read at home. 

To ensure these good reading routines are maintained, diaries will be returned to school for teachers to track and monitor your child’s reading at home.  Home reading diaries will be checked weekly by your teacher. Your child’s teacher will inform you about what day their reading diaries will be collected. 

Scholastic Book Club 

Scholastic Book Club offers students a wide range of titles in each issue. Plus every order you place earns the school FREE books and learning resources. Book Club catalogues arrive to school up to twice a term. More information in Skoolbag.  Issue 1 is out now and due back Thursday February 10.

NUMERACY - Colleen Monaghan

Fun Numeracy Ideas to do at home:

It is so great to be back working with your children in Maths. Counting and Place Value are the big concepts we are teaching across the school this month.

In Foundation: Children learn to count from 0-20 forwards and backwards, count items with one to one correspondence and match numerals with collections up to 20. They start working with numbers to 5 and when competent and confident move to 10 and then onto 20.

Year 1- work with reading writing, ordering and representing numbers up to 100, they count forwards and backwards to 100 in 1’s, 2’s and 5’s starting at 0.

Year 2’s move to working with numbers up to 1000 (reading, writing, representing and ordering)

Year 3’s move to working with numbers up to 10000, Year 4’s 10000 and beyond. By Grade 5, they are working with large numbers and Year 6 with large numbers fractions and decimals.

F-2

• Thread beads to make and explore patterns, count the beads, record the number of each colour 
• Play guess and check games (use different shaped jars) – how many beans, buttons, pegs in the container?
• Work together on jigsaw puzzles and discuss your method: e.g., Collect the pieces with straight edges
• Play card games; e.g., Snap, Go Fish, Find the Pair, Read a number using 2 cards, 3 cards, 4 cards etc..
• Play games: e.g., Hop-Scotch, Snakes and Ladders, Connect 4, Noughts and Crosses, Checkers. Is there a strategy?

When out and about, children:

• Take turns closing their eyes and describing how to get from the front gate to the kitchen, from the kitchen to their bedroom
• Dance to their favourite song/music
• Find and read large numbers in your local environment
• Spot number plates; e.g., numbers in order, double digits, numbers that add to a given total
• Play “I Spy” with a mathematics focus; e.g., something rectangular and red
• Go on a numeracy walk to look for numbers or shapes, to count objects, compare sizes of objects and look for patterns in your environment. Ask your child to decide what you will look for
• Measure everything! How far can you jump? How long is the desk? How tall are you? How tall is the dog?

Years 3-6

• Read car and house prices in car yards and real estate agents’ windows
• Find and read large numbers in the local environment
• Measure everything! “How far can you jump?” “How long is the desk?” “How tall are you?” “How tall is the dog?”
• Pack for a trip or help loading the boot. What will fit?
• Compare steps, paces and hand spans with metric units of length
• Explore online maps, sat navigational directions for planning a trip
• Look at architecture and buildings: shapes, symmetry, patterns, size and proportion

When driving, spot number plates with the number zero on them. Change the number to 1 when they have spotted five car number plates with the number zero. Work their way up to the number 9. Spot number plates with digits that equal 10, 20, 55, 17 using different operations (+ – x ÷ )

SPORT & PE - Michael Jennings

Physical Education & Sport Timetable

TUESDAY

Physical Education Lessons

5/6VC, 5/6OS, 1/2AM, 1/2SC, 1/2AP, FLW

WEDNESDAY

Physical Education Lessons

 5/6CG, 3/4KD, 3/4GT & 3/4BF

FRIDAY

Year 3/4 Modified Sport Program 

Year 5/6 Inter-school & Intra-school Sport program

Please note that students will need to wear their sports uniforms to school on the days outlined above for physical education classes and sport.

SPORTS NEWS

St Fidelis Primary School is an affiliated member of School Sport Victoria and competes in various sports within the Coburg District. The Coburg District aims to provide the children with the opportunity to participate in well organised and enjoyable sporting events that are an extension of school based Sport & Physical Education programs. It is our school’s belief that children benefit greatly from visiting and competing with other schools within the Coburg District.

SSV Coburg District program Outline

SSV Coburg District Summer Sport Competitions

Term 1

Friday February 19 - Friday March 19

ELIGIBILITY

All Grade 6 and some Grade 5 students

Games:

Boys/Mixed Softball, Girls Softball, Boys/Mixed Bat Tennis, Girls Bat Tennis, Boys/Mixed Basketball & Girls Basketball.

SSV Coburg District Swimming Trials

School Sport Victoria conducts swimming competitions at district, division, region and state levels, however, the Coburg District does not conduct swimming championships.

Students, however, can progress to the next level of competition (Inner North/Moreland Division) by competing in Coburg District Swimming Trials, to be held on Thursday 24 February at Elite Swimming, Pascoe Vale Pool, 8 Attercliffe Ave, Pascoe Vale, 

In order to nominate and to compete at this event, students are required to swim for a club outside of school hours, or be at a very good standard (squad). Students swim in 10, 11 & 12/13 year age groups. Ages are calculated as of December 31st in the year of competition. Therefore, if your child is 9 or 10 years of age this year, he/she will compete in the 10 year age group. Children 11 years of age this year compete in the 11 year age group and children 12 years of age this year compete in the 12 year age group.

If your child wishes to nominate for this event, please complete and return the attached form to the office by the due date.

SSV Coburg District Tennis Competition

School Sport Victoria (SSV) - Coburg District will conduct a Tennis Tournament for both boys and girls at the West Brunswick Tennis Club, Victoria St, Brunswick, on Tuesday, 22  February 2022.

In order to nominate and to compete at this event, players are required to:

1.             Play competition tennis for a club outside of school hours, or be 

                 at a very good standard.

2.             Be born in 2009, 2010 or 2011 only. All participants nominated must not turn        

                 thirteen or remain nine during 2022.

3.             Attend a school affiliated with S.S.V.

This year the tournament will be run as a singles tournament. The students will play Fast 4 Rules. If your child would like to nominate for this event, he or she can obtain an information letter and nomination form attached to this newsletter. Nominations will not be accepted after the due dates.

SSV State Team Selection Process

Each year, talented Victorian school students have the opportunity to trial for a place in the School Sport Victoria (SSV) Team Vic state team and participate in annual School Sport Australia (SSA) Championships.  

The School Sport Australian Championships offer gifted and talented students the opportunity to participate in higher levels of sporting competition against students from other Australian states and territories. Please note: The opening of the 2022 Team Vic State Team Trial registrations are open and close on March 1 2022.

Go to https://www.ssv.vic.edu.au/team-vic to view information regarding the nomination process for each sport re. dates, times, venue, age eligibility, nominations closing dates, trial fees and Championship venue and dates-by clicking on the respective links under the Team Vic tab on the SSV website.

Please note that participation in SSV Team Vic state teams is self-funded, so students will be required to contribute to the costs of being a member of a team.  Costs include host state and administration levies, uniform, flights, transport, accommodation and meals.

SSV makes every effort to keep all costs to a minimum and tries to assist team members through contact with schools, sponsor letter and a media release. SSV also conducts a State Teams raffle to assist with meeting the costs of participation, plus students can also apply for grants from the Australian Sports Commission Local Sporting Champions Program or nominate for an opportunity to obtain funding from the Sports Excellence Scholarship Fund. Students registering for trials are indicating that they will be in attendance at all trials unless otherwise informed. Team training schedules will be available at the trials and team training is generally held on weekends or during school holidays. When registering, SSV recommends using Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome as your internet browser as there have been reports of problems when registering when using Internet Explorer.

Eligibility

To be eligible for selection, students must be enrolled and in regular attendance as a full-time student at a primary or secondary school affiliated with SSV; available to attend selection trials and training sessions; and meet the costs of participation.  Your child’s school is affiliated with SSV and competes in the Coburg District. Students wishing to register for trials for sports will need to apply directly to SSV via the website. If your child wishes to nominate for football, soccer, netball or basketball, please follow the steps outlined:

PRIOR to registration:

1. Your child's Sport Coordinator must confirm/ endorse your child's athleticism and sport specific ability to trial so discussion with this person prior to registering is imperative.
2. Please note that only a maximum of 3 students per school are permitted to register for football, soccer, netball or basketball so this endorsement is important.
3. If the Sport Coordinator endorses your child, please register online.
4. If your child is nominating for more than one sport, please complete a separate nomination form for each sport.

PLEASE NOTE:

There are no longer Coburg District Trials for these sports. The ultimate goal of nomination is State Team selection in these sports. Therefore, only very gifted and talented students can be selected from districts to trial at division trials.

VISUAL ARTS - Joe Frazzetto

OUR LITTLE PICASSOS

The Foundation students had their first art session and they were introduced to the question ‘What is a portrait?’. We had a brief discussion about the question and the students said…

“It is a picture.”

“Photo of someone.”

“Picture of person’s face.”

We discussed and explored the structure of our face. Where the eyes, nose and mouth are located on our face, shape of our face and features such as hair, ears and eyelashes and eyebrows.

Then the new Foundation students were asked to draw a portrait of their lovely and wonderful teacher Mrs.Wenckowski by drawing with a white crayon on a black cardboard. The Foundation Students are truly Little Picassos, each student drew a beautiful and detailed portrait of Mrs. Wenckowski.

Mrs Wenckowski and I were amazed what the new Foundation students produced within 40 minutes. Here are our Little Picasso’s portraits.