What's happening in our learning spaces? 

Students of the Week   

Foundation

St Fidelis School community welcomes Isabel, Oscar, Sam, Adam, Daniel, Elliot, Vivienne, Liam, Alessia, Sascha, Sienna, Alessandro, Patrick, Abby, Milana, Damien, Amelia, Zara and their families to our community for the 2022 school year. It has been a smooth transition to school for everyone over the past four half days of learning. Everyone is to be congratulated for their positive attitude.

As self-managers, we have been fantastic at engaging in the different daily routines, including the morning routine, brain food, recess and end of day. We have also been introduced to the St Fidelis Agreed Ways, and this week we will be introduced to the Photo Blocks as an extra organisational tool within the learning space and how to use them.

As readers, we have had the opportunity to engage with different stories and identify who was in the story, what the characters were doing and where it was set using the Colourful Semantics cards. 

As mathematicians, we have been identifying how many letters in our name and how many people in our families. We have also been counting different collections of teddies, counters and blocks and recording the numbers on whiteboards and on blank ten frames. We have been introduced to subitising cards and have enjoyed sharing with each other how many dots we could see when the cards were quickly shown to us. At home, students can practise counting from 0 to 20 and back, counting collection of items around the house and identifying different numbers that are visible at home eg on clocks, remote controls, house numbers or on appliances. 

We were able to participate in specialist classes last week. It was very exciting for us to meet the different teachers who will share their knowledge and expertise with Italian, Visual Art and Physical Education sessions each Tuesday .Just a reminder that the sport uniform is worn every Tuesday.

This week we begin full days at school, but we still have Wednesday as a rest day. Some of us will come in on Wednesday at our scheduled time to engage in some literacy assessments. 

Dismissal times for the students in Red and Blue houses will be 3:20pm and for those in Green and Gold houses, it will be 3:30pm. The students will be dismissed to the Saunders Yard area near the entrance to our Learning area.

Wishing everyone a great week!

Leanne Wenckowski

Year 1/2

It was wonderful to see everyone’s smiling faces as we returned to school on Monday morning and walked through the doors of our newly refurbished learning spaces. We unpacked our bags and collaborated with our friends and teachers as we engaged in puzzles, games, construction and book making, whilst catching up and sharing our summer adventures.

As self-managers, this week we focused on building positive relationships with one another and familiarising ourselves with our new learning spaces and play areas.

As thinkers, we unpacked each of the daily routines and the St Fidelis Agreed Ways and explored how to be respectful, responsible and safe members of our learning community. We went through the Morning Routine as a learning space, took photos and wrote steps to follow. Each morning when we arrive at school, we know that as self-managers, we need to sanitise our hands, unpack our bags, change our books and read quietly in our thinking circle while our teachers listen to us read and check our yellow reading log books. We also know where all of our things go, such as our lunchbox and green folder.

As mathematicians, we tuned in to Number, Counting and Place Value. We have been skip counting forwards and backwards by 2s, 5s and 10s, some of us from 0 and some of us from different starting points, and exploring two and three digit numbers. We have been reading and writing different numbers and identifying numbers before, after and in between, and playing different card and dice games to consolidate our number knowledge. 

As members of a Catholic community, we are exploring Prayer, and what it looks like, sounds like and feels like. As communicators, we activated our prior knowledge and shared our thinking about why we engage in prayer and how we engage in prayer, and engaged in the thinking routine Chalk Talk, as we unpacked the different symbols associated with prayer and their meaning. 

As readers, we engaged in different texts that focused on positive mindset, growth and goal setting. We read the text ‘Oh the Places You’ll Go’ by Dr Seuss and as thinkers and communicators, identified, shared and recorded some of our hopes and dreams for the year ahead. Some of us engaged with the text ‘The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be’. We drew self portraits and used adjectives to describe our own character traits. 

It was a wonderful start to the year in 1/2SC, 1/2AM, 1/2AP, and we look forward to all of the learning opportunities the year will bring. 

1/2 Team

Stefanie Carriera, Alexandra Phillips and Alycia Marsico

Year 3/4

Welcome to Year 3/4, 2022!  We are very excited to welcome all students and parents/carers to a new year of learning in our new spaces. The Year 3/4 students were thrilled to start the first week in their new flexible spaces. We discussed agreed ways around the space, and students took ownership of their belongings.

This week, the Year 3/4 students have been communicating with each other by engaging in getting to know you games, conversations and sharing their holiday experiences. There were numerous stories and laughs shared amongst the classes.

In Literacy, students engaged in a variety of texts that opened opportunities to discuss what it means to be a learner. We read ‘The Wonder of Winsome’ written by Kath Murdoch, and ‘What We’ll Build’ written by Oliver Jeffers. Students created their own wonderings about the world around them, sparking their curiosity. 

I wonder why there are deadly animals? Nicholas 3/4BP

I wonder why bananas are yellow? Anderson 3/4BP

I wonder why we get pimples? Louis 3/4BP

I wonder why birds make nests? Lennix 3/4BP

I wonder how makeup is made? Olivia 3/4BP

I wonder how our eye colour changes? Xena 3/4BP

In Numeracy, students collaborated to graph their birthdays to create a display in the learning spaces. In 3/4BP, we found out that the month of May has the most birthdays and no students have birthdays in the months September, October and December. 

We cannot wait to see all the learning opportunities this year has in store for us!

Year 3/4 Team 

Katarina Davidson, Graham Troy and Belinda Panzarino 

Year 5/6

Welcome back everyone!  The 5/6 students are enjoying the big learning space in the Senior Learning Area (SLA) and it is very pleasing to see how they have settled well into the classroom routines.  They are very respectful and enjoy learning from each other. The students are enjoying getting to know each other and have been excited to talk about their holidays.  Comments from students about the start of the school year:

5/6VC - Hunter - I am a little nervous but excited to be in a new class.  I am looking forward to getting better at maths.

5/6VC  - Daniel - I am excited about learning new things and more challenging things like maths. I am excited to meet new people.

5/6VC  - Chrisitan - I am excited to meet my buddy in foundation and to make new friends.

5/6VC  - Grace - I am happy to be in Mrs Clarke's class. I am looking forward to learning new things.

5/6OS - Penelope - It has been great getting to know my classmates and my new teacher.

5/6OS  - Ava.B - It was exciting to see my friends again and having such a good class has made my first week back easy. 

5/6OS - Chloe - It was really fun. I have enjoyed getting back into learning. All of my classmates are really nice. 

5/6OS  - Alejandro - Coming back to school I was a bit nervous but seeing my friends again and spending time together made me feel good and happy. 

5/6OS - Connor - I am really happy to be back at school, because I get to see my friends and its good to be back into a routine again. 

5/6OS  - Lucien - I loved being back at school because it was fun. 

As the new school year began I felt a little nervous because I have never been in the senior learning area before. I was very excited about meeting new friends but also a little nervous as this was all new to me. 

5/6CG -  Maddie - I am so happy to be in 5/6 CG because I have all my friends in this class and we enjoy learning together. 

5/6CG - Adelynn - I was so excited to be in 5/6 CG because I have never had so many of my friends all in the one class.  I am so excited about starting year 5 because I am really interested to know what we are going to be learning about.   

5/6CG - Sanjay - I was so excited coming back to school because I wanted to do more face to face learning as last year we did not get much opportunity to do so.  This year I hope to spend more time with my friends and enjoy school life. 

5/6CG - Christian - This year I am really excited about being in year 5. I am really looking forward to going to camp as this is a great experience to be with your friends away from school.  I am also looking forward to having my communion.  This is a really special time for me.  

During the week, we revisited St Fidelis’ ‘Agreed Ways’. We explored and discussed key concepts associated with each of the ‘Agreed Ways’, and the important role they play in creating a safe environment for us all. Students then had the task of choosing one ‘Agreed Way’ and demonstrating their understanding of it in a comic form. The students are to be congratulated on their creative and clever comic strips.

Also, a reminder for the Year 5 students and their parents that the Parent and Child Eucharist Sacramental workshop is online (via Zoom), on Tuesday, 8th February at 7.00pm. Each family is required to have a candle for the workshop.

**Any family that chose to celebrate the Sacrament of Eucharist last year is also expected to attend the workshop. We look forward to seeing everyone online.

Have a wonderful week!

Michelle Casamento, Annette Gasbarro, Olivia Sargent & Viviana Clarke

Year 5/6 teachers