School News 

Prep

Week 6 already and we are officially more than half-way through Term 2. We have been keeping track of how many days we have been at school….and we are now at 69 days. Stay tuned to hear more about our 100 day celebrations coming up. 

This last fortnight has seen us continue some amazing learning. We have completed phase 3 words and sounds. We now know the letters f, r, h, j, o and m. Don’t forget to help us practice these at home!

In Writing we made our first whole class books, based on the book ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell. 

We met with our buddies for a learning session and together made an Alphabet Book ‘A -Z of the Zoo.’ 

In Maths we have been learning about ‘Addition’. We had so much fun playing the game ‘In and Out’. We are bringing our board games home so we can even teach our Mums and Dad’s to play. We played with counters at school, but at home we could play with sultanas, Lego, rocks, coins or buttons.

In Friendology we made friendship puppets and we talked about making friends. We enjoyed role playing with our puppets as we practised the skills of introducing ourselves and asking our new friends questions.  

Grade 1 & 2 

Another busy 2 weeks in level 1/2! Learning tasks have now been completed and marked and we look forward to seeing students share their work with you. They will be bring their portfolios home on the 2nd of June.  Only 3 weeks left of Term 2!

In Reading, students have been exposed to many different types of poems and have had lots of practice reading them. They have had a focus on identifying nouns, verbs and adjectives as well as the structure of different poetry types.  

In Writing students have been writing some beautiful Cinquain and Colour poems. They have also started planning how to write a Diamante poem which has a very similar structure to a Cinquain.   

In Maths, students have been learning about subtraction. They have been learning many different strategies for solving subtraction problems such as partitioning, filling in the blanks, counting back, finding the difference, and counting up. We have also used a lot of hands-on resources such as unifix blocks to help solve problems.  

In Inquiry, students have continued their Inquiry unit ‘Change-Stimulating Science’. We have looked at observable features of objects and discussed these as a way to compare objects. They have done scientific observations on the physical properties of and changes to liquids, for example when blowing a bubble, as well as the changes that occur between raw and cooked spaghetti.  

We have also been very hands on in Science lessons this week mixing oil, water and detergent together to see what changes occur! Students made a hypothesis on how well they think the materials would mix together and then recorded their observations in their Science journal. 

It has been great to have Parent Helpers reading with students in the classroom! We really missed this over the last few years.  

Have a great weekend.  

The Level 1/2 Team 

Llinos Poole, Kayla Hartrick, Rachel Boyle, Emma Wright, Sam Younes & Daena Hailey 

Grade 3 & 4

This week you will have received you child’s portfolios with their Learning tasks for the term. We hope you enjoy this celebration of your child’s learning. To compliment the learning tasks, at the end of term you will receive your child’s semester report. These will indicate your child’s progress thus far this year.

At school the students have been designing and building rockets. We will be firing off the final design from an air compressor at the end of term to cheer on the furthest rocket.

In Maths, we are looking at money and giving change. It would be a great opportunity, the next time you go shopping, to take cash. You could either allow your child to watch you handling the money or allow them to do it for you. In this age of tapping to pay, students aren’t experiencing the money transactions.

As the winter fast approaches we notice that students often misplace their jumpers and jackets. Please ensure your child’s belongings are all clearly labelled. It is also important they have water bottles even though it is cold, dehydration is still a concern and again these bottles need to be clearly labelled.

Grade 5 & 6

The past two weeks have been full of new topics and learning for our 5/6 cohort! Students have been hard at work exploring new skills and ideas across all subject areas.

In Reading, students have been using the specific skills related to analysing and critiquing a range a texts by Australian author Jackie French. In particular, we have been looking at the book ‘Pandemic’, and exploring the unique way in which Jackie presents factual historical events in a narrative style of writing. Students have analysed the text’s use of images, language, character, plot and setting to critique the text. 

On May 24th, the 5/6 students participated in the National Simultaneous Story Time reading of ‘The Speedy Sloth’. It was lovely to read a story all together and reflect on how lucky we are to have access to so many amazing books and stories at Rolling Hills.

Writing this fortnight has been jam packed with exploring new and exciting ways to write informative texts.  We have been focusing deeply on being able to improve our information reports by posing open-ended and probing research questions to further our understanding of chosen topics and write more engaging and informative texts. Students are also focussing on appropriate language choices for their information reports, as well as using the Seven Steps Writing Graph to improve on their report structure.

In Inquiry, Students have been hard at work continuing to research their chosen notable Australian, in order to present their findings to the 3/4 cohort at a History Expo yet to come. The 5/6 level have been using their research to design questions for the 3/4s to ask them about their notable Australian, as well as writing journal entries from that person’s perspective. 

In Maths, students have absolutely loved practicing their enlarging skills by using grids, ratios and scale to draw larger version of their chosen images. These are looking absolutely amazing and I’m sure students will want to create more of these in the future. They could even do one at home! Students have also started exploring elapsed time, creating timetables, and converting units of time this week in Maths. 

Writing this fortnight has been jam packed with exploring new and exciting ways to write informative texts.  We have been focusing deeply on being able to improve our information reports by posing open-ended and probing research questions to further our understanding of chosen topics and write more engaging and informative texts. Students are also focussing on appropriate language choices for their information reports, as well as using the Seven Steps Writing Graph to improve on their report structure.

In Science, students have been experimenting and documenting various electrical circuits to create functioning fans, buzzers, LED lights, doorbells and more. We can’t wait to see what they will design next!

Don’t forget to take a look through learning portfolios this week, our 5/6 students have worked so hard and are very excited to share their tasks with you. A reminder that homework is due each Monday to your child’s classroom teacher.

 We look forward to updating you about what has been going on in our classrooms again soon!

 The 5/6 Team

Damien Smith, Megan Pepprell,

 Brendan Van Haaster and Millie Pinney