Grade 4/5/6

In the classroom

Literacy this term within the 456 area is shaping up beautifully. We are very proud of all of our students' achievements.  They are working hard and approaching their learning with Care and Responsibility.  

Within the Writing Workshop the genre focus has been on Information Reports.  Students have generated ideas on their topics of choice, and then whilst adhering to the key features and structure of the genre, spent time on constructing grammatically correct, and interesting sentences of varying length.  Within Reading, focus has been placed on students beginning to write about their reading.  Time is being provided to students to read independently, and then following on from this, they then respond to either their own individual reading goals or to question prompts categorised at either a 'surface level', 'going deeper' or 'going even deeper' level.  In addition to this, for the last few weeks students have been preparing for the launch of our Literacy Circles.  Each lesson has focused on students learning about and practicing the various roles involved in the approach, roles such as the 'Literary Luminary', the 'Word Wizard', 'The Connector', and the 'Discussion Director'.  We are proud of the manner in which our students have participated in this learning, and are SUPER excited to launch our Literacy Circles officially in week 9 of this term.

In Spanish Literacy, our students have been developing their cross-linguistic skills by describing themselves and important people in their lives. Descriptions included information about where they are from, what celebrations are important in their families and who their friends are and why. To achieve this, they have developed and strengthen communicative skills such as asking and answering questions about their culture, listening to Newlands teachers talking about themselves, note taking, identifying key information and writing descriptive texts. 

In Mathematics, we have been focusing on addition and subtraction in the Spanish rooms and multiplication & division in the English rooms. There have been some interesting conversations around using the basic operations to solve decimal number and fraction equations, as we make links between the students' mathematical understandings from a 'procedural' perspective to develop their knowledge 'conceptually*'.  Our number talks have been a fantastic opportunity for students to articulate their understandings with more clarity- away from the "You carry the X and add the Y and just add a zero!" thinking!

The number talks give the opportunity to students to not only present their own strategy, but to also see other's ways of solving the problems. Some of the students thinking processes have been very creative and accurate. Each teaching team has also commenced units of work on measurement (time, length, area, surface area, and perimeter) to reinforce and extend student learning from our Term 1 unit. Feel free to reinforce all of the learning at home too.

Outside the class

Not a dull week at NPS, a lot has been happening here as usual. We had Andrew McDonald, the creator of the Real Pigeons series, coming to engage in a presentation with students across all levels at Newlands. 

We had a visitor from Canberra David Ferrán and María Luisa Ochoa, both from the Department of Education from the Spanish Embassy. Together they did a presentation around Picasso´s life and art, linking it to the current exhibition at the NGV. 

Some students attended Districts on Wednesday. There were some comments from other teachers about the school on blue and yellow being really supportive to everyone, cheering and encouraging all participants, and really engaging with the competition. 

Our amazing STEAM teacher Raema organised a whole school Science incursion with Street Science to celebrate National Science Week. The students were engaged and amused with the experiments and outcomes. Such a good way to start the last day of the week.

We would like to thank the parent helpers for giving their time to come and be part of the learning in the classrooms, muchas gracias! 

Grade 6 Families - Graduation day

The year is moving very fast and we have got some things organised already for the students to have a memorable end to their time here at NPS. We would love to involve parents in the process of organising the Graduation Day. 

We need your help in terms of ideas or skills you can offer. We are really excited and would love to create a great memory for the students, therefore, would like to meet the Grade 6 families at NPS on the 1st of September Thursday at 4pm in the Staff Room at Newlands. We will send a message on Sentral to remind families.