Overview

This is the final newsletter for the term and what a term it has been. The “Weather" unit, the Wicked Weather incursion, a visit from the fire brigade and Carlton football players, Literacy and Numeracy Week, Book Week activities, Dress Up Day, the Fathers’ Day breakfast, Literacy and Numeracy Week and the whole school assembly, have been some of the highlights of the term. It is wonder that we fitted it all in!

I am always impressed by the interest our students show in their school program and their individual achievements. They are certainly successful and always striving to be the best they can be! As another term comes to an end, I would like to thank the students and staff for their hard work. It has been busy!

Exciting events to come

Sleepover

PKD and PKD are looking forward to their sleepover next week. Students will be going to Healesville Sanctuary, having dinner at the Commercial Hotel, South Morang and sleeping over at school on Thursday. On Friday students will be going to Inflatable World in Bundoora and McDonalds for lunch. There is lots of fun to be had!

Footy Day

It is also that time of the year when most people are talking football as the finals for all codes approach. Our footy day is next Friday and the students and staff are looking forward to coming dressed in their favourite team colours, participating in the parade and marching to their club song. There will be lots of cheering and support for all football clubs. A special footy lunch will also available for students to enjoy. I thank parents in advance for their help in organising the footy lunch on this day.

Literacy and Numeracy Week

Lower Primary opened its classrooms to family and friends during Literacy and Numeracy Week. We had over 30 family members spend time in their children's classrooms working on a range of literacy and numeracy activities with them. Our students loved sharing their learning with their family members who also enjoyed learning alongside their children.

As a conclusion to these activities the school community also came together at an assembly to recognise and to celebrate the wonderful achievements of our students in the areas of literacy and numeracy. PLB and PJL represented Lower Primary at the assembly and did a fantastic job performing “Drip Drop and I Can Sing a Rainbow” which related to the work they had done as part of the integrated unit on Weather. Congratulations to PJL and PLB, their performance was impressive.

Over the term

The focus for reading sessions has been Visual Language, Phonics and Word Knowledge and Decoding. All students have been working through the fundamentals of these skills at their point of learning need. Students are learning that visual language is about exploring how images work in texts to communicate meaning. Visual texts are not only found in books but in photos, pictures, diagrams, picture books, environmental signage, the internet and multimedia technology. Students have also been developing their phonics and word knowledge. This for some students was as simple as developing their auditory skills to identify environmental sounds, rhyming words, matching letters to their name, recognising initial sounds and matching to a picture or object to sounding out, chunking and blending for those with more developed skills. Modelled and Shared reading experiences using big books, and interactive texts form the basis of our reading program. Modelled and Shared reading is also used to teach decoding strategies. Students continued to build on their phonics and word knowledge which will assist in further development of decoding strategies. Students are being introduced to specific decoding strategies to assist with the development of their reading skills.

These strategies include:

Eagle Eye - looking at the pictures and looking for clues to figure out the word.
Lips the Fish- getting your lips ready. Saying the beginning sound. Saying beginning, middle and ending sounds in single-syllable words
Stretchy Snake- sounding out and stretching the sounds within the word slowly
Trying Lion- trying to reread the sentence, thinking ‘what makes sense?’
Chunky Monkey- dividing words into parts (chunks) you already know, read each part and read the word by combining the parts
Skippy Frog- skip the tricky word, read to the end, go back and try again.
Flippy Dolphin- flip the vowel sound, try long or short sounds.

Writing

Students have looked at a variety of text type and structure with particular focus on procedural and descriptive texts. The purpose of a procedural text is to tell the reader how to do or make something. The information is presented in a logical sequence of events, which is broken up into small sequenced steps. As with all of our writing text types students participated in a stimulus activity which in the case of a procedure was for example, making hot chocolate. Students were provided with explicit instruction, visuals and hands on tasks to complete the procedure. They used photos, pictures, picture words, picture word sentences or their own writing to sequence the steps of a procedure and to create their own procedural text.

The primary purpose of descriptive writing is to describe a person, place or thing by using the five senses and descriptive words (adjectives). Students continued to build on their oral language skills so that in turn they had the language to develop their own descriptive writing. In the early stages, a description was as simple as responding orally using descriptive language to a stimulus activity such as dipping into a feely bag, taking objects out of a mystery box , blind-folded tasting, moving through an obstacle course viewing a video or photo using the orientation prompts:

What did you see?
What did you hear?
What did you feel?
What shape is it?
What size is it?
What colour is it?

Students were provided with explicit instruction to assist them to complete a descriptive text. They use aided language displays, picture words, picture word sentences to assist them.

Mathematics

In the area of Mathematics students enjoyed learning about Money .The younger students enjoyed "playing shops" in their classrooms. This role play was an important aspect of developing an understanding that money is exchanged for goods. Students who have developed this understanding moved onto role play that focused on the labelled cost of an item- 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, one dollar and using the right coin to pay for items. As students continued to develop, they worked on counting coins to make a specific amount- making 5 dollars from dollar coins.

Students also developed their knowledge and skills in the area of multiplication (grouping) and division (sharing). All activities have been supported by concrete materials that students have manipulated to develop their understanding of these processes. Students have taken part in specific moderation tasks which reflected their understanding of these processes and the ability to use grouping and sharing strategies. These tasks also gave teachers relevant information about where students are at and where to take them next.

Shape

Students were involved in activities to develop and understanding of simple two dimensional shapes by matching, sorting and naming them. They were encouraged to locate shapes in the environment and in familiar objects- a basketball is a circle, that roof looks like a triangle, my work book is a rectangle.

Length

Students have been comparing ‘long’ and ‘short’ objects and learning how to order objects by measuring them against each other. They have been encouraged to use the language of measurement such as same, long, longer, short, shorter, tall and taller. For those students who have further developed measurement skills have been using icy pole sticks, blocks and paper clips to estimate and then check which objects are longer.

Integrated Unit- Weather

Students were given the opportunity to investigate the weather and how weather can affect their lives. Students have been encouraged to use their senses to develop understandings and concepts about the weather. The projects, art work, construction and displays within classrooms showed students understanding of this topic. It has been wonderful to see students totally involved in experiments and activities, and to listen to the observations and conclusions that students have been making.

In Science students have looked at weather and observable changes that occur in the sky and landscape and how seasonal changes affect daily life. As a part of this unit the students have been assisted to conduct experiments such as, water cycle in a bag, erupting volcanoes, tornados in a bottle, and have made an anemometer and a weather vain to examine wind force and direction. The students had lots of fun making their own snow.

Social Competencies

All students are now fully involved in the Drug Education. A variety of topics are being undertaken. Some students are exploring 'illnesses' using the doctor's kits and sick dolls. While other students are exploring medicines: where they are kept, who can give you medicines and how they go into the body. Students are enjoying activities including whiteboard slideshows, bingo games, first aid kits, medicine containers and packets and role plays using the doctor dress ups

Occupational Therapy

Within some of our OT sessions, we have been working on making and drawing a person using the Mat Man program. Mat Man is a person made of wooden pieces with a mat for a body. As a class we make Mat Man while listening to the Mat Man song. The students then have a turn making him themselves before drawing a person themselves. Learning about Mat Man assists our students to add a body to their drawing and also helps with body awareness e.g. arms come out of our body not our heads.

If you would like to practice drawing mat man at home, you can find the song on YouTube: “HWT songs” you will need to start playing the song at 7.15 seconds.

Kath Moore

Campus Principal

Dates to Remember

September

October