What's happening?
Foundation
Thank you to our amazing helpers with corridor reading and Monday writing! There are still gaps so feel free to add your name if you are available. Foundation students had a fantastic time on Wednesday for our annual ‘Breakfast at School’, eating lots of toast, fruit and even a pancake!
Last week in literacy we learnt about /r/ and /u/, and this week /b/ and /h/. Reversing ‘b’ and ‘d’ in reading and writing is common. We teach students a range of strategies to assist, and encourage you to remind your child if they have stated/written the incorrect one. But it does take time, exposure and practise. We continue to be impressed with their writing skills, and it is lovely to see their confidence growing.
Place Value has just been completed in Maths Groups. However, this is a very important topic and will be addressed again in Term 3 and 4, as well as in our Maths Warm ups on occasion. We have now moved onto Measurement (Time), looking at days of the week, duration of events and sequencing events in the day.
Please also remember the Mother’s Day and Special People stall will be held tomorrow. The students are able to bring in $1-$7 to purchase a gift. It will also be great if you could send them in with an extra shopping bag to collect and carry their items in. We are also looking forward to having breakfast in the classroom tomorrow morning with our Mum’s and special people.
Grade 1
This week in Grade 1 we have begun our Maths topic of patterns, where students will be exploring how to recognise and continue repeating, and increasing patterns with numbers, colours, shapes and objects.
During Reading sessions we have been working on recognising punctuation, and using it to develop clear, expressive and fluent phrasing. It is lovely to welcome parent helpers into the classrooms to assist with our daily reading sessions. We know the children have been really excited to have an opportunity to share their vast improvements with our visitors. If you are wanting to help, there is still space on the sign up sheets, outside your child’s classroom. Please ensure you have a current Working With Childrens Check, and that it has been sighted and copied at the office. You must also sign-in on the Compass kiosk at the office before entering the classroom.
For the next two weeks, Word Study focus will be ‘soft and hard c and g’. The letters c and g can say their soft sounds /s/ and /j/ when directly followed by the vowels e,i or y. As you may have noticed, the English language is incredibly complex and there are a vast range of spelling rules and choices that your child has now been exposed to. To support and strengthen their understanding of these rules, we encourage all families to regularly use their child’s sound pack at home to practise and review learnt spelling rules and sounds. For any families needing support with this, please don’t hesitate to contact your child’s teacher.
We are continuing to learn about Weather, and have been observing and tracking the daily weather in Parkdale by recording weather symbols. This week the students have also been using the daily weather forecasts to dress their classroom teddies, and did a wonderful job of making sure that they had their raincoats and umbrella’s ready for this weeks rainy days!
Grade 2
This fortnight, we have really enjoyed integrating our Inquiry topic, ‘All Mixed Up’ (which focuses on chemical science) and our learning within the ‘English’ strands of the curriculum. Students have explored a range of procedural texts and their features, and are developing their skills with writing their own procedures.
Students are learning to apply their knowledge from our ‘Syntax Project’ lessons in order to develop relevant and thought-provoking questions beginning with ‘who, what, where, when, and how’.
As part of our ‘Word Study’, students have been using the suffixes -ed and -ing to indicate past and present tense, and are now focusing on the suffixes -ful and -less.
In Maths, we wrap up our subtraction topic this week, in which students have been exploring the relationship between addition and subtraction, and how they can use addition to help solve subtraction problems. Practise at home is always beneficial, from ‘quick facts’ games using dice and playing cards, to explaining which strategy was used to solve a problem.
We began a new round of ‘Rotations’ last week which allows students and teachers from the four grades to mix and work together, learning more about coding, symmetry, tessellations and participating in a design challenge.
As part of our wellbeing program, we have revisited the ‘Zones of Regulation’ and students have identified some tools/strategies that may help them when they’re feeling a particular way, or when dealing with difficult situations.
Students no longer require their hat at school for this term (“Hats away, 1st of May").
Thank you for your support with homework: Regular reading aloud and ‘Red Flag Word’ spelling.
Optional extras: ‘Nessy Reading and Spelling’ and ‘Sunset/Jetpack Maths’ (Essential Assessment).
Grade 3
The students have been working extremely hard in Grade 3 over the last few weeks.
Reading: We have been learning to find the main idea by figuring out ‘who’ or ‘what’ the passage is about and then identifying the most important idea about the ‘who’ or ‘what’. Our mentor text this week is ‘Tiddalick’ which is a First Nation’s dreamtime creation story.
Writing: The students are beginning to write an Information Report on an Australian animal of their choice. In our grammar lessons, we are learning to use co-ordinating conjunctions to accurately form a compound sentence. In our spelling lessons, we have looked at the graphemes oa/ow (boat and snow) and the 1.1.1 doubling rule.
Maths: We have finished up our subtraction concept with a post-test and will commence our data topic next week. In this concept, the students will be collecting data, organising it into categories and creating displays using lists, tables, picture graphs and simple column graphs as well as interpreting data.
Inquiry: Last week, we found out the similarities and differences between a Welcome to Country and an Acknowledgement of Country. As a cohort, we performed our version of an Acknowledgement of Country taught by 3B.
Here is the land and here is the sky
Here are my friends and here am I
We thank the Bunurong people
On which the land we play and learn
Hands up, hands down
We’re on Bunurong ground.
This week, we are answering our big question: How does The Dreaming help First Nations Australians make sense of their world? We have read a number of dreamtime stories and identified their message.
Wellbeing: We have been using the zones of regulation to identify what zone I am in and how to respond when I am in each zone. We have also added a new self-care skill to our toolbox called tapping. Tapping involves light patting on various points of the body while repeating specific statements or affirmations. It can be used to clear sadness, fears, anger, pain, and discomfort.
Grade 4
Lots of wonderful learning and great work by our students has been happening in our classes over the past three weeks. Grade 4 sport on a Monday has continued and has seen the students practice some football skills which has been expertly led by Mr. Brown. We had some Grade 4 students represent our school in District Cross Country which was a wonderful achievement. Grade 4 Rotations have begun on a Thursday afternoon. Students will be participating in activities such as coding, publishing Word documents, Growth Mindset learning and Thinker’s Keys tasks which promote creative thinking.
Literacy: Students have been developing their knowledge and application of reading comprehension strategies such as comparing and contrasting as well as predicting and inferring. They have practiced applying these strategies by reading, listening and responding to some wonderful Mentor Texts in class, as well as completing some lessons and tasks using our online program, CARS & STARS. We have begun to look at Information Report writing in class and the structural and language features of these texts. Students are learning how to conduct simple research on a given topic and take notes when gathering information and facts.
Numeracy: Multiplication work has continued across the cohort in Maths. Students have been learning and building their proficiency with recalling multiplication facts as well as learning and applying different methods and strategies to multiply larger numbers such as partitioning (eg. 49 x 5 = 40 x 5 = 200, 9 x 5 = 45, 200 + 45 = 245) and using a visual model such as a grid to partition and multiply each part of a number. Students of all abilities are accessing and applying these methods with increasing confidence and success.
Inquiry: Work has begun on our Inquiry called, “Into the Unknown”. Students have been learning about some early (pre 1700) European Explorers such as Abel Tasman, Dirk Hartog and Willem Janzoon and the reasons why explorers explored. Students have also been learning about James Cook and his exploration of Australia and the Aboriginal perspective of first contact with his arrival.
Homework: Students should be completing their Word Study homework via SeeSaw or in their homework book each week. The practice of multiplication facts is strongly encouraged and some Maths tasks have been set for students to complete on SplashLearn.
Reminders: “Nude Food” on a Tuesday continues this Term. We encourage our students to try and bring their snacks and lunch in plastic free wrapping with the incentive to not only reduce the amount of disposable rubbish to help our environment, but to be the recipients of the ‘golden lunchbox’ which recognises the class with the highest percentage of students who have ‘nude food’ for the week!
Grade 5
The Grade 5 students have had a wonderful couple of weeks and have already achieved so much in Term 2. Just a reminder that students are invited to bring along up to $7 in a named, ziplock bag along with a shopping bag for the Mother’s Day stall on Friday.
Writing: Our wonderful writer’s have been busy planning, writing, and editing powerful persuasive texts on a topic of their choice with a focus on including DAFOREST techniques effectively. Students have also begun exploring colour poetry and will be using emotive vocabulary and figurative devices to build meaningful poems as a class, in pairs and individually.
Comprehension: Understanding sequence has been the focus of comprehension this week. We all discussed how understanding the sequence of events can help us understand what we’re reading and practised recalling important events of texts and videos and placed them in order. We encourage families to support our students by asking them to recall the events they’ve read about in chronological order during their reading sessions at home.
Maths: After putting a pause on fractions for the term, Grade 5 students will be delving into chance and probability. We’ll be discussing the likelihood of events occurring, practise using fractions, decimals and percentages to represent probability and conduct a range of hands-on and fun chance experiments.
Inquiry: Students have continued learning about the Stolen Generation in our inquiry unit ‘Closing the Gap’. In weeks to come, we’ll be learning about Sorry Day, famous Indigenous Australian identities and create some interesting classroom displays.
Grade 6
English: The Grade 6 students continued their Information Report writing block. They spent time peer assessing their completed animal information reports focusing on the correct structure. This week, they began writing an Information Report on a significant individual. The criteria for this was that their individual had to have made a significant impact in their field.
Mathematics: In Mathematics, we will be completing our work on chance and data. Students participated in a variety of probability activities to build their understanding. Next week, we will begin our Shape topic.
Inquiry : The Grade 6 classes have been working on their ‘We Dream of Space’ theme covering the solar system, galaxies and universe. The students have enjoyed developing their reading skills while becoming experts in all things Space! This week’s focus was to describe the various characteristics of the planets in our Solar System.
Interschool Sport: All sports team are training hard in preparation for the first official Winter Interschool Sports event. This term, the students will be playing a variety of sports including footy, soccer, volleyball, tee ball and netball.
Term Dates and Events: This past week the Grade 6 girls took part in a wellbeing incursion run by external company MPower. The Grade 6 boys also had the opportunity to take part in a wellbeing incursion run by Mr Sing.
Please check Compass for further information regarding Term 2 dates and events relating to Grade 6 students.