Discovery Centre

Curriculum

What a start to the Term! Our first week proved to be busy, however very exciting getting to head on a bus each day to the swimming pool. Foundation students did a fantastic job at transitioning back into our school routines. Thank you to our families for all of your assistance in organising your child for swimming at home. Practising getting dressed and organising themselves at home has been a great way to support the students independence and they are certainly getting faster at it each day! We do have a tub of ‘Foundation swimming lost property’, so if your child has misplaced something while at swimming please direct them to check the tub or contact their classroom teacher. As we have noticed some students spread their belongings out while in the change rooms, please ensure every piece of clothing has their name on it so it can easily make its way back to the rightful owner if we do have any mix ups. Thank you again for all of your support.

Last week in Literacy, students were introduced to dotted thirds in our writing sessions. Dotted thirds provide a visual structure and specific method to help children write with well-spaced, sized and positioned letters. This will be a continued focus for the remainder of the semester. Another focus for writing this term will be writing to entertain. Students will explore different ways to entertain an audience with their writing. To support this, in reading students explored a range of texts where the authors purpose was to entertain the reader, such a fairy tales, picture story books, songs and short stories.

In Maths students began their swimming project. The swimming project is going to be running for two weeks, complementing our school swimming program. Students began the week by designing their own swimming pool, they measured the length of their pool and their friends pools using informal units from around the classroom, such as unifix, teddies, icy pole sticks and dominoes. Our next session focused on capacity, where students explored estimation and using key words such as empty, half full and full to describe various sized and shaped containers.

As part of our swimming project Foundation students joined together and collaborated as a year level to explore our STEM focus ‘sink or float’. Students experimented with different objects deciding if they would sink or float in a tub of water, explaining their reasoning to their group. Students then made their own boat out of aluminium foil and were challenged with making a boat that could carry various objects from around the classroom. This was a huge highlight for the students.

Last week FH and FJ were very excited to begin the kitchen component of our kitchen/garden program. Students headed to the Café Studio, where they were able to follow steps and practise skills such as spreading to decorate biscuits with icing, sprinkles and smarties.

We continued on with our PMP program this week thanks to Mrs B. Students focused on movement sequences, where they had to follow a sequence of steps to complete an obstacle course. To finish off an incredibly exciting and fun-filled week, we had a Buddies session. Students joined their Year 5 buddy to participate in a NAIDOC week scavenger hunt. You can read more about this in the Principal's Message section of the Newsletter or head to our Instagram page to see the highlights from this day.

Thank you again for all of your support around swimming, we hope you have a wonderful week.

Your Foundation teaching team,

Brooke Henwood, Jessica Tossell and Ella Gasowski.

Student Voice

Students were asked what their favourite part of the week was:

Meg W - "Buddies was my favourite because I loved the scavenger hunt."
Jennifer D - "I loved spending time with my buddy because I hadn't seen him in a long time."
Reynold T - "I liked making the cookies and eating them, they were so tasty."
Leo S - "I liked cooking because I liked colouring in when we were in the kitchen."
Skyler W - "I liked making the Aboriginal flag with my buddy."

Reminders

Students come to school with bathers underneath school uniform and bring slip on shoes to wear to and from the pool
Please ensure all pieces of clothing brought to swimming are labelled
Parent help program will commence in Week 3 - please send any new expressions of interest/availability to your classroom teacher
Sharing Time and Talk Homework begins this week - refer to notice and email sent home last week for information

Pupil of the Week

FG: Gabriel L -

For demonstrating teamwork and creativity in Play-Based Learning last week. You used clever communication skills to build structures with your friends. Keep up the great work, Gabriel!

FH: Eesa J -

For using our Term 3 School Value of Responsibility during our Water Safety Program. You were calm and patient when getting on and off the bus. What a superstar!

FJ: Billie L -

For demonstrating zest and teamwork during our STEM swimming project in Maths. You worked hard with your partner to build a creative boat out of foil that floated while holding items in it. Great work Billie!