Achilles Community Report
Term 3, 2020
Congratulations Achilles Community on a fantastic term of remote learning. You have all worked extremely hard and we are very proud of each and every one of you. A big thank you to all the families for supporting you child/children through these difficult and unprecedented times. We are looking forward to getting back into the classroom and seeing you all soon :)
Reading
Students have been keeping busy in reading this term. They have been immersed in the topic of inferring where they investigated the topics of predicting the events in their texts, making text to self connections, visualising and summarising.
Towards the end of the term students focussed on the topics of monitoring and Fluency. Students explored how to resume a good reading pace and how to self correct when their reading did not sound right. Students practised how to read dialogue with expression and feeling in their voices by recording themselves on their iPads. Throughout the year students will continue to recognise how to read different types of punctuation within a text and how to monitor their reading independently.
The EPIC reading program has been a wonderful addition to our reading program as students have really enjoyed reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts that suit their interest. It has also been wonderful to see so many students actively participating in their reading conferences this term and we would like to thank you so much for supporting your child through this as we know it has not always been easy.
Writing
Students have been very busy in Writing this term. They have been investigating the structure of narrative (story) writing which includes the introduction (who, when where), the series of events that lead up to a problem, and the solution to the problem. They also created plans for familiar stories before creating one for their own. Over a few weeks students wrote their own story and we're looking forward to the students sharing these with the community once we return to school.
Students have also been learning about sentence structure to further improve their writing.
We have looked at simple and compound sentences, conjunctions, adverbs, and using correct punctuation. Students have also been working on improving their handwriting by forming letters correctly and using the dotted thirds appropriately. We have also focused on spelling, and using the Look, Say, Name, Cover, Write, Check strategy to learn to spell unknown words from the Oxford Word List. As the term ends will be looking at common digraphs at the beginning of words i.e ‘th’, ‘sh’ and ‘ch’ words and also word endings such as ‘ed’, ‘ ing’ and ‘s/es’.
Maths
We have received lots of positive feedback from families this term with Maths Remote learning. Students are enjoying the maths activities where we have been working with the four operations; Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. We have continued to practise our additive thinking strategies this term, for adding and subtracting 1,2 and 3 digit numbers such as, counting on or counting back from the largest number, skip counting, using number lines, charts and the CUBES strategy.
Students continue to consolidate these strategies using concrete materials that can be found around the home, and engage them to create and use a variety of operation related math games and worded problems to support and extend their learning.
The students have been working hard completing tasks focusing on Multiplicative thinking which involves a range of strategies including using arrays, repeated addition, creating and solving number sentences for multiplication and and division facts to improve their understanding of 2, 5 and 10 number facts. Students are encouraged to explain their thinking and working out using mathematical language in their videos and in their written working out, which they continuously do a tremendous job on.
As the term comes to an end, we will explore the different 2D and 3D shapes there are, and how we can identify them by their features such as sides, faces, corners and edges.
As the term comes to an end, we will explore the different 2D and 3D shapes there are and how we can identify them by their features such as sides, faces, corners and edges.
Inquiry
In inquiry this term students have been learning about water; where it comes from, what we use it for, and if it will run out. We have made a water cycle experiment using a zip lock bag, recreated different bodies of water using materials at home, and explored some of Victoria’s water supply dams on google earth. Students have made posters encouraging community members to save water and put them up on display at home in their windows.
SEL
In social and emotional learning students have been looking at identifying their feelings, recognising their own strengths, and developing an emotional/mental health toolkit full of strategies that they can use when they are feeling stressed or upset.
Important notes to remember:
- Don’t forget to bring your hat to school each day
- Please bring a labelled drink bottle to school
- Please label all of your belongings
We hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday. We look forward to sharing more of our learning with you next term.
Kind Regards,
Carla, Fanny, Addy & Elin.
