What's happening?
Foundation
What a busy couple weeks we have had in Foundation! We are so impressed with how quickly all students have settled into life at school. They are doing a wonderful job at following their morning routine and are coming into the classroom ready to complete their morning rotations/activities. We are still continuing Developmental Play throughout the week to foster students’ social skills.
With the completion of learning the ‘satpin’ sounds wordlists have gone home. The aim of these wordlists is “building confidence in letter/sound knowledge, word decoding and sentence level reading before whole text reading.” (Decodable Readers Australia). These are taped inside your child’s reader and a great way to practise the sounds we have explicitly taught so far, and blending them to read words. Sounding out and blending to read words is also referred to as ‘decoding’.
Decodable books will be sent home each week. All students are now on wordlists and will be on decodable books by March 14th. Class teachers will conference with each student at least once a fortnight. Books are changed once a week, if all ‘smiling’ faces are filled in on the reading log. We encourage you to have your child reread their books several times to assist with fluency, comprehension, and importantly confidence. Additional helpful hints will be in their readers, as well as uploaded to Seesaw next week. Sound Packs and information will also go home Monday.
This week Grade 6 Buddies organised a Pirate Treasure Hunt! Students loved making a pirate hat and then following the map to the treasure (blowing bubbles).
We complete our Shape Topic tomorrow and Maths groups start next week. Look out for a Foundation newsletter with more information about Maths Groups.
Building social skills continues to be a big part of our day and we enjoyed the story ‘Hippo Owns Up’ to explore integrity and learnt all about resilience by reading ‘Pete the Cat’ to learn how to bounce back when things go wrong.
Foundation start of year testing is now complete. Foundation students will attend full time from Monday 6th March.
Grade 1
Over the past two weeks, our aim has been to establish classroom reading routines and build the student’s reading confidence. It has been so lovely to hear their clear and fluent reading develop throughout the week, as they continue to persist with reading familiar texts. Once our English Online Interviews have been completed we will begin the process of assessing and changing reading levels as needed.
Our Word Study focus this week is revising the ‘silent e’ syllable. You can help your child revise these ‘silent e’ vowel cards in their sound packs! In Maths, we are continuing to focus on Number and Place Value. We will be concluding our Place Value topic this week before moving on to addition strategies.
The children have been exploring our new Inquiry topic ‘Families Past and Present’. They have enjoyed talking about their families and sharing ideas about what a family is. In writing we have begun writing about our families, hobbies, likes, dislikes and memories. Just a reminder, we are asking that every child bring in a baby photo in a sealed, named envelope as soon as possible, so that we can begin our ‘guess the baby’ game! Thank you to those who have sent them in already!
Grade 2
Over the last fortnight, students have continued to develop their understanding of narrative structure and features, exploring a range of terrific mentor texts, and transforming their own ideas into stories. As part of our ‘Word Study’, we have been focusing on decoding strategies and dividing words into syllables to support reading and spelling. Students have also been learning to apply their knowledge from our ‘Syntax Project’ lessons to edit their sentences for accurate punctuation.
In Maths, students have shown terrific effort throughout our ‘Number and Place Value’ topic. While next week we move on to ‘Shape’, we encourage students to continue to practise counting forwards and backwards by 1s, 2s, 3s, 5s and 10s from different starting points in order to build fluency.
Your child may move between teachers for Maths throughout the year depending on their assessment results for each topic. This ensures they are working in a group that best fits their needs for each topic.
We are looking forward to our excursion to Ripponlea Estate (week after next) as part of our inquiry into the past and identifying changes over time. Consent/payment is required by Monday 6th March (on Compass) if not already completed.
Our Grade 2 students are now set up with a homework folder that ‘lives’ in their reader bag (so it can go between home and school each day). As per the Grade 2 Information Book, homework expectations include: regular reading aloud and ‘Red Flag Word’ spelling. Students also have access to ‘Nessy Reading and Spelling’ and ‘Sunset/Jetpack Maths’ (using the Essential Assessment website) if they are looking for something more.
Thank you for your support.
Grade 3
Swimming has been a splash! The students have shown our Super Six Value of Responsibility while representing the school during swimming. They have been super organised and their efforts and behaviour at the pool are to be commended.
Reading: Last week, we focused on the reading strategy of questioning. The students have practised generating questions before, during and after reading to help better understand the text. The students have also been reading a number of texts relating to our inquiry unit and recalling facts and details.
Writing: Within the narrative writing genre, the students have focused on writing story starters and endings which engage and excite our readers. We have explored the different types of sentences and practised writing statement, command, question, and exclamation sentences with the correct punctuation mark in our grammar sessions. In our spelling lessons, we have looked at the grapheme 'ar’, ‘or’ and ‘er’ as well as r-controlled syllables and the syllable division pattern – vccv.
Maths: We finished our Place Value concept with a post-test last week and have commenced our addition concept this week. The students will be learning a range of mental and written strategies to add efficiently as well as questions to promote problem solving and reasoning.
Inquiry: In our classrooms, we have been exploring how we can produce electricity more sustainably by using renewable energies sources that can be created from the sun and wind. This week, the students have created a wind turbine and tested it out.
Grade 4
We can’t believe we are almost half way through Term 1. This year is already flying by! The students have begun their one week swimming program at Mentone Aquatic. We are so far impressed with the organisation, speed and respect the students are displaying at the pool.
Students have also completed their ‘Passion Project’ presentations and we were blown away with the effort and preparation that they were able to display to their peers. Well done to all Grade 4s!
Literacy: We have begun our persuasive writing unit by looking at the different ways and strategies we can be convincing in our arguments then heading into the structure of a persuasive piece. Soon we will be looking at the comprehension strategies of ‘recalling factions and details’ and ‘visualising’. Students will continue to either borrow a book from school or read a book from home for their daily reading.
Numeracy: Our measurement topic of ‘Location and Transformation’ has been our focus. Using the mathematical language of translate, rotate and reflect, students are able to manipulate objects and shapes and plot points and references on grid maps. Our next topic will be ‘Addition’.
Reminders: Please ensure your child is bringing their diary with them each day, and recording their reading each night. Students should be dressing accordingly to the weather, keeping in mind that classrooms must have windows or doors open for air circulation. We are looking forward to the Swimming Program coming up in week 5.
Grade 5
The Grade 5 team would like to congratulate all students for representing the school so well during last Wednesday and Thursday's beach program at Mordialloc Life Saving Club.
Maths
Throughout our Maths sessions this week we have continued our unit on addition and subtraction. Our focus has been on rounding, estimating and applying our skills to real life situations.
Writing
This week in Writing we have been learning about the features of a plot. We are using plot lines to sequence the events that unfold within our narratives.
Reading
In reading this week we have continued to develop our inferring skills. Our focus has been on answering and creating inferential questions on a variety of texts.
Inquiry
During Inquiry this week we continued our ‘Why is it so?’ unit with a focus on results and data. We conducted the ‘Rainbow Rain’ experiment where we collected and analysed observational data.
Grade 6
English
Students have completed their unit on descriptive writing this week completing a post assessment piece. Our next writing genre will be persuasive with a focus on modality and the use of DAFOREST strategies.
In Reading we are close to completing our unit on making predictions based on a text. In grammar we have learnt about stative verbs and how to use them within a sentence.
Mathematics
In Mathematics, we will be completing our work on the four operations on Friday. Next week we will start work on decimals and percentages with a focus on calculating equivalent values, using the four operations and finding the percentage of various quantities.
Inquiry
The Grade 6 classes have been working on their ‘May the Best Party Win’ theme covering our nation’s system of government, democracy and the constitution. Students have been learning about how members are elected to parliament, the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Beach Swimming Program
A big thank you to our parent volunteers that attended the Beach Program last Friday at Mordialloc Life Saving Club.
Interschool Sport
This week we will be playing Parktone at home on Friday 3rd March.
Term Dates and Events
Please check Compass for further information regarding Term 1 dates and events relating to Grade 6 students.