What's happening in our learning spaces? 

STUDENTS OF THE WEEK

FOUNDATION

Can you believe it, we are already at Day 16 as we count towards 100 Days at School and this week is our first full week! We have lots of exciting learning opportunities that the children will engage in throughout the week. This week we are beginning the Resilience Project, which focuses on identifying different emotions for the first session. 

Last week, we engaged in our first Literacy rotations for reading. Some of us identified the initial sounds of images and we then had to place a peg on the first letter that matched the sound. Thanks to our Cued Articulation song, which we practise daily, we are becoming experts at recognising our sounds and letters. As collaborators and communicators, we shared resources when playing alphabet bingo, beat the bear and alphabet dominoes. As writers, some of us are beginning to include not only the initial sound for a word but other dominant sounds in a word when writing about the things we like and dislike. We can’t wait to learn how to write even more words! 

As the Foundation classes had their final Rest Day last Wednesday, we participated in a prayer ceremony in our learning spaces on Thursday to unpack the significance of Ash Wednesday. Prior to this, as inquirers, we shared our first thinking about the symbols associated with Lent and prayer. On Thursday, we all received the ashes on our forehead as a sign that the season of Lent has begun. Did you know that Lent lasts for 40 days and during Lent, in our Church and around the school you may see the colour purple to remind us of this time. 

As a reminder, If you haven’t already done so, please bring a library bag into school before Wednesday the 1st of March so that we can borrow books as this will be our very first visit to the Library. The Foundation children are very excited about this visit!

Have a fantastic week. 

Leanne Wenckowski and Alex Phillips

Foundation Team

YEAR 1/2

It has been another busy week in Year 1/2! We can’t believe how quickly the term is going, but we are definitely having fun as we engage in many new and exciting learning opportunities!

As people of a Catholic faith community, we have entered the Season of Lent. We participated in making delicious pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. This experience enabled us to apply our reading skills to follow a recipe. We also used our mathematical knowledge to measure ingredients with Mrs Monaghan. To reflect on this experience we collected data about our favourite pancake toppings. The most popular flavours were lemon and sugar and maple syrup! The next day we went to the Ash Wednesday mass. We listened, responded and joined in the songs. When we returned we had time to reflect on this experience and share our thinking about what we noticed with our peers. As researchers, we read and listened to information to find out and make new discoveries. We will continue to extend our thinking throughout the Lenten Season. 

As inquirers, we were very excited to begin Discovery Time. We had the opportunity to apply the learning assets, ‘Communicator’ and ‘Collaborator’. We were provided with opportunities to engage in play and explore how to work together, share materials, take turns, plan and design our creations with our groups and talk about what we were doing. Some of the workshops were Book Making, Architecture and Design, Box Construction and Sea Creatures. Here are some of our amazing reflections:

• “We are designing an apartment. We are adding an upstairs area and windows to our design. This is our plan. We are being collaborators by sharing the jobs and ideas about how we can make it.” - Ava & Ruby
• “We were being artists and we had to fix our mistakes as we went. When you have a plan, it helps you fix mistakes.” - Florence
• “I was an artist. I was being respectful of the objects and using the paintbrushes carefully.”  - Amelia
• “At the merge cubes, we were being collaborators and researchers. We talked, shared, took turns on the iPad and built on each other's ideas.” - Hudson
• “We made a racetrack and the cars had to jump and turn. We were collaborators by working together and sharing the things with everyone for their creations.” - Maria & Orlando 
• “Me and Tess were sketching and painting flowers. We were good communicators because we talked about what we were doing.” - Ariana

It was so exciting to see parents and students surprise Miss Sparano for her 30th birthday on Friday afternoon! She feels extremely grateful to be a part of such a kind and giving community! Thank you to all the wonderful families in Year 1/2! 

We hope everyone has a wonderful week ahead and can’t wait to tell you all about our excursion to Melbourne Museum!

Alycia Marsico, Vania Sparano and Vicky Karalis, 

1/2  Team

YEAR 3/4

What a busy week!

In connection with the start of Lent, we engaged in finding out about the events that have occurred this week in the Catholic faith tradition. When finding out about Shrove Tuesday, we had the opportunity to engage in making pancakes in small groups. When making pancakes we were able to use measurement when making our pancake mix. After making our pancakes we had the opportunity to estimate the size of our pancakes and measure it to find out their actual size in centimetres. We also had the opportunity to survey students about their favourite pancake topping, we tallied these in a table and graphed these using a key and pictograph. 

We would like to thank Mrs Monaghan for helping us make yummy pancakes!

As a way of finding out and creating meaning about the three characteristics of Ash Wednesday, students engaged in a thinking routine ‘Making Meaning’ around Prayer, Almsgiving and Fasting. Students worked collaboratively in small groups to document words, phrases and wonderings about their idea before they created their own definitions of them. 

As mathematical thinkers, this week we have been finding out about place values. We have been exploring numbers and how we can read these out using place-value houses. We have also been learning about writing these in worded form. For example, 516 is the same as five hundred and sixteen. 

As collaborators, we engaged in working with our new Foundation students. We spent the time and opportunity to introduce ourselves to the new foundation students, we then worked together in pairs reading out and identifying images that start with ‘S’. 

Specialist Timetable Change

For the remainder of Term 1, both Year 3/4 classes will have Sport and STEM on Mondays (not Thursdays). 

Footsteps Dance/ Drama Program 

This program will start this week. 

The Year 3/4s have their session on Thursdays. If you would like to find out more, here is the link https://footstepsdancecompany.com.au/programs/ 

Enjoy your day!

Year 3/4 Teachers

Belinda Panzarino & Bianka Zorzut

YEAR 5/6

Another week down, and I think I can speak for all of us when I say February has certainly flown in! Last week was an eventful week for the Grade 5/6 students involving Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and our first Inter School Sports Event.

Monday was an exciting day for us all as we began our first lesson of the Resilience Project. This lesson involved the students focussing on gratitude and identifying the people, places and things we are thankful to have in our lives. The students made some great insights during this lesson and it was interesting to see that there are often things we take for granted in life that we should all be grateful for.

In Literacy, we continued exploring Indigenous authors and read the book ‘Back on Country’ by Adam Goode and Ellie Laing. The book is about an Aboriginal family making the trip back to the Country to learn about their family customs, history and traditions. The students made some new discoveries about this Indigenous group and made some great links to our Inquiry Topic ‘Beliefs and Culture’. We also had some very interesting conversations in our learning areas about customs and traditions within our own families and it was wonderful to see the diversity we have across the SLA building.

In Numeracy, we continued our Topic of Place Value and branched into the area of renaming, expanding and representing 6-digit numbers and beyond, using a variety of manipulatives. We also took an opportunity to integrate Shrove Tuesday into our Numeracy sessions by having the students partake in a recipe investigation which involved them calculating how much we would need to make a pancake batter that would be enough for the entire SLA building and how much it would cost. The students were very engaged in this lesson and worked like real mathematicians (particularly when they heard it meant we were having pancakes the next day!!).

Last week was a very important week in the Catholic calendar as we celebrated Shrove Tuesday, which then led to Ash Wednesday. Religion lessons involved us discussing the meaning of Lent and how as individuals we are going to fast, give alms and engage in prayer this Lenten season. The students made some personal lenten promises for themselves and we explored Scripture which allowed us to further understand Lent.

On Friday, we had our first inter-school sports event against the Australian International Academy. It was an amazing experience for all the Grade 5/6 students who attended. It was wonderful to see all students taking part in Basketball, Softball and Bat Tennis. Regardless of whether students won, lost or drew, we as teachers were so proud to see the sportsmanship and teamwork that all students displayed. We look forward to our next session this Friday. Well done to all involved!

We finished off our Friday enjoying some delicious, fluffy pancakes with a variety of toppings. A big thank you to the Grade 5/6 teachers, Ms Ange and Mr Aaron who ensured the activity ran smoothly!

Have a great week,

Olivia Sargent, Graham Troy and Aoife O’Flynn