Learning & Teaching

LITERACY - Di Manthos 

Book Week continued…  

On Monday students in Years 3-6 enjoyed interacting and listening to our guest author Adrian Beck. He entertained us with Dad jokes from his recent book called Dad Jokes,

He inspired us to want to write and answered numerous questions that the students posed. He suggested ways to be creative writers based on his experience of writing over 30 books for children. 

Suggested Writing Tips - What you need to make a good story by Adrian Beck 

I look forward to reading children's writing based on Adrians creative ideas. This approach can be followed at home and at school of course. Using the 3 M’s and 3 P’s method to create and to come up with ideas for writing.  

The 3 M’s were Mission Impossible, Me Me Me and mashing it up

• Mission Impossible ideas -include writing about things that are unconventional and out of this world such as, ‘Plants have taken over the school, Mrs Watson and all the teachers have turned into robots - Ideas that are weird and ‘wacky”.
• Me Me Me - What is the most unusual thing that has happened to you? Have you ever met a famous person? Experiences that the children can draw upon and create inspiring writing.
• Mash up -  Using two ideas that children are familiar with and mashing it up. For example he spoke about creating a new character in one of his books based on The Hulk and Charlie from Charlie & the Chocolate factory.

The 3 P’s P - People, Place, Problem/Plot - this method is used to ‘flesh’ out ideas.

• When writing creatively, we draw on our experiences as readers to write purposely and to entertain. We are always lifting lines from known authors for ideas and children are encouraged to do so when they write.
• Keeping a writer’s notebook to jot down thinking when an idea comes to mind is an effective writing tool for all children.
• Write4fun is always encouraging children to submit writing which they collate and publish a book - the link is below.

https://www.write4fun.net/

NUMERACY - Colleen Monaghan

I am adding a family building task for you to do over the next week. The task is to build a cubic metre 

Building an understanding about how big a cubic metre is, needs to be developed through exploring and investigating one. For this task, you will need lots of newspapers, sticky tape, masking tape, a ruler, tape measure.  What is a metre? Children in Years 2 - 6 should know it is 100cms, but may not realise how big that is. So making this will help them with that.

What is a cube made of? Hopefully again the Year 2-6 students can answer this. It has 6 square faces. The sides are all congruent (the same) squares.

Have fun making one. Please send in photos of your family making this and can you find out how many family members fit inside one?  cmonaghan@sfmoreland.catholic.edu.au

Photos of students making these at school. I normally do this task at a family maths night or with students in their classrooms. But just because we aren’t at school doesn’t mean we can’t explore this.

Good luck,    

Mrs Monaghan 

Some great student work samples from the meets we have had in the last week. It’s so good to see so many happy, persistent, positive students on my meets. 

Students work from the juniors showing their strategy for subtraction 

SPORT & PE - Michael Jennings

PHYSICAL EDUCATION NEWS

Last week’s Physical Education lessons involved students from Years F-2 playing the game ‘Coin Toss’ and the students from Years 3-6 playing the game, ‘Bottle Flip’.

The students were able to play these games by themselves or with another person. They watched videos showing them how to set up the games and then how to play the games.

By viewing all of the photos and videos sent in, it looks like our students had a lot of fun and showed great skills in achieving their outcomes.

BOTTLE FLIP

COIN TOSS

EXERCISE

LOTE - Rosa Fokianos

Salve! (Hello). Spero che tutti voi avete fatto una buona festa del papà ieri, I hope you all had a good Father's Day yesterday.

This week, I will be giving our St Fidelis school community a snapshot of what the Grade 3/4 children have been learning about in italiano this term. 

At the beginning of this term, Grade 3/4 started off by revising numbers 1-31, then learning ‘I giorni della settimana’, (the days of the week), which then led to being introduced to present, past and future tenses: Oggi è... (today is…) Ieri era… (yesterday was...) Domani sarà… (Tomorrow it will be...).

Once we started Remote Learning, the children began to learn the names of  ‘I mesi dell’anno’ the months of the year and were then introduced on how to ask: Quand’è / Quando è il tuo compleanno? (When is it your birthday?) I hope they asked you this question at home? :)

Next, the children were introduced to ‘Le Stagioni’, (The Seasons), which then led nicely to learning about various weather conditions and asking “Che tempo fa?” (What is the weather like?) 

About half way through the term, Grade 3/4, revised some of the vocabulary and language structures learnt so far by doing a Kahoot, which proved to be quite popular. 

Last week we also had our first live Google meet with the 3/4 ‘s. It was so nice to see their faces, even if it was from one screen to another screen. You will see some of the photos in this article today. 

I hope to end the term next week, with another Kahoot, as well as have a final check in with all the Grade 3/4 ‘s again. Keep up the great work bambini.

Also, apart from having my usual live weekly Google meets with Grades F-2 this week, I will also be checking in with Grades 5/6, to see how they are doing in italiano so stay tuned for times ragazzi. :)

A presto! Signora Rosa :)

On a final note, today I have also attached la preghiera dell’ Ave Maria, the Hail Mary prayer in italiano, since this mecoldedì Wednesday, 8 settembre, we celebrate the Blessed Virgin Mary’s birthday. For some children this will be the first time they hear or see the prayer in italiano, for others, they may be already familiar with it, whichever way, could you and your family try to pray to Mary la preghiera dell’ Ave Maria, as we continue to love and support our own families and community during these challenging times. Grazie.