Years 3 -6 Community News

Welcome everyone

A very warm welcome to our Year 3-6 students and their families to the second edition of our College newsletter for 2021 as we near the end of this first term in 2021. 

What a busy but productive one it has been. We have transitioned through our starting right program where students re-established all the systems, routines and expectations for the year to all of ur learning programs taking shape. It has been very exciting to witness. 

In English, our students have engaged in persuasive writing, looking at reading rich texts and pulling these apart to understand the writing features required to change the reader's mind/opinion. This is an important skill to use language to give opinions.

Students have also been analysing online texts such as advertisements, short films (pixar) and picture books to support their understanding of persuasion. 

During reading sessions, teachers have continued developing the close reading strategy and have been implementing this within their groups. Students have a fine focused reading goal that they are working towards. As you can see in the photos students have engaged in library borrowing and quiet reading activities. 

During math lessons students have been consolidating their place value knowledge of whole numbers, using hands on manipulatives to support their learning as well as learning how to interpret data and read maps. This has also been linked with  their geography unit where they have been asked to locate places and objects on maps. As you can see in the photo below students are using MAB blocks to experiment with their math understanding. 

In HASS our students have been looking at Australia (Years 3-4) and Australia's location in the world in relation to Europe and North America (Years 5-6). 

Through this unit students have been identifying the states and territories, cities and compass points. In Years 5 and 6, students have extended their knowledge of how people have adapted to different environments and their personal influences on these environments. Using the chromebook learning opportunities we have used online supports such as Pear Deck, Google Earth and data collection tools. 

Students then moved into personalised research projects towards the end of the term and have selected an interest to investigate further. 

It has been wonderful to be able to go beyond the school gate to excursions and the Year 3-4 students took a lot away from their visits to Serendip Sanctuary where they explored the natural habitats and environment of our wildlife, including a wildlife walk with an Education Officer.

Melissa Maccora

AP Wexford Campus 

Coordinator of College Years 3-6 Stage of Schooling