Learning Areas
Prep
Hello Foundation Families!
Firstly, just a reminder that the consent and payment form for our Zoo Excursion is live on Compass! Please complete this at your earliest convenience. The Foundation Team is very excited to be taking the students on this excursion BUT we need your help! If you can assist on the day as a volunteer, please email Lexie (including whether you have your Working With Children’s Check and if you do/do not have a Zoo Membership). Thank you!
In classroom news, our students have been working hard over the past fortnight. In Writing they have been exploring Jeannie Baker books, and used her famous ‘Window’ text as their narrative prompt. After brainstorming lots of fantastic ‘five senses’ descriptive words, they were able to use these to write beautifully descriptive stories, focusing on the passing of time and the life of the young baby who grows up to be a parent himself. Please stop by the Foundation area to see your child’s work displayed!
In Reading, the students have continued to engage in Author Studies. They have noted how authors and illustrators often have specific styles of writing and drawing, and how these prompt certain responses in their readers. Please make sure your child is bringing their Home Reader to school each day to swap. Instilling a love of reading at home is a great way to support your child moving forwards.
Maths has continued to be very hands-on, with lots of sharing activities. Please encourage your child to talk about how they can share collections of objects equally between different groups. This helps develop their multiplicative and division sense and is another great way to practise their basic counting skills.
In Integrated Studies, the students have been learning about how individuals and groups impact the environment in both positive and negative ways. They have thought about the current strategies being used to protect the land and strategies that were used historically.
Wishing you all a relaxing weekend from the Foundation Team!
Grade 1
The Grade One’s have been busy learning about our new Integrated Curriculum topic, ‘Healthy Bodies & Healthy Minds’. They began the topic by showing what they already know about maintaining a healthy body and mind. Each class traced around 1 student to create the outline of a person. Students then drew or wrote different things that can keep our bodies and minds healthy. We stuck these onto the person and have them on display in our classrooms. It was great to see that many students already have lots of great ideas about how we can stay healthy!
The Grade One’s were also very excited when they saw a special visitor… Healthy Harold! Harold visited each homegroup to talk about the topic, ‘Safety Rules’. In these sessions, the students learnt about the ways we can stay safe in different environments including school, home, on the road and when in nature with family and friends.
The students have also been doing some great hands on learning activities in Maths to explore concepts of capacity. They have been developing their understanding of how to estimate and measure the capacity of different containers using informal units in lots of fun ways such as with rice, pasta, water and sand.
A reminder for families:
Please see our Compass event regarding the excursion to the Queen Victoria Market on Thursday 3rd November. If you would like your child to attend and haven’t already provided consent, please do so before the excursion date.
Also, please ensure that your child has a school hat to wear on the day.
We hope everyone has a lovely weekend!
Grade 1 team
Grade 2
Hi Year 2 families and friends,
We have had a wonderful couple weeks of Mathematics learning. We started the term with two weeks on Fractions, looking at finding halves, quarters and eighths of shapes and collections. Students got a chance to explore this topic by playing games and using hands-on materials to help them understand that fractions are equal parts of a whole.
More recently we began our topic on location and mapping, looking at creating treasure maps or towns using grid coordinates and describing the location of objects found on the maps. We also coded our BeeBots to follow a set of directions which would lead to a predetermined final position. They had a blast!
Grade 3/4
This week we have begun our fractions unit!
We have made fraction walls, used hands on materials and practiced creating fractions with shapes and numbers.
Grade 5/6
What’s going on in the 5/6 learning area?
Recently we have been looking at a website called Kiva. Kiva is a micro financing institution that helps people all around the world achieve goals that they can’t attempt financially. People publish loans for money they need to achieve financial goals very quickly. The way they receive money is that people send money to the borrower and once they reach their goal they buy what they want and repay their debt over time — with a small amount of interest — to the people/organisation that lent them money.
This organisation is a non profit organisation meaning that they are not trying to make money, even those publishing loans are there to help others. People ask for money for many different reasons from buying some new chickens to buying 125,000 solar lights! Despite there being many different kinds of loans. Many of them get paid off by the good people around the world, that is why we have chosen to support a person/organisation on Kiva (but we have yet to decide who we will loan money to).
On Kiva we have been looking into different people’s challenges, because we plan to raise money as a unit to donate to a specific someone or organisation. Once we have found a cause that needs funding for a cause we agree on, all 5/6 students make a presentation to convince the whole unit to help them. Most people have completed a slideshow but others have done a rap, posters and more! This has really helped us students to notice that there are many issues in the world, and that there are many ways to solve them.
Cleo, Will T and Kira
