Welcome To Term 1

A very Happy New Year and welcome to the Level Four community for 2022! We would like to welcome existing families back to our school and extend a very warm welcome to the new families of the Glen Waverley Primary School community. It has been a brilliant start to the year with our learners settling into their learning with excitement to reconnect, curiosity in a new year level and immense energy. 

This term we will be building our classroom culture of belonging through establishing meaningful connections with our peers, teachers and school community. This is something we value greatly at Glen Waverley Primary School as the students are at the centre of everything we do and will feature prominently within our You Can Do It learning this term. We are looking forward to embracing challenges, moments of ‘productive struggle’ and clarity, as well as a multitude of opportunities to transfer and celebrate our learning. We are very eager to learn and grow through building the learner’s capacity in using digital technologies within their learning.

We also look forward in anticipation when watching our learners thrive as confident, young global citizens. We are excited to be in partnership with you and your family as we navigate this learning journey together this year. If you have any questions or we can be of service in any way, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We warmly welcome and our Level Four team members: Christine Marotti (4A), Dante Sciessere (4B), Samantha Stefanidis (4C), and James Dean (4D) and Lauren Lee (4E) who all bring with them a wealth of knowledge, vibrancy, passion and excellence.

Important Term Dates:

• 7th, 8th, 9th, 14th, 15th and 16th February: Years 4-6 Swimming
• 15th, 22nd February and 1st March: Getting to Know You Interviews
• 14th March: Labour Day Public Holiday
• 15th March: Curriculum Day
• 21st - 25th March: Cultural Diversity
• 23rd March: School Photo Day
• 24th March: Maths Olympiad 
• 6th April: Twilight Sports
• 8th April: Last day of Term 1 (2:30pm finish) 

Inquiry 2022

In out Inquiry learning this term, learners will be exploring the question, “How do we manage outside influences on our health?” Through the lens of Health and Personal and Social Capabilities, the learners will be investigating emotional and mental health from a personal, local, national and global scale. Learners will have the opportunity to gain an understanding of self and others by unpacking topics such as habits and influences and their impact on wellbeing, positive talk, growth mindset, managing emotions, conflict resolution, and community support and connections. 

A key element of our inquiry will also involve transferring and thinking deeply about our Global Goal “Good Health and Wellbeing”. Learners will be unpacking, ‘What is Good Health?’ and how we can ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for lifelong skills. We look forward to encouraging your children to think broadly about the concepts of wellbeing, as well as developing deep questions to be investigated as individuals and as a class.

To support your child at home, you may find the following tasks helpful:  

• Share strategies or practices that you use to promote mindfulness, positivity and health.
• Cook a healthy and balanced meal or recipe together and sit around the table together to enjoy it. 
• Talk about role models and people you admire and reflect on the values they possess that inspire you to continue to grow and be your best. 

• Encourage positive self-talk, self-compassion and praise at home. 
• Share lessons learnt of times when you overcame challenges or struggles that strengthened you. 

Social and Emotional Learning

Through the Glen Waverley Primary School preferred social and emotional development program, “You Can Do It!”. Our overarching themes for Term 1 in Level Four will be Getting Along and Resilience. We will be supporting our learners in transferring our YCDI Keys to Success (Confidence, Persistence, Organisation, Getting along and Resilience) and our School Values (Integrity, Respect, Initiative and Global Empathy) into our inquiry topic and their well-being. Integrating our inquiry learning with our social and emotional learning will provide exciting and powerful opportunities for our learners to create deep connections and reflect on our school values which we all aspire to and utilise to drive our daily practices.

At GWPS each learner has four goals in the areas of Reading, Writing, Mathematics and a Personal Social Emotional Goal. Goals are personalised with students to support growth, self-regulation and their next steps through conferences. Each goal is changed at least twice a term to ensure that we are building their skills, confidence and setting them up for success. 

Writing

Our focus this term is to establish ourselves as authors as we create memoirs and narratives. When creating memoirs, your child will be required to think about a memory that has shaped their identity and expand this moment in their writing. During narrative writing their creativity will flow. They will learn to plant seeds, draft their story, edit their writing and publish their learning. 

Here are a variety of ways to support your child at home: 

• Help brainstorm ideas around their favourite moment, focusing on why it was so pivotal to them
• Discuss what the 5 senses are and how to utilise them in their writing
• Ask your child what their favourite themes are when writing stories (horror, comedy, fairy tales, etc)   
• Discuss ways authors help their readers visualise an image in their minds by their word choice

Reading 2022 Complete

During Term One, our Year Four learners will have the opportunity to apply and engage in various Reading strategies and track their thinking whilst reading through “Thinking Tracks” with their ‘Good Fit’ books. They will be exploring different texts for example memoirs recounts and narratives with a focus on the strategies authors have used. The purpose of this is so that learners can transfer their reading to writing, incorporating the author’s strategies to support their authorship in writing. 

To support your child with their reading at home, here are a few strategies:

• Ask your child what reading strategy they have used whilst reading their ‘Good Fit Book’
• Ask your child to note their ‘Thinking Tracks’ whilst reading their ‘Good Fit Book’
• Ask them questions about the books that they are reading. ‘What’s the problem in the story?’ ‘What is the main idea?’ ‘Can you retell the story to me?’ Etc.
• Ask your child about their CAFE reading goal and the strategies they have been utilising to complete their goal

Spelling

In Spelling, learners will continue to build on their self-regulation as they identify their personal spelling needs, analyse these words through a spelling inquiry and apply these new words in their writing. Each week learners will inquire and investigate various sound blends, spelling patterns, history/root origin (etymology), generalisations and exceptions.

Mathematics

In Mathematics, learners will deepen their thinking in a range of mathematical concepts, relating to the two dimensions of Mathematics: Number and Algebra as well as Measurement and Geometry. We will begin by further exploring place value as this is a pivotal foundation for our learners in order to reach success in other areas of Mathematics. For example, the children will learn:

• How to rename and decompose numbers
• Apply place value to solve problems using the four operations 
• Calculate the perimeter, area and volume of various shapes and prisms

Below are some examples of strategies you can use to support your child at home:

• Practice using correct place value language when noticing decimals in your environment such as petrol prices and in the supermarket e.g.: Petrol is $1.34 per litre – read the decimal as one and 34 hundredths or one and 3 tenths and 4 hundredths 
• Converting measurements when cooking e.g., 500gms is the same as 0.5kg

Meet our new team member

As 2022 has begun, we have the pleasure of welcoming a new staff member to our Glen Waverley Primary School and Level 4 community. Dante Sciessere is a third-year graduate from Deakin university, he spent the first two years of his career at Bayswater North Primary School before successfully taking up a position with us. Here are a few things to get to know Dante better:

• His favourite subjects are Mathematics and Physical Education.
• He has travelled to 11 countries outside of Australia.
• He is keen on sports. He plays football himself and a big fan of Formula One, basketball and football.

When he is not busy working, Dante enjoys spending time with his dog Kevin at a local coffee shop. He is looking very forward to getting to know the community that is Glen Waverley more as the year progresses.