Curriculum News

English

WRITING, SPEAKING, LISTENING and READING 

Writing to explain how or why something happens in our world will be our focus in Term 3, with Year 5/6 classes writing Explanation Texts and Year 7 students creating Information Texts. Films, books, artwork and websites will be critiqued during Term 4 as all Fisher classes explore Review writing. Vocabulary expansion will be dependent on text topics, integration of all other curriculum areas as well as words identified through class novels and independent reading.  

Students also have the opportunity to regularly express their ideas and work on specific aspects of their writing through Ten Minute Writing tasks.  Making plans, proofreading and editing written work will also be a focus with the expectation that students take greater responsibility for this. 

Listening and speaking skills will be developed through class participation, assembly presentations, Year 7 speeches and class based oral presentations. 

FISHER  WORKSHOPS

Student progress in the areas of spelling and writing continues to be monitored closely so that learning is  targeted to the specific needs of each student in the form of 30 minute workshop sessions. These occur over 3 mornings, Monday through to Wednesday. The spelling workshops focus on understanding spelling generalisations and the origin of words, whilst the writing workshops focus on individual targeted needs which students will then transfer skills into everyday writing. This semester, reading workshops will take place within individual classes. The students have demonstrated excellent self management with how they prepare for and participate in workshops. 

In addition to these workshops, identified students also receive in-class support from Michelle Harous which focusses on improving skills with sentence construction and reading behaviours associated with comprehension.

Mathematics

Learning Mathematics is an active process where students build their own mathematical understanding through interaction with the ideas they hold and alternative ideas held by others. Students are encouraged and supported to take risks and persevere with new or different and efficient ways of thinking and solving problems, and will understand that mistake making is an important part of their learning. 

Students will continue to develop understanding of the algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and will explore, and apply a range of written and mental strategies for computation to solve multi-step problems with a focus on measuring masses. Students will continue to apply their understanding of concepts related to place value, fractions, decimals and percentages.

Students will develop their understanding of probability and statistics with opportunities to represent and interpret data and investigate chance. They will investigate angles in relation to two-dimensional shapes and transformations.

Science

In Science this term, our focus will be on Earth & Space Sciences. We will be exploring natural disasters and renewable energy. Students will be engaging in “Solution Fluency” where they work through the ‘6Ds’ process; Define, Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver and Debrief. Students will be working collaboratively on a project that sparks their interest and then present their project at our Science Exhibition Assembly on Friday of Week 6.

In Term 4, our focus will be on Biology. We will be investigating living things, their structural features and how they have adapted in order to survive. Students will engage in tasks where they need to classify organisms and investigate food chains and food webs.

Throughout the semester, students will continue developing their Science Inquiry Skills where they will get opportunities to conduct scientific investigations, plan and implement fair experimental methods and identify variables to be changed and measured. There will also be a particular focus on Science as a Human Endeavour where students will expand their scientific knowledge and make connections to the real world.

HASS and Health

H.A.S.S includes History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship and Economics and Business. 

We use an inquiry approach to assist the students’ learning of skills and attributes necessary to become successful, independent and lifelong learners. In addition to the subject specific concepts addressed, key skills developed through our inquiries include: questioning, researching, analysing, evaluating and communicating.  The Fisher staff plan and assess all inquiry units together.

During Term 3 and 4 students will inquire into the following areas:

Year 5 and 6 - Our primary focus this term is History, mainly investigating the Gold Rush and the events both before and after. With the camp to Ballarat and Sovereign Hill at the end of term, students will be posing questions that they will then answer or reflect upon during camp.

Following this, students will be turning their attention to Health and Economics and Business. In Health, students will be inquiring into ways they can take action to enhance their own and others' health, wellbeing, safety and physical activity participation. For Economics and Business students will investigate why businesses exist and the different ways they provide goods and services.

Year 7

During Term 3, Year 7 students will be building upon their learning in Ancient History and the emergence of civilisations with a focus on the importance of water, its impacts on communities in the past, present and future in relation to recreation, economics and uneven distribution.  Sustainability, critical and creative thinking and global perspectives with feature throughout.

Term 4 will involve an Economics and Business inquiry with students learning about the relationships between producers and consumers and the characteristics of successful businesses and entrepreneurial behaviours.  We will create pop-up businesses with the aim of making profits to contribute to the furnishing of our new Fisher space.

We will also conduct a Health inquiry into puberty, its impacts and developing resilience to cope with physical, social and emotional change. More information will be sent home prior to beginning this unit.

TARTS & Technologies

This year, Fisher students are participating in Tuesday Arts and Technologies.  Each student is able to choose from Drama, Music, Design and Technology, Media, Visual Arts and Digital Technologies. Students,  choose their desired topic at the beginning of each rotation. They work with a different Fisher teacher each time. As well as offering students a range of experiences and expertise, this programme also helps prepare students for high school by providing the opportunity to work with specialist teachers. 

Ms Brook is teaching Visual Arts, Ms J Martin is teaching Dance, Mr Tarleton is teaching Design and Technology, Mr Clayton is teaching Music, Mr Jonathon is teaching Media while Mr Starr is taking Drama. This is a great chance for students to try things they may have never done before. See the Reflections page for photos and videos of the students' work.

PE & Health

This semester, the emphasis of the PE program will continue to be the development of skills, coordination, cooperation, enjoyment and healthy, positive attitudes to physical activity, in order to prepare students for future recreational pursuits.

The main areas of study will be on:

LEARNING THROUGH MOVEMENT

Volleyball - serve, dig, set and spike. Setting up to attack and attacking as a team. Defending space on court, defending an attack and defending as a team. Creating set plays (offence and defence).

Netball Clinic- Metro Jets Netball Club have organised two premier league players Teri Schubert (GA) and Lisa Roscarel (WD) to run a netball clinic. Commencing Week 5 during Thursday morning’s PE lessons.

Cricket - Batting, fielding, throwing, catching, teamwork.

Softball- Throwing, catching, fielding, batting, base running, modified games.

UNDERSTANDING MOVEMENT

LNPS Fit Challenge

The LNPS Fit Challenge is designed around exercises that emphasise functional and foundational movements. These exercises are functional because they are based on real world situational movements such as reaching, squatting, twisting and balancing and they require a lot of core activation. They are foundational because in almost any type of physical activity we engage in, we will do some type of variation of these movements. Building these functional and foundational movements will not only help to increase overall strength and endurance, but will also help to improve athletic performance and injury prevention. Learning how to do these movements correctly and efficiently is the basis of the LNPS Fit Challenge. Students have already participated in 3 rounds of the challenge during Term 2 and will take part in the challenge this Term during Weeks 3, 6 and 9.

MOVING OUR BODY

Premier’s Be Active Challenge

The Challenge:

To be physically active for 60 min a day (R-7 students), for 5 days a week, for at least 4 weeks, in order to earn a medal. Activities are many and varied. Recess and lunch play can be included as well as any other physical activities that are undertaken at school or outside of school. There is no online recording available this year so it must be done on a paper recording sheet and once completed, returned to Miss Patterson or Miss Martin. Students can collect a recording sheet during their PE lesson.

The challenge closes on the last day of this term (Sep 29th), please return PBAC recording sheets prior to this date.

Important dates:

SAPSASA District Athletics Day- Tuesday 12th September (Week 8)

State Athletics Championships- Tuesday 26th September (Week 10)

Languages - German & Greek

Please read our Languages Newsletter to find out more about our Languages program.

Please encourage your child(ren) to tell you about what they have been learning in their language lessons.

Libby Edwards (German Teacher) and Voula Pagonis (Greek Teacher)