Argus-Xenica Community Report

Welcome to The Argus-Xenica Community Newsletter, this is the final newsletter of this immensely enjoyable but productive term. Looking back, the teachers hope that the students have enjoyed this term as much as we did, and we hope that they inherited enormous sums of education throughout this trip. We had a great number of events that occurred this term, including 100 Days of Prep, Book Week, and with House Spirit Day and Bunjil Incursion still to come. Once again, we aspire to a great term for your children and hope they gain the maximal amount of knowledge possible from this term.

Reading

In Reading, we have started a new topic named procedural texts. We have just started, and students are trying to grasp at this concept. We are currently teaching them the structure and features of a procedural text and are trying to help them distinguish between this type of text and others we have covered. Right now, we are analysing to see if the students can understand this so we can move on and further develop knowledge. We estimate that we will have concluded this topic by the end of this term. We are continuing CVC words and are working through Phase 4, in which the understanding of the students will be challenged and administered.

Writing

In Writing, we are working on procedural texts. Children are practicing how to write these texts to increase their understanding on these texts and how they are formatted/created. We provide students with different topics to conduct procedural texts on to further build their perception on this notion. One instance of this is when us teachers told students to write a procedural text on how the created the card they gave to their buddy for book week. We are also still working on CVC words; children are proving to be able to segment sounds and write CVC words. We are still teaching students to create sentences and the students are now learning how to create a sentence structure (capitalisation, spacing, and punctuation).

Maths

In Mathematics, we have commenced teaching students how to analyse and break down data. We have just started this relatively unique topic, but as per experience, expect this part of the curriculum to be completed by the end of this term. We are also working on division and have tried to engage the minds of our students using open ended questions which demand formulated and coherent solutions. Students are able to understand the idea of division successfully and can apply this knowledge to complete questions in relation to this topic.

100 Days of School

Recently during this term, we had the opportunity to celebrate 100 days of school. To commemorate this moment, we encouraged students to dress up in pyjamas, and we saw a great amount of initiative from the Prep community and would like to thank both students and parents for their commitment to this event. We had many different activities installed for them, including making a card, making a crown, and watching a movie. We also decided to organise students to have lunch with their 5/6 Buddies, we saw many smiles throughout this day and would truly like to congratulate our students for this milestone.

Book Week

A well anticipated and celebrated aspect of the year is Book Week, in which students dress up as characters from their favourite book and we celebrate the many different characters that come to life from the careful words of our beloved authors. Yet again, we were pleasantly surprised by the turnout on this event and are truly appreciative for the effort put in by the Prep Community. Our communities’ theme was the commemorated book named ‘Do Not Open this Book’, a creative sequel created by an Aussie Author named Andy Lee. We hope the students has just as much fun as us teachers had.