Icarus Community Report

Welcome to the Icarus Community

Welcome to our newsletter for August! It was great to see our students dressing up as their favourite characters to celebrate Book Week. The costumes looked amazing! Students have continued to be busy at work this term and we are looking forward to sharing our learning with you.

Reading

This month, Icarus students were mainly focused on making inferences about characters' traits based on their actions, thoughts and feelings in a text. Our students also made inferences about characters' emotions, motivations, and thoughts based on their actions in a given text. This month, we also started to use the reading skill of synthesising.

Writing

In the Icarus Community, students commenced learning about Information Reports. During this unit, students explored the features and structure of information texts. Students had the opportunity to practise their paraphrasing skills and are currently working on writing their own information reports linked to our Inquiry topic of ‘Are we still standing on Earth?”.

Maths

In Numeracy, students have been learning to solve division problems by using different strategies. They used repeated subtraction, number line and equal groups to solve division worded problems. Students were engaged in writing their own worded problem involving division. They enjoyed sharing their strategies and thinking with their peers. Student have also been learning to measure and compare the area and perimeter of regular and irregular shapes. They have been learning to read, interpret and create grid maps. Students were given opportunities to use compass directions and grid coordinates to write a set of directions. They created a quiz using the map of Australia.

Inquiry

For Inquiry in August we have been learning about the seasons, months, days and years, about how Earth rotates and revolves, how Indigenous people use the stars and sky to determine the seasons, climate change and its effects and natural disasters. 

SEL

This month, we focused on a number of concepts to aid students' wellbeing and their social/emotional learning. These included explicit teaching on how to differentiate between different sized problems - 'elephant' vs 'ant' problems. We also discussed help-seeking behaviour and described factors that contribute to positive relationships. Most importantly, students were exposed to a range of strategies that can be used to deal with strong emotions. A checklist below was provided as a starter for a discussion and students were able to identify coping strategies of their own preferences. We also revisited expected behaviours to show CARE for yourself, for your learning, for your school and for others.

Friendly Reminders

• Please ensure your child has a water bottle at school each day and that it is labelled with their name.
• Please ensure your child is attending school regularly and on time as ‘It is not okay to be away’.
• Please ensure that your child is reading their home reader for 20 minutes every night and that their reading log is filled in and signed by a parent/guardian. Students are welcome to either read a book from school or a book of their own choice from home.
• We strongly encourage students bring along some brain food (fruit and vegetables) that they may eat in class. It is important that this is included as an additional snack in their lunchbox.

Warm Regards,

The Icarus Team

Christina, Amandeep, Amanda and Aliya.