5-8 Community News

 

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

 

As the weather starts to warm up, let's enjoy it.  We are blessed to be having some wonderful spring days: take your pets for a run/walk, or even just get some fresh air.  I strongly encourage you to take this opportunity where you can.  We know what Spring can bring, either really nice or really poor weather. Most importantly, spring brings football finals!  Get out to kick the footy! Especially a Carlton one!

 

As we are more than half way through our remote learning, we wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for your time, commitment, and reassurance. The students have handled Remote Learning 2.0 way too easily!  You guys deserve a huge pat on the back for all of your efforts so far.  Let's finish the term off strongly. 

 

Here are some tips to help us continue to see success in our students:

 

Remaining 'safe' while using school devices online

As well as our lessons being online, using the internet and school-wide software programs for classes remains vitally important. We would like to remind both parents and students that during the period of remote learning it is important that students use their devices for a means of connecting with their learning outcomes, College, their TA and to receive any important messages.  

 

Here are some tips for setting up a successful online space for your child at home.

 

Mr. Poppa's top tips for creating safer spaces for young people online:

  • Have responsive, trusted adults moderating, safeguarding and supporting young people online at all times during remote learning. This looks like setting up a learning space where you can monitor the children's screen.  Students should be Zooming at a location that is supervised.
  • Enable young people to control and edit their own privacy settings quickly and easily eg. what's appropriate to share online and what isn't
  • Make terms, conditions, and rules of engagement upfront, transparent, and easy for them to understand. Setting boundaries is really important.
  • Refer to our school-wide SOLE matrices as a means for supporting your children.
  • Ensure that the children have had enough time to rest from being in front of their screens. Set some times that are appropriate where the students are not on their screens.  It's important that the students are getting their 8-10 hours sleep and are heading to bed at a reasonable time and without any technology around.

Anthony Poppa and Corey Carver

5-8 Community Leaders

5-8 remote learning overview

Since we last gave an overview last fortnight, we were fortunate enough to be a part of something new and exciting.  As the 5-8 middle leaders, we thought it would be awesome to try something new by planning a 5-8 midterm report, using the software program, Zoom.  This occurred last week on the 28th of August.  It was very successful and we had 50 parents, students and teachers who joined us for our report.

 

The report consisted of examples of the learning that has been produced in Remote Learning 2.0.

 

We were fortunate enough to hear from some potential leaders from Years 5, 6 and 7.  To give you an insight into the report, this is what was discussed: 

  • In the 5/6 year levels students have been further extending their knowledge on persuasive writing. Some of the topics covered included ‘Why we should have a veggie garden at school?’ and ‘Why should you live in Australia’? This was presented by Mia Stockdale, Shylee Donaldson and Teaghan Buntine
  • In the Year 7 space, students have been learning about Ancient China, Judaism scriptures and how to identify the meaning of the text. They also discovered how much water they use by doing their everyday tasks. This task for PBL was presented by Jett Guiney and Ben Dickens.
  • In the Year 8 space the focus during remote learning has been on the math topic of volume, area and perimeter. To help us understand these concepts, we measured things around our own houses before converting them between cm, mm and m.  I was surprised with the length of my door and then I had to convert this again!
  • During remote learning, the Partnerships for the Future classroom have further extended their learning from their garden which they created for the school. These lessons are occurring in their PBL classes where the focus for the past few weeks has been to investigate how to stop the plants from dying due to the bugs that are getting into the garden.  Hayden Parsons had some great suggestions.  This learning was presented by Callum Leocata and Billy Halliwell.

Sarah Whelan and Isla Carver

Years 5/6  learning

During remote learning, we have been learning about information reports in English and adaptations of plants and animals in PBL.  We were required to choose a habitat to learn more about (ocean, desert, arctic and rainforest) and create an animal that could live in that environment.  Our animal needed to have physical and behavioural adaptations to help it survive in their habitat. After we created our animal, we wrote an information book on book creator to present our work.

 

Online Mass

On Thursday 20th and Friday 21st August, Fr. Jinjo very kindly came and ran mass for the Years 5 and 6 students via Zoom. An altar was set up in the Strength & Kindliness Building with all the symbols and icons that an altar in a church would have. Students were organised via Zoom to be readers and to participate as best they could. Students who were in attendance at school on those days also came and participated in the Mass. 

 

Fr. Jinjo did an amazing job live streaming Mass amongst 'dings' from Zoom, PA announcements and the general hustle and bustle of school. His sermon about being invited by God to share in a life like Jesus lived, was very apt and engaged and directed the students in their own reflections. 

 

A huge thank you to Fr. Jinjo for leading our Masses and to all the Years 5/6 students for their participation and respectful attendance.