What's happening in our learning spaces? 

FOUNDATION 

We have been enjoying the engaging learning opportunities over the last few weeks in Term 2. As we continue to count to our ‘100 Days of Foundation’, we are learning to count by 10s and even 5s as we reached 61 days this week!

Last Friday morning we gathered as a Catholic faith community to celebrate National Walk to School Day and Family Week. We showed our local community how we can safely walk to school or ride our bikes to maintain a healthy and active lifestyle. It was great to see so many Foundation families who gathered for the walk from Shore Reserve. Along the journey down Reynard Street towards school, many more students joined the walk. We then enjoyed a lovely breakfast served by our Grade 6 leaders, with our friends and family. After this, we then attended Mass to acknowledge the importance of Family Week. 

As inquirers, we engaged in our Discovery Time in Foundation this week. The students were so excited to immerse themselves in new stations such as Shops, Box Construction and Wild Animals. We enhanced our learning assets of ‘collaboration’ and ‘communication’ to authentically gain the skills to work together in a cooperative and fair environment. Some of the things our wonderful inquirers found out during this session were: 

• I found out the dollar sign tells us how much the money is - Cristian 
• I made a letter ‘i’ out of a different shape by moving the playdough around - Xavier 
• Animals like hippos, giraffes, leopards, some have stripes and some have dots - Adam 
• I am an author because I had the idea to write a book about my mum - Evelyn   

As part of The Resilience Project last week, we learned about the importance of friends and making new friends. We discussed how we felt on our first day of Foundation when we didn’t know too many people in our class. Now we have so many new friends across the school. As readers, we engaged in texts throughout the week “Whale Finds a Friend” by Tiya Hall, “All About Friends” by Felicity Brooks and “The Things I Love About My Friends” by Trace Moroney to discover more ways we can build our friendships. As writer’s we then drew a picture of a new friend we have made this year and wrote different ways we can make a new friend. 

Our parent helper timetables have been placed on the entrance doors to our learning spaces. Please write your name down in a time slot that is available. Please note, new timetables will be posted on a Thursday afternoon. As always, please remember to bring back any library bags by Tuesday so that we can borrow a new book on Wednesday.  

Have a wonderful week. 

Leanne Wenckowski and Alex Phillips

Foundation Team

YEAR 1/2

We can’t believe it is week five already…time really does fly by when you’re having fun! 

This week in 1/2 , as readers, we continued exploring Non-Fiction texts and their features. We focused on the purpose of each of these features and how they help us to be resourceful researchers when reading. As thinkers, we discussed how we could include these when creating our own information texts in writing.  In the coming weeks, we will tune in to Fiction texts as we explore the similarities and differences between the two and how to summarise the different texts. 

When engaging in reading at home with your child, you might like to explore some non-fiction texts. Locate some of the different features of this text, such as the contents page, index, glossary, topic specific words, headings, subheadings, labelled diagrams and captioned photographs, and discuss their purpose and what information they can find out from these. Ask your child to share some of the facts and information that they have learnt from these texts. Look at a Fiction text and identify the differences. 

As mathematicians, we tuned in to the concept of Addition.  We are beginning to explore different strategies we could use to solve simple addition problems and the ways in which we can represent these problems. As thinkers, we focused on partitioning numbers in different ways. We used concrete materials, drew the different solutions and made connections to our knowledge of basic facts. Some of us also used the counting on strategy, while some of us applied other known strategies. In the coming weeks, as researchers, we will find out about a variety of strategies, including counting on, doubles, near doubles, building to the nearest ten and the split strategy. 

As learners, we have also been practising our skip counting. Some of us have been counting by 2s and 5s from 0 to 100 and back, and some of us have been counting by 2s and 5s from different numbers not in the sequence. As thinkers, we have been identifying the patterns and using this to help us count. 

Our week ended with our annual Walk Safely to School Day. Many of us met at Shore Reserve and made our way to school, whilst some of us walked to school from our houses with our parents, carers and siblings. Upon arrival at school, we gathered in our classes to enjoy a yummy breakfast! Thank you to TheirCare for our milk and cereal, and to the Joson family for the fruit. 

After this, as people of faith, we all participated in a Mass to celebrate Catholic Family Care Week. In connection to this, we have been engaging in dialogue about the ways in which our families are all unique, and unpacking what it means to be inclusive of others. As communicators, we listened to the story of the Good Samaritan and engaged in dialogue about empathy, kindness and making good choices. 

We look forward to some more amazing learning, and hope everyone has a wonderful week! 

1/2 Team, 

Alycia Marsico, Vania Sparano and Vicky Karalis 

YEAR 3/4

This week we celebrated CatholicCare Family Week. Family Week is a perfect time to come together to celebrate the power of family relationships in all their diversities, and the importance they play in our lives and community. We engaged in finding out all about families through conversations, family portraits and what makes us unique.

A reminder that Year 3/4 students will be attending an excursion to the Melbourne Museum on Wednesday 31st May 2023. Students are to wear their full sports uniform and bring a plastic bag with their brain food, recess, lunch and drink bottle. No backpacks are required. Please label the plastic bag with your child’s name and class. 

A reminder that Year 3/4 students should be engaging in Home Learning each week. These home learning opportunities are given to students fortnightly and also posted on Google Classroom. During the week, we co-constructed a reading checklist to assist students with reading at home. Parents, please take the opportunity to engage in these with your child. The Year 3/4 teachers would like the students to be responsible to complete the checklist each week. A new reading checklist will be provided each week.

On Thursday night, the Year 4 students engaged in an online Eucharist workshop hosted by Maria Forde. Thank you Maria Forde for your time to assist the children in preparation for their Echarist celebrations. Thank you parents and students for joining us on this night. The Year 4 Eucharist celebration will be held on Sunday 18 June 2023. 

Have a great week!

Year 3/4 Teachers

Belinda Panzarino & Bianka Zorzut

YEAR 5/6

It was a busy week for all our students in the SLA last week. 

On Monday morning, the students arrived into the SLA building and were shocked to find their chromebooks locked up and a letter addressing all 5/6 students that the Chromebooks, after weeks of careless misuse, were on strike. The students were tasked with the responsibility of writing a persuasive letter to Chromebooks asking them to come back. We were very impressed with the letters the students wrote. While some students took the remorseful approach, others were quite threatening in nature! What was evident in all letters was that all students had an awareness of how to use persuasive devices in an effective manner. It is great to see students using the knowledge and skills from the previous week's writing lessons to good use. Thankfully, due to such well written letters, the Chromebooks agreed to come off strike and were returned to the students.

In Numeracy, the students began the unit of length. They spent the week developing their estimating and measurement skills to find the length and perimeter of a variety of objects both in and outside of the classroom. The students had the opportunity to use a variety of measurement tools such as rulers, measuring tape, string, trundle wheels and metre sticks. The students engaged in a fun measurement activity on the Hawthorn Yard on Friday in which they were tasked with throwing a bean bag a certain distance from the white line and then in groups measured how accurate their throw was. It was interesting to see how students' perception of distance developed throughout the task.

In Religion, we explored a painting of 'The Good Samaritan' through zoomed in parts. It was amazing to see all students so engaged in the task. Some wonderful conversations took place as to what the painting could make and there were some great inferences made. We look forward to exploring this well known parable further.

Well done to all students and family members who participated in Walk to School day on Friday. It was an amazing turn out and it was wonderful to see the students enjoy a hearty breakfast afterwards. This was then followed by a beautiful whole school mass, where all our students represented St. Fidelis faithfully.

Unfortunately, Inter-School Sport was cancelled this week due to weather, we look forward to partaking again this week.

Have a wonderful week, 

Olivia Sargent, Graham Troy and Aoife O’Flynn.