From the classroom

News from 5/6 Unit

Hello Families,

Welcome back for Term 4!. We hope you had an enjoyable break. It is certainly looking to be a busy term! Not only do we have camp and graduation, but we are organising student leadership positions for next year, there will be sporting events and High School transition.

Over the term, students will be working on My Background, this is a project that students will do from home and present in class. Please speak to your child about the expectations and the date they need to complete it. The outline of expectations and timetable have been emailed to you.  

In Reading, we begin a new mentor text, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordon. Students will focus on analysing and comprehension strategies as they study the text. 

In Writing, we are comparing articles and looking for similarities and differences. Students will also hold mock debates in teams and will argue their side for points. 

In Numeracy, we will be focusing on money and financial mathematics. We have started a special money challenge for this week, which involves students starting with $20 in their ‘account’. There are tasks that earn them money and tasks that cost them money. Their challenge is to end the week with at least $20 in their account. We look forward to seeing who is a financial wizard!

This fortnight students will be completing a project, involving creating a financial plan, comparing prices, choosing the ‘best buy’ and calculating percentage discounts of 10%, 25% and 50% on their total cost.

Additionally to this, an essential part of success in numeracy is being confident with times tables. Students should be practising these skills each night, with the goal for all sets (2-10) to be recalled with automaticity. 

Please remember to order your year 6 jumper for 2023 as soon as you can so that your child can have it by the end of the term. 

We are still looking for photos of year 6 students throughout their schooling years. Please email them to your child’s teacher or Cherie.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Kind Regards,

Pippa Davis and Sheena Cronin

What’s Happening in 3/4 unit

Welcome back for term 4 ready for all the exciting things we have happening this term.

This week we have started our unit of work on puppetry. Students have begun investigating the different types of puppets and the history of puppetry. This term students will be writing scripts, making puppets and presenting puppet plays.

Our shared class novel this term is 

'The Fire-Makers Daughter' by Phillip Pullman.

The author Phillip Pullman originally wrote the story as a school play. The novel is a children's adventure story where the main character undertakes a quest to prove herself. 

In English we will be looking at play scripts both reading and writing them. Before we can write play scripts, we will investigate the features of a play script and the difference between direct and indirect speech. 

In our Literacy block we will continue to investigate the different graphemes making the same sound. We will be looking at when to use particular graphemes in words and using our knowledge of spelling to make correct choices. We will also continue to work on our reading fluency through shared reading of news articles.

Our Numeracy sessions are focussing on the 4 processes, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The Masterclasses are enabling students to find their level of understanding and develop their confidence in following procedures required to solve equations.

Remember to return your camp notices to your teacher ASAP.

Have a great week.

Regards Lisa, Anna, Peter and Lee.

The Adventures of the 1/2

Hello Families,

Welcome back to Term 4, we hope your break was relaxing. We are looking forward to many exciting events this term.

Students have spent some time this week settling into classroom routines and forming their classroom expectations. It was great to see students have their voice and ownership in describing what was important in their classroom.

In Literacy, we have started our unit on narrative texts where we will be taking a deeper dive into this text type. This week we have been reviewing our prior knowledge of narrative texts and their features. In the coming weeks students will examine images and draw comparisons between different texts. During our reading sessions, we are focussing on summarising texts and our phonics sound of the week.

 In Phonics, we continue to do daily practice of fluency, revising previous sounds we have learnt and are currently learning the long i sound.  In Writing, we have been learning about complex sentences and using conjunctions as well has planning narrative texts.

In  Numeracy this week we have revisited Probability, with the students gaining a deeper understanding of sorting events into likely, unlikely, impossible and certain. In the coming weeks we will focus our attention to Fractions and will be exploring quarters, halves and eighths. . 

We encourage you to support your child in bringing their reader packs each day as these are used for notices and reading practice. Students are to swap their readers on a Monday for the week ahead.

Please remember to return Medical forms for the Grade 1/2 Sleepover to your teacher ASAP.

Kind Regards,

The 1/2 Teaching Team

Helen Edwards, Hua Maley and Amelie Fraser

Fantastic Foundation

We have had a great start to Term 4 and it's been so lovely watching the students reconnect and settle back into our routines. This term our Inquiry unit is all about the Performing Arts and we will be linking our exploration of dance, drama and music to our story book each fortnight.

This fortnight we are kicking off the term with an old favourite "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" and we've already had a few sing-a-long and dance sessions! In our Writing time we are continuing to grow our skills and have written a retelling of the story. In Foundation, retelling is as simple as breaking the story into 3 main parts - the beginning, middle and end. Next week we will be looking at the parts of a sentence and writing our own class book.

In Math this week we have been revising our counting skills as well as ordering collections and reading the worded numbers (reading the text "one" as a word). We continue to work on building our understanding of teen numbers and our fluency with numbers up to 20. It is very important that the students have a strong understanding that a teen number has 2 parts - the tens and the units. So 14 has a full ten and 4 extra units. Next week we will explore money and this is a great area that families can work on at home. In Foundation our goal is to understand how money is used, that  we exchange money and each coin or note matches a set number. Some children might be ready to explore the value of each coin or begin working out which coins or notes are worth more or less money. At home you could engage with your child by playing with REAL money or helping them pay for things at the shop.

Next week the Foundation students have been invited to join the Year 2 students in their pajamas for a Camp breakfast on Friday 14th October at 7am.  Please make sure you use our Compass portal to sign your permission, pay for this special event and read for further information. There is also an optional Subway lunch order on that day and these forms will be coming home this week.

And finally, just a reminder that students need to bring their "take-home packets" (a large, clear zipper pouch) to school every day. These are part of our daily routine and help ensure that our reading books are kept safe and that any school notices are making it home to families in 1 piece! Students also need to be bringing a hat to school throughout Term 4, and these can be kept in their bag-box if you wish. 

Best wishes,

Melissa