Specialist Team News

Performing Arts

The Curriculum Focus in Performing Arts 

Prep

Students have been learning about using imagination and acting through participating in drama activities. They have used their voices in a range of ways to act out different emotions and characters.

Grade 1 & 2

Students have been using their knowledge of actors to identify the skills they possess when portraying characters. They have used their voices in different ways including pitch, tone, volume and emotion. They have enjoyed playing the game “Greetings your Majesty”.

Grade 3 & 4

Students have continued playing warm up games that focus on quick thinking, reactions and concentration. They have communicated ideas using their face, body and voice when acting. They have created their own character and ideas when acting in a group scene called “What’s for dinner?”

Grade 5 & 6

Students are continuing listening and responding to music selected by their peers at the start of each lesson. They have used gestures in their acting and have started activities based around developing characters.

Music Clubs

On Friday 4th August, the Marimba Band, Rock Band and Choir will perform in the afternoon as part of the 150-year birthday celebrations.

On Saturday 19th August, the Marimba Band, Rock Band and Choir have been invited to perform at the School’s Open Day. This is taking place between the hours of 10am - 2pm. The performance time for these groups is 12pm. Please accept or decline the invitation on Compass so I know who is attending.

*Please ensure that your child wears their music t-shirt for all performances.

Warm Regards,

Faye Ferry (Performing Arts)

Physical Education

Fortnightly Curriculum Focus in Physical Education – Term 3 Week 4

All Classes: The focus for all classes this fortnight is Indigenous games and our 150th Celebration!

Sport 

Yesterday on August 2nd, the Willy Primary athletics team went along to Newport Athletics Track to compete in the District athletics competition. We had over 60 representatives go along and compete in their respective events. In a tightly fought encounter. St Mary’s finished in 8th position on 660 points. Seaholme finished in 7th position on 697 points, Sacred Heart finished in 6th position on 794 points, Altona Primary was in 5th position on 877 points. Newport Gardens were in 4th position on 958 points. Williamstown North were in 3rd position on 969 points. Newport Lakes finished in 2nd position on 1079 points and Willy Primary finished on top with 1089 points! Congratulations to every student who competed on the day. You have made the entire Willy Primary community extremely proud!

Warm regards, 

Paddy Gallivan, (Physical Education)

Visual Arts

Wominjenka, and greetings from the Art Room. 

What an exciting and busy week this week is tuning out to be.

The smoking ceremony on Monday has been the inspiration for most of the artwork this week. All the Grade Ones through to Six have done a representation in some way, using a range of different mediums. It is amazing how you can have a common theme but manage to get such diversity.

As the Preps were celebrating their first 100 days at school, they created self-portraits of what they might look like when they get to one hundred. Looking a some of their work there should be some very groovy grannies, bald grandpas and some old men with very long beards. They certainly had fun making these.

Then of course we needed to finish the 150 art work for Friday’s Celebration Day. Lucky for me I had the self-named,‘Pom Pom Atists’ who willingly gave up their lunchtimes to continue to work on arranging and attaching pom poms to wire mesh. Thanks to Di in the office and Nic Paramanis, for sourcing more wool at the last minute. I can’t believe we used so much. The best thing about this project has been watching the kids’ reactions as it progressed. There were lots of gasps, comments and questions about it all, making it all worthwhile.

The other thing we have been busy doing is attaching our little people to sticks to put in the garden for the big celebration. While this has been a big job, it too has been one that has really excited the kids. They all wanted to see their pictures on sticks and look at the others. There have been lots of giggles and squeals of delighted. 

To be honest, I haven’t seen the kids this excited or motivated in a long, long time. Obviously, it is nearly time to party! 

 Happy 150 Celebrations everyone and remember, stay happy and keep creating art!

Jo Jo (Visual Art)

LOTE - French

La Conversation A Go-Go

Year 5/6s

Students are the stars of the French room at the moment. Thanks to the outcome of the French student survey completed in class at the end of the last term, our classroom now sports the much sought after ‘FRENCH CUP” students requested to have in the classroom to add that extra edge. As part of our usual ‘La Competition Des Classes 5/6’ which sees each student within the cohort ranking their respective class team performance weekly with honesty, the winning 5/6 team by the end of the term will get to take the French Cup into their classroom along with a special French treat for each team member. Our senior students have shown some serious focus and determination, visualising themselves putting their hands on the trophy! So far, 5/6H has been in the lead by a fraction of a decimal… Each class performance is announced by individual students using the French language and gets recorded weekly out of 20 – as per the standard French marking system – and students have to reflect on their scoring decisions. This is a French numeracy task to strengthen students’ place value and number building process in the target language, combined with the extensive French conversations we have leaped into involving language analysis of questioning words to determine direction of questions and meaning cross referencing by re-using words given in questions to create their own statements.

5/6 students will continue to build on their conversational French in the next two weeks by adding further questioning to their repertoire to expand on their ability to converse with one another.

Year 3s & 4s

No French this term.

Year 1s & 2s

They have been actively developing further their knowledge of numbers by ‘Lego building’ regular numbers to simplify learning and realise that they own a lot of the answers already. For example, numbers 17/18/19 are numbers I don’t need to teach them as they are built on their prior knowledge of 10+7/8/9. This helps them realise how much they already know and how it applies to many French numbers, making counting a breeze and empowering them with a sense of knowing from within. Using this strategy, year 2s have now expanded their counting from 20 to 39.

We’ll be playing counting games in the next 2 weeks to put this strategy to good use, using abacci, plastic coins and playing cards. 

Preps

The kids are actively working on number identification from 0 to 15. They are learning to play organised games with play cards to develop their auditory and visual matching skills in the target language. They get to engage in being risk takers by calling out numbers in French for the rest of the class to find on the floor in order to create a number line. They also played identification games in teams by writing the numbers they hear on mini whiteboards and scoring points for their answers. Well, that surely got our preppies excited! They have been recording numbers in written form and identifying them by drawing the right number of pictures next to them.

In the next couple of weeks, Preps will get to make use of their knowledge of numbers while enjoying the cartoon story of ‘La Petite Poule Rousse’.

Madame CRICRI