Learning Communities 

Junior Years  - Term 3 Topics

In Term 3, students in the Junior Years Learning Community will be covering the following topics.

English 

In Reading, students are learning to follow instructional texts, such as simple recipes, manuals and ‘how to…’ texts. In Writing, students are creating their own instructional texts. In Speaking and Listening, students are learning to respond to texts by reflecting on their favourite books, authors and illustrators. 

Mathematics

In Number and Algebra, students are learning about multiplication and division concepts of: sharing a collection into equal groups and representing multiplication as repeated addition and skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.In Statistics and Probability, students are learning about chance events. Students are developing their mathematical vocabulary by using the language: ‘likely’, ‘unlikely’, ‘certain’, ‘impossible’ or ‘50/50’ to describe chance events. 

Religious Education: We Can Pray in Different Ways  

In this unit students will have the opportunity to explore their relationship with God and examine the nature of prayer and how they can creatively express this relationship. 

Inquiry Based Learning: How Do We Look After Ourselves?

In this unit students will learn about how their bodies are growing and changing. Students will explore opportunities to promote their own health, safety and wellbeing. 

Physical Education

We are currently preparing for our upcoming Athletics Day on 3rd September. Students are enjoying practising the different track and field events. We encourage our students to keep practising their long jump. 

Middle Years - Term 3 Topics

In Term 3, students in the Middle Years Learning Community will be covering the following topics.

Mathematics

We are revising the operations of addition and subtraction.

• Vertical addition/subtraction
• Near doubles
• Near ten
• Rounding and adjusting
• Chunking

We are learning about money and finding the correct change from transactions.

English

During reading we are exploring the book week books. We are discussing the themes, characters, settings and vocabulary. We are looking forward to voting for our favourite book and completing some fun craft and interactive activities during Week 7, the official “Book Week”.

During writing our focus is on letter writing. We are enjoying writing personal letters to our family and friends. We are learning to structure our letters, making sure we have a return address, a date and a sign-off.

Religious Education

We are learning about the Sacraments of Initiation. We have explored Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist. Students have been researching about Saints, sharing their learning through a profile highlighting the qualities of each Saint.

A big congratulations to all of our students who have made and are in the process of making their Sacraments.

Inquiry Based Learning

During our unit titled, “How can we be happy and healthy?” students have been discovering healthy food choices, exercise options and ways to keep our minds healthy. We loved watching our Olympians at the recent Tokyo Games, reflecting on their hard work, training and achievements.

Physical Education

We have been preparing for our upcoming Athletics Day.  Students are enjoying practising the different track and field events, improving on their technique and sportsmanship.   We encourage our students to keep practising their “hop, step and jump”!!!

Senior Years - Term 3 Topics

In Term 3, students in the Senior Years Learning Community will be covering the following topics.

English

For reading the children have been completing an author study on Jackie French.  In line with our Inquiry studies on Natural Disasters, Jackie has produced a series of natural disaster books with Bruce Whatley as the illustrator. Students will be using reading strategies to compare and contrast these books, and focus on the style of Jackie French writing stories about floods, bushfires, cyclones and droughts.

In Writing the students have been learning how to write Explanation texts. Explanation texts are pieces of writing that explain something. They might tell you how or why something happens, or give information on how to do something. Some examples are: information books or leaflets. This will be followed up by procedural writing where students will learn about writing Procedural texts, such as, listing a sequence of actions or steps needed to make or do something. Typical examples of procedural texts include recipes, science experiments, assembly manuals or instructions for playing games. Students will examine the key structures and understand the differences between the two text structures and genres.

Mathematics 

This term we have been teaching concepts around using units of measurement and geometry, such as, time, angles, shape, perimeter, area, volume, capacity and mass. Students have been very engaged in learning activities working collaboratively with their peers, using concrete materials and hands on resources, such as, tape measures, meter rulers and protractors to help with their mathematical understandings! 

Inquiry Based Learning

This term our Inquiry based learning focus is on Natural Disasters. We have been exploring and learning about Fire, Cyclone, Drought and Flood. Students will choose one of these 4 natural disasters and complete a detailed research project which they will present to their peers. 

Religious Education 

We commenced this term with our topic Reconciliation, focusing on stories in Luke’s Gospel and reflecting on our own family and friendship experiences, the happy and the hurtful times. We explored the rituals of making up or ‘reconciliation’ and the ways of making peace again when things go wrong. We will move into our next topic ‘People of Prayer’,  where students will identify and write different types of prayer including thanksgiving, praise, sorrow, petition and adoration.

Physical Education 

This term the students were practising skills in preparation for Athletics Day. Health and Physical Education is the key learning area in the curriculum that focuses explicitly on developing movement skills and concepts students require to participate in physical activities with competence and confidence. Students participated in rotations including hurdles, high jump, long jump, triple jump, shot put, vortex and sprints. 

Science Week

For Science week the students participated in a float or sink activity.  Students were able to look at and feel different items. With guidance, the students posed questions to clarify the scientific investigation, and predicted what the findings of this investigation might be, predicting whether items would float or sink, giving reasons why. Students were very engaged in this investigation and found surprising results.