1/2 T

Literacy

We have continued to use a range of books to inspire our work during Literacy. 

Some of the books include; "Duck!", "Jetty Jumping" and "Winston and the Indoor Cat".

We have been expanding our vocabulary, using lots of interesting words from the books we read to form our own sentences that tell 'who' is 'doing what' 'where'. This week we have been adding adjectives and adverbs to make our sentences even more interesting.

Mathematics

Last week we were working on collecting, sorting and representing data. 

Each student came up with their own question to investigate, surveyed their classmates, collected the data, sorted the data and created a graph.

This week we have been thinking about the days of the week, words we use for different times of the day and the order of the months of the year.

Each day we start our maths lessons with a 'Number Blast' - 

to practise our counting and mental computation skills. 

We have been counting forwards and backwards by tens 

between 0 and 130, ie. 0, 10, 20, 30 ......100, 110, 130, 

from various starting points ie. 90, 80, 70...... (this is know as 'on the decuple')

Next we count by 10s forwards and backwards from other starting points, 

ie. 17, 27, 37, ....... 97, 107, 117, 127

129, 119, 109, 99 ....... 29, 19, 9 (this is known as 'off the decuple')

Building counting fluency by 10s and 1s, backwards and forwards, is very important and something that can be regularly practised at home too - it can be made into a game for the whole family to join in with, taking turns with what comes next and choosing different starting points.

Inquiry/Education in Faith

During our Inquiry studies this term, we will be considering the idea of 

'Growing Older and Wiser'. We have started by thinking about all the different ways we change as we grow up and have watched some very interesting time lapse videos to show how much one person can change. 

We also had a couple of rounds of 'Guess Who?' using some of our own baby photos.

During Education in Faith we have been focusing on our Catholic Identity and what makes St Francis Xavier Catholic Primary School, catholic. 

We will be exploring various aspects of Catholic Identity during the term. 

Each day we start our school day with a prayer. We have been trying out lots of different ways to pray. Sometimes we say formal prayers together, such as the St Francis Xavier school prayer which we have been learning. Other times we offer up our own prayers, sing songs, use special reflection cards or listen to music. Yesterday we started sharing in our weekly whole-school morning prayer to start the day, and each day the Grade 6s lead us in our special lunch time prayer.