Glen Waverley Primary School Level 2 Newsletter

Term Four - Level 2

Dear Parents and Guardians,

 

 Welcome to our last stimulating term of learning and celebrations in Level 2.

The Level 2 team are excited to see everyone again as we continue connecting and learning in the classrooms and school grounds. 

 

In Term Four, the Level 2 students will participate in engaging learning experiences as they continue to develop their knowledge and understanding in the areas of Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, Mathematics, You Can Do It, Inquiry, and their own Personal and Social development and growth. These learning experiences scaffold student learning to support the students to extend and challenge their current abilities in all areas of the curriculum. This term the students will participate in the organisation and production of the Prototype Exhibition. 

 

Throughout Term Four, the school foci ‘Flexible Thinking’, Self-Care and Mindful Actions’ and ‘Respectful Relationships’ will continue to be integrated throughout the students’ learning journey.

 

Please take a moment to see what we have planned for this exciting term of learning and development for the Level 2 students.

 

Term Four Key Dates: 

  • 28th October - Terrific Toy Incursion
  • 31st October - Halloween Dress Up Day (Cultural Celebration)
  • 1st November - Melbourne Cup Day (Public Holiday) 
  • 13th December - 2023 Day
  • 14th December - Level 2 Prototype Exhibition 
  • 20th December - Last Day of School for 2022

Mathematics

In Mathematics, the learners will have the opportunity to build their mathematical skills using concrete, pictorial and abstract strategies. Throughout the term they will be encouraged to apply their SURF goal to build their problem solving, understanding, reasoning and fluency skills. They will deepen their understanding of Number and Algebra through an exploration of money, learning about the different features and values of each Australian note and coin. The students will then be able to apply their new understanding to perform simple money transactions that involve adding amounts and calculating change. 

 

In Statistics and Probability, the learners will explore the likelihood of events occurring, be given opportunities to learn and use chance and probability language before delving into the connections between probability and fractions. 

 

In addition to this, the learners will focus on the transformations of shape such as, flip, slide and rotate, along with an exploration of tessellations. They will then continue to deepen their Measurement and Geometry understanding skills through identifying the different features of two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes. 

 

Towards the end of the term, they will be revising addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in order to consolidate their understanding of these four processes, the connections between them and multistep questions that involve more than one operation.

 

To support your child’s mathematics at home you could:

  • Involve your children in anything that involves simple money transactions, such as shopping.  Encourage them to make simple calculations of adding small amounts of money or calculating change.
  • Prompt your child to look for different shapes around the home and discuss what features they have. An example could be when you are playing a game with dice, explore the features of the di, such as how many faces, edges and vertices (corners) it has, or discussing what might happen if they held a shape in front of a mirror to see its reflection. 
  • Explore the possibility of things occurring such as what the weather might be or what they might have for dinner. Use language such as likely, less likely, more likely, equal chance and discuss why we think this way or the evidence we use to make a prediction like this.

Reading

This term in Reading, learners will trial the new scaffolded CAFE menu that aligns with the Victorian Curriculum to continue to deepen their comprehension, accuracy, fluency and vocabulary in reading. Each week Year 2 students will have one Reading session with a Comprehension focus, to build the skills of our learners that can be transferred to the good-fit books they are reading. They will be learning skills such as retelling, asking questions before, during and after reading, making connections and inferring using clues from the text. In addition to this, learners will use mentor texts to identify and analyse the descriptive language and strategies authors use, to engage a reader, particularly in the ending of narratives. Learners will then transfer learnt vocabulary and strategies to their own writing.

 

To support your child’s reading at home you could:

  • Ensure your child reads aloud to you regularly throughout the school week. 
  • Ask your child what their reading goal is and provide them with feedback as to how they are progressing as you hear them read. 
  • Prompt your child to make connections to the books they are reading. They can make connections to the characters' personalities, thoughts and feelings or they can make a connection to an event in a story. 
  • Pose questions to your child as they read to support their comprehension of texts. Particularly focus on asking questions that encourage deeper thinking such as ‘Why do you think the author wrote this text?’ ‘Whydid the character act like that? or ‘How did the author end the story? What made the ending engaging?’

Spelling

Following the school’s inquiry approach to spelling, learners will be extended to explore the etymology of their personalised words within their Spelling Inquiry. Personalised words are found within the learning of each learner. Learners will practise their personalised words during their Home Learning and through integration into their writing pieces at school.  In addition to this, each week learners will have a spelling focus, such as long vowel sounds, common blends including ‘tch’ and ‘ch’ and plural nouns. These words will also be practiced in their Home Learning and their learning at school. 

 

To support your child’s spelling at home you could:

  • Identify words in written text or conversation based around the weekly spelling focus at home with your child, for example, different, paper, inference.
  • Encourage your child to use resources, such as a dictionary, to find the meaning of a new word they have heard or read. 
  • Challenge your child to find synonyms to words they use regularly in speech and writing, such as big or good.

 

Writing

In Writing, learners will utilise the VOICES whole school approach, building on their skills of integrating Voice, Organisation, Ideas, Conventions, Excellent Word Choice and Sentence Fluency throughout their writing pieces. Using what they have learnt in Reading, learners will transfer their understanding of descriptive language and creating imagery to narratives, and will experiment with different ending types such as circular, surprise, lesson/moral and cliff-hanger and evaluate how they engage the reader. 

 

In addition to narratives, there will be a focus on persuasive writing techniques and practising implementing them in a range of text types, including persuasive essays, advertisements and letters. Student will revisit the Persuasive Writing structure to provide a framework for students to write clear and convincing persuasive pieces and demonstrate their use of the persuasive writing techniques.

 

To support your child’s writing at home you could:

  • Take photos of activities you do at home for your child to use as a stimulus for writing at home.
  • Write a joint story together with your child.
  • Tell your child a story of when you were little or something that happened at work that day. Leave off the ending and ask your child to write how they think the story ended.
  •  Encourage students to plan their writing through drawing pictures and using adjectives to deepen descriptive writing.
  • Engage in conversations where students are required to reason and provide arguments for or against a topic, for example ‘What movie should we watch together tonight, and why?’.
  • Discuss advertisements, what makes them most convincing and what persuasive techniques they have used.

 

Speaking and Listening

In Level 2 there are many opportunities across all curriculum areas for learners to demonstrate their Speaking and Listening skills. Sharing mentor texts and students’ learning pieces with peers will be a focus in Reading and Writing. Through this, learners will continue to develop their fluency skills, such as varying tone and inflection, paying attention to punctuation and using descriptions of emotion to read with appropriate feeling. Students will build their problem solving and communication skills during collaborative tasks such as discussing strategies used in Mathematics learning and engaging in the STEAM process to build a prototype during Inquiry. 

 

To support your child’s speaking and listening at home you could:

  • Listen to your child read to you out loud
  • Read to your child, modelling varying your tone and inflection
  • Partner read with your child by alternating reading a page each
  • Engage in conversations around topics that spark their thinking or interest
  • Ask your child to explain the learning task they have completed for home learning
  • Play a verbal word association game together

 

Inquiry

Throughout Inquiry in Term Four, learners will be exploring the question ‘How do forces impact play?’, allowing them to experiment and observe the effects on an object’s movement, speed and shape. They will build their knowledge and awareness of physical sciences through making observations and posing questions. Year Two learners will investigate contact and non-contact forces such as push, pull, friction and gravity. They will be given the opportunity to transfer their skills and knowledge to create a toy or arcade game that involves forces. This will be linked with the Global Goal ‘Reduced Inequalities’, with students raising funds for a charity by exhibiting their toys or arcade games to the school community.

 

To support your child’s learning at home you could, engage in conversations around the following prompts: 

  • What forces do you encounter every day? 
  • What is gravity? 
  • Why is there inequality in our society? 

YCDI

The Level Two team integrates the You Can Do It (YCDI) program into weekly teaching and learning. YCDI is adapted to the unique needs of each student as they work towards developing and strengthening their social and emotional thinking and self-regulation skills. YCDI is a comprehensive framework that incorporates the latest research into developing the social and emotional characteristics of children and explores how social skills can affect outcomes. We connect elements of YCDI to our whole school values of Global Empathy, Integrity, Respect and Initiative, allowing students to reflect on how actions affect the wellbeing of themselves and others. Learners will implement their learning about the Zones of Regulation into their daily lives through a personal display on their tables. They will also focus on tuning into others feelings through reading body language and understanding consequences from actions.  (this is a great explanation of what YCDI is, however it doesn’t explain the intended learning for Term Four.  What are they learning?)

 

To support your child’s learning at home you could:

  • Ask them to explain the Zones of Regulation to you. 
  • Reflect on how they use the Zones of Regulating by asking - Are you in the Blue, Yellow, Red or Green zone, and how do you know?
  • Discuss how they are going with their personalised Social Emotional goal – what strategies are they using for success?

 

Kind regards, 

Level 2 team