Learning and Teaching 

Literacy News Around the School

Many students find the  process of writing, both fiction and non-fiction texts, extremely challenging. These students may have wonderful ideas, but struggle to get their thoughts onto the page. Even those who read reasonably well can experience difficulty with written expression. Talk for Writing is a unique process that uses spoken activities to develop writing skills. In Talk For Writing, the process of “Imitation – Innovation – Invention” is explored. Students learn to orally recite and act out popular stories through listening and reading. The teacher maps out the story using pictures to aid the students’ memory. Repetition allows the students to interact with the text and helps them to internalise the language patterns and text features. Students are then taught to use the underlying structure of the original text to create their own version on a different topic.

This week, the Year 1/2 students have  been following the ‘Talk for Writing’ process using the picture story book Owl Babies, written by Martin Waddell.

 Open the link to watch the ‘talking the text’ part of the  Talk for Writing process in 1/2 HT, and have a read of their wonderful writing pieces below.

scroll->

Reading expectation at St Brendan’s:

There are many wonderful benefits to reading at home. Children who read often and widely get better at it. After all, practice makes perfect in almost everything humans do, and reading is no different.

At St Brendan’s, it is an expectation that students read each week night. 

• In the Junior Years (Prep – Year 2), reading (to parent, with parent or parent modelling reading) should not exceed 10 - 15 minutes each evening 
• In the Middle Years (Years 3 – 4), reading of a ‘Good Fit’ book should be for a minimum of 15 minutes each evening.
• In the Senior Years (Years 5 – 6), reading of a ‘Good Fit’ book should be for a minimum of 20 minutes each evening.

Have a lovely long weekend!

Erica Hudson

Enjoying our Library at lunchtime

LITERACY NEWS Week 8 Newsletter

In the last newsletter, I shared with you the approach towards learning phonics, that all the staff at St Brendan’s have been educated in over the last couple of years. Our youngest students in Foundation have been loving learning their sounds each morning and can even confidently explain the difference between a vowel and a consonant! Here is a video of our little learners showing how they are learning their sounds through MSL. The multisensory aspect ensures that links are consistently being made between the visual (language we see), auditory (language we hear), and kinesthetic-tactile (language symbols we feel or make through gestures) pathways in learning to these, which helps them to develop their reading, writing and spelling skills.

Each week in Foundation, we learn one or two new sounds. 

This week we learnt /p/ and /m/. We practised writing a sentence using our focus words 'pig' and 'mud'. We also developed our listening skills by following a guided drawing. 

How cute are our pigs!

scroll ->

Green Team News

Summer finished with a lovely stretch of warm days which certainly accelerated the growth of the newly planted cucumber, beetroot and lettuce seedlings in Brendan’s Garden. The Green Team were very impressed by the size of their recently planted vegetables and are sure the smelly fertiliser we fed them has helped them to grow quickly. 

This week, the Green Team went out in the morning to avoid the hottest time of the day. We worked in three groups, each group working on a different task and then rotating tasks to ensure all the students experienced each one.

The three a activities were: 

1. Planting and mulching
2. Watering
3. Picking and weeding

The seedlings we planted were brussel sprouts, broad beans, coriander and basil. It was great working with the enthusiastic students, especially the Foundation children as it was their first time. 

Our pumpkins are growing beautifully but are not quite ready for picking. Our cherry tomatoes on the other hand are being picked most days and many students and staff have had the pleasure of eating them.

Here is the Green Team working hard in Brendan’s Garden!