Around the Classrooms

Foundation

With the end of the school year fast approaching, we would like to take this opportunity to thank this year’s Foundation cohort and their families. We are incredibly grateful to have had this opportunity to support and teach all students during their first year of school and have thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with you all.

This is a wonderful time to stop and reflect on the growth of every single student. Growth regarding their learning, development of friendships with peers, their emotional regulation and confidence at school. To say we are proud is an understatement!

We would also like to thank the broader group of staff who have supported Foundation students this year, in particular Ms Moloney, Mrs Clarke, Mrs Perret and Mrs McHenry. 

It is bittersweet coming to the end of the school year, but we have no doubt that this cohort will continue to flourish as they transition to Year 1 and beyond. Once again, thank you for your support this year! We wish you a safe and happy holiday period and look forward to seeing all involved in 2023.

Year 1 and 2

Over our final weeks of the term, we are looking at author Jeannie Baker and her wordless texts called Belonging, Window and Mirror.  Each text has a hidden message that is up to the interpretation of the reader.   Window is a story about a mother and baby look through a window at a view of wilderness and sky as far as the eye can see. With each page, the boy grows and the scene changes.  Belonging is a story about the small things in one neighbourhood--their fragility, strength, and connection--and their power to make a difference.  Mirror is a story about the lives of two little boys – one from an urban family in Sydney, Australia, the other from Morocco.  As you move through the pages, you can see the similarities of both lives.  Students have completed their own ‘window’ picture and illustration to show how they envisage the world to be in the future based on the information they learnt while reading Belonging and Window.

Students also had a little visitor this week, Eddy the Elf.  He is keeping a watchful eye over the students and reporting back daily to the North Pole.  From what we have seen, Eddy is very impressed with our students so far!

Visual Art

The Senior Students have been making progress on their weaving artwork, with some students working in pairs to complete the project. Well done seniors we will be displaying the frames in the coming weeks so keep an eye out. The seniors have also developed a plan for a comic strip which they will be sketching and illustrating to produce a final copy.

Students in the Junior School have created stained windows and they look wonderful. They have been displayed on the windows in the classrooms, the colors and geometric designs are fantastic, great effort juniors. We have also been working on a display for the reception area of the school. Students have joined forces to decorate a tree that will be home to their paper roll owls. 

Year 3 and 4

Over the past few weeks, students have been working through their final Content Knowledge unit for the term – The Wind in The Willows. What a great text it has been to round out such a wonderful year. The themes of friendship and kindness throughout the book match perfectly to a great year in 3/4A and 3/4C. Students will continue to read the text right through until the final week of school. Students have taken inspiration from the book to create their own narratives – our imaginations have run wild! We look forward to sharing our published texts with you at home. 

Puberty Education Session – A friendly reminder to families that the Puberty Education and Personal Development session for Grade 3/4 will take place this week. If you have any questions, please contact your child’s homeroom teacher. 

We wish all families a safe and relaxing holiday break over Christmas. It has been a pleasure spending 2022 with your children and we are looking forward to enjoying the remaining weeks of school with our students, having lots of fun! 

Reshae Armstrong and Laura Clancy

Year 4, 5 and 6

In Literacy students have been focusing on their monitoring when reading by ensuring that they listen for if it makes sense, obeying punctuation and rereading. The students have been choral reading, buddy reading and independently reading the text Early Russia. They have been measuring their progress by completing a words per minute test regularly.

In Numeracy students have been learning about perimeter and area of 2d shapes. They have been following the different rules for each and practising both addition and multiplication in the process.