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Students of the Week   

Foundation

FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER- TERM 4, WEEK 6

It has been a busy week in Foundation, one full of excitement, curiosity, collaboration, creativity and resilience. We are continuing to be positive andpersistent learners, always having a go and working through any challenges we face. 

We welcome Mrs Santina Alessio to the Foundation team for a few weeks, who has been covering Leanne during her long-service leave. Santina will continue to teach FLW until Leanne returns at the end of November. This week, we also welcome Mr Max Williams to the Foundation team and to FAM. Max is a student teacher from ACU and will be with us for a few weeks. 

As part of our Discovery Time workshops, we continued to demonstrate our skills as thinkers, communicators, collaborators, researchers and self-managers. As builders and designers, we shared our ideas, came up with a plan, shared materials and took turns as we collaborated to build parks, race tracks, schools and mansions with wooden blocks. We faced many challenges as the blocks fell down again and again, but we were persistent and kept trying. As designers, we even went back and made changes to our plan as we constructed our design. As curious scientists and researchers, we found out about Australian animals. We used magnifying glasses to look closely at the different features and with some help, used non-fiction texts and pictures to help us gather more information. As communicators, we recorded our discoveries in words and pictures, and shared them with each other. As architects, we continued to design houses, buildings and apartments. As communicators, we shared our designs with each other, making sure to look and listen to the person talking and ask questions about each other's designs and provide feedback. We also continued to plan, write and edit different books at the writing station, collaborate to solve puzzles and brain benders and create our own shops and menus. 

As inquirers, we have been exploring the big question ‘How do we design and make for a purpose?’ We are learning how to be designers by engaging in different design challenges to find out about the different steps required when creating a design solution. This week, as collaborators, we have been working in small groups to think about, plan, and build a new house for the Three Little Pigs. The Three Little Pigs wrote us a letter and as thinkers, we had to consider the problem they had and what they wanted us to do. As collaborators, we shared our ideas in our groups and worked together to draw and label a house design and list the materials we would need. We began building our houses, making sure they were strong and stable, large enough for all three pigs and that they protected the pigs from the weather, such as wind and rain. This week, we will have time and opportunity to test and improve our designs. 

As readers and writers, we are continuing to explore Narratives and create texts for the purpose of entertaining. As thinkers, we are using story maps to plan our story and draw and label our characters, setting, problem and solution, before taking the time to carefully write and edit our stories. Many of us have been focusing on our letter formation and placement of letters on the dotted thirds, and we are making sure to check our spelling of sight words by using our sight word lists to help us. Some of us are focusing on using adjectives  to describe the characters and setting, for example, a dark forest, the beautiful princess, one sunny morning. As part of our home learning, please continue to engage in reading with your child each night. Please continue to practise reading, writing and spelling their sight words and practise counting forwards and backwards. 

Foundation Team, 

Leanne Wenckowski and Alycia Marsico 

Year 1/2

It was a short but sweet week in Year 1/2! We hope you all enjoyed the long weekend. 

As readers, we have been looking at the De Bono Thinking Hats to help us think deeply about texts. This week, we put on our red, black and white thinking hats. Our red (feelings) hat was used when reading the text ‘The Huge Bag of Worries. Our black (cautions) hat was used when reading the text ‘The Greedy Grey Octopus’. Lastly, our white (facts) hat was used when reading the text ‘Seasons’. Each hat gives us the opportunity to understand different perspectives of texts. 

As writers, we used our imagination to create a fiction story based on this image titled The Magic Tree. We put on our green creative thinking hat and imagined we walked through the open portal and into the world inside the tree. We wrote and drew what we saw which fostered wild imaginations. There were soft pillow worlds, friendship worlds, trampoline worlds, cricket worlds, technology worlds, candy worlds and many others. 

As Mathematicians, we continued to explore the concept of Division. We shared objects into equal groups and created division stories in small groups. We also know that some sharing problems can have leftovers or ‘remainders’. 

As Inquirers, we are continuing to discuss ‘What makes a good garden design?’ for our school. We have looked closely at various garden spaces and how to redesign them. We have drawn sketches that show features of flowers, plants, stepping stones, gnomes, bird houses and compost bins. As well as our garden designs, we have been investigating the design process. We communicated and collaborated with each other to design a face mask that would meet a specific design brief. We created so many funky and functional designs, take a look...

We are excited for the full week of learning ahead!

Year 1/2 Team,

Stephanie Carriera, Belinda Filippone and Maria Delaney

Year 3/4

This week we have a full school week back together.  Overall our students have settled back into school and have clearly enjoyed seeing each other face to face after so long.  There are a number of events happening this week.  

Thursday 11/11 is Remembrance Day and we will be discussing the importance and relevance of this day to Australians in the context of peace and commemoration. Thursday is also the last day for Book Club to be ordered. Students received the catalogue to take home for their perusal. Even if a purchase is not being made, it is an enjoyable experience to go through the catalogue with your children to help develop a reading habit.

Friday is Crazy Sock Day and students are encouraged to wear socks in a crazy manner for all to see. This can include novelty socks, colourful socks or even wearing odd socks. In class and online during remote learning the students have seen the work done by Catholic Mission and this is our way of supporting their work.

In Literacy, this week our focus is again on reading texts to identify key words to be used in retelling the main ideas in their own words. In Writing, we continue with explanation text using natural phenomena to explain how or why something works/happens.  We are looking at the language features such as subject specific words and conjunctions showing sequence distinguishing between the sequencing of cause and effect and the sequencing of order as found in procedure text writing. 

In Mathematics, our focus is on division strategies and processes and how division is closely connected to multiplication and simple fractions. 

Our inquiry into design continues with students using their ideas and understanding from examining design features of the Coburg Station upgrade to develop ideas on how spaces in the school could be used in different ways.

Congratulations to our students of the week:

Madeleine Leahy 3/4MM

Scarlett Falsetta Spina 3/4KD

Isabella Joson 3/4GT

Year 3/4 Team, 

Katarina Davidson, Mark MacGregor, Graham Troy 

Year 5/6

It was fantastic to see all our Year 5/6 students back in the classroom full time last week, and well rested after our long weekend! We are so excited to have the students with us for our first full week back this week. 

In Reading, the students have been reading the last few chapters of our whole class text, the ‘39 Clues’. We are only 3 chapters away from the end of the story and we are eager to find out what happens to our main characters! Currently, the story is set in Paris, where our main characters Dan and Amy are exploring the history of this beautiful city. They have found their way to the French Catacombs, where they must follow leads to the next clue, in their adventure towards the Cahill family fortune. The students continued to identify the important and interesting details within the text, and researched the hidden mysteries of the catacombs. In Writing, the students began exploring the differences between simple, compound and complex sentences. They used their understanding of the different sentence structures to construct their own sentences in their writing.

In Numeracy, the students had the opportunity to head outside with Mrs Monaghan to explore angles in everyday life. They measured different angles that they could see within the yard, particularly on our basketball courts. They also used tennis balls and chalk to create their own angles to measure. It was wonderful to see the students working collaboratively with each other and developing their understanding of different types of angles and how we can measure them accurately using a protractor. 

In Religion, students analysed the scripture passage from Matthew 28: 34-36. They completed a word, sentence, phrase thinking routine, to deepen their understanding of what it is that Jesus calls us as Christians to do, to help those in need. The 5/6 students are continuing to develop their understanding of our mission within the Catholic Church and what we as individuals and as part of the community can do to help the poor. 

In Inquiry, students were introduced to the concepts of ‘Fast Fashion’ and ‘Ethical Consumerism’. The students have been engaging in research about what ethical and sustainable fashion and business is. They have been learning about what to look out for in order to make more ethically conscious choices when making purchases.

We look forward to another great week of learning ahead!

Stay safe and well, 

Year 5/6 Team,

Olivia Sargent, Viviana Clarke, Cherrie Arnold and Michelle Casamento