Senior School News
Gee Whiz! Can you believe it is week 4 already? The grade 5 and 6s have had an incredible 2 weeks and it was great getting to meet most of you at parent teacher interviews this week.
Cyber Safety
We kicked off last week with a cyber safety session for the students with Susan McLean. Her message was very powerful and we think the students got a lot out of it. Thank you to those parents who gave up their Thursday night to hear her speak. I believe it is a really important message to get out and if parents and teachers work as a partnership, and share the same message with our young people it can only make it all the more impactful.
Beginning of year testing
The 5s and 6s have been very busy. They have put themselves to the test and have finally finished off all of their beginning of the year testing. There was a lot of brain power involved in this as I'm sure you can imagine. Make sure you congratulate them at home! The testing involved 3 Essential Assessments; Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry and Statistics and Probability, 4 one minute maths tests, looking explicitly at their fluency when working with the four operations, and in English they completed their DIBELS testing, which tests their reading fluency and comprehension. This testing at the beginning of the year is extremely valuable as it gives their teachers insight into their current learning levels, allowing us to meet each student at their point of need.
Maths
In Maths over the past two weeks, the 5s finished off their Statistics and Data unit and have moved onto place value, while the 6s have been completing lessons on the four operations, making sure the foundations are solid and exploring different problem solving strategies. The 6s will have one more week on multiplication and division before moving onto fractions, while the 5s are moving onto the 4 operations.
English
In English the students have continued with the Spelling Mastery program which is mixed age levelled groups working together for 20 minutes, on Monday - Thursday. In Reading both the 5’s and 6s have been building their skill sets to break down a variety of comprehension activities, largely based on our Inquiry topic of 'Health'. They have been exploring the link between screen time, physical activity, and healthy diets with our mental health.
R.E & R.R
Our R.E focus has been on Lent with Ash Wednesday next week, in particular the origins of Shrove Tuesday and in Respectful Relationships we have been exploring character strengths, emotional literacy, positive coping strategies and the power of positive and negative voice.
Homework
You may have noticed that Homework came home this week. The grade 6 homework will run Monday - Friday and use a 6 grid activity sheet. While the 5's are running Friday - Friday. Some of the grid tasks will stay the same each week such as the “20 minutes of reading each night”, the “healthy living” task and the “30 days of kindness” activity. The other 3 grid squares will change each week and be directly related to the learning taking place in the classroom. Our Homework is not meant to be overly strenuous, its purpose is to create good study habits to best prepare the students for High School. We are encouraging them to plan out their week and choose one or two tasks to complete each night, and not to complete it in the one sitting.
Chrome books
With the introduction of chrome books this year, both the year 5 and 6s have had a focus on building their typing skills. They are using “Typing Club’ to do this and are able to access this at home to complement the lessons they are doing at school!
Kaboom!
Finally, our leaders did an amazing job helping run KABOOM for the rest of the school last week and the teachers could not be more proud of them! Well done!
Until next time,
The Senior Team ,
Jayne McKay - jmckay@shsandringham.catholic.edu.au
Trent Thiessens - tthiessens@shsandringham.catholic.edu.au
Dara Blake - dblake@shsandringham.catholic.edu.au
Simon Brown - sbrown@shsandringham.catholic.edu.au