Introduction

Our classrooms are once more full of colour and life, our playgrounds reverberate with the sounds of happy children, and our whiteboards, tables, books and pencils are getting a welcome workout. We’re back! The focus this week has been all about welcoming back our students and staff. While the education of our students remains our number one priority, we also know how important it is to reignite those all-important relationships and friendships that have been somewhat distanced by remote learning. And even though we are arriving and leaving school at staggered times, playing in the playground in year level groups, and observing hand hygiene and social distancing, we know that face to face interaction is what our kids need right now.

This week has been a wonderful reminder of the special joy that only happy, engaged children can provide: peals of laughter, smiles on faces and squeals of excitement. Welcome back, everyone!

Prep

The word of the week is: Shark! We hope that didn’t scare you too much!

Our preps have been focusing on:

Developmental play
Writing about their experiences with developmental play
Revising addition, subtraction and number recognition
Working on the “sh” and “ar” digraphs
Wellbeing – getting back into routines

Elena (PW): "The best thing about being back at school is getting to be with my friends. Today I painted a rainbow”

Nick (PE): “I’m playing with Maddie and we are eating yummy food at our café. The best thing about being back at school is we get to play together”

Maddie: “I’m playing with Nick at the café. Now we are back at school we can play together and we can play footy and stuff at lunch.”

Years 1 and 2

We have been focusing on number – including playing fun games like “Race to 100”, addition using playing cards, and skip counting on white boards and using number charts. We have also set up shops in our classrooms, which is a fun way to learn all about Money! And in English we have been working on vocabulary and have started our author study

To help our students adjust we have been doing a lot of team bonding activities and class promises. Reconnecting over circle time has been a highlight.

Some rocket writing (writing as much as possible in a set amount of time), has been the challenge and our writers have examined their feelings around their experience of the pandemic. To do this they have asked questions such as:

“If our Covid experience was an animal what animal would it be?

And...

“If Covid was a colour what colour would it be, and why?”

Take a look at some of 2V’s responses below.

Years 3 and 4

Grade 4 have been continuing work on persuasive writing. They have also been working on objective and possessive pronouns. They are finishing work on chance and data, including phrasing closed questions for tighter data sets and graphing results. They will also be starting to look at the integrated science topic for the term, which will be on solids, liquids and gasses.

Scarlet (4B): “ It is different being back at school because we have been so used to learning from home and no one has seen each other for so long and now we have to do our work in a different timetable. I have found music really fun – we have been practising the song for production.”

Flyn (4B) “After 7 months of home-schooling seeing everyone’s faces is still quite unusual for most of us. This week I have enjoyed doing PE, we played softball”

James C (4B): “It is a little bit weird because we don’t get to choose our timetable and I got used to choosing mine when I was learning from home. Everyone is now around you and we are also working in groups sometimes. I’ve really enjoyed PE this week because we get to interact with our friends – we haven’t been able to play sport in ages.”

Brodie (4B): It feels weird going back to school because we have been on zoom talking to friends and classmates and it is different in person because there is no camera. It is weird learning around everyone else. I was used to learning on my own. This week I’ve enjoyed PE because we go to do sport with others, which we haven’t been able to do in a while, and if we did do it it would only have been with someone in our family.”

Senior School

To break the ice and catch up on what’s been happening in “ISO”, Grade 6 completed an “ISO Scavenger Hunt”, where they had to find someone else who had done one of the activities on a grid. Activities included “singing aloud, “getting a new pet” and “reading a book”. In English, they have been looking at Memoirs, and making personal connections to texts, reflecting on their own experiences to understand the experiences of others. And they have also examined word choice and sentence structure and the powerful ways in which these can convey emotion and meaning.

Our senior students are also planning a jail break! They have to use public transport maps to plan an escape from school, and attempt to get as far away as they can in 12 hours. We know none of our students actually want to escape school, but we wonder how far our fugitives could travel in this hypothetical escape! In visual arts they are designing and painting skateboards, which we think is wheely exciting! Could they use their skateboards as getaway vehicles?

And Covid will not be putting an end to celebrations. Grade 6 are planning graduation, including choosing songs. Which songs would you choose? Grade 5 and 6 have also been getting excited about this year’s production, which they have been workshopping. Rehearsals for the scenes and main acting parts have already started! Taking a virtual format, our production this year will bring the school together for a unique and dramatic showcase to round out our final term of a unique and dramatic year.

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