Student Achievements & Class News

Student Awards

Here at Surfside we have four very important School Values, they are:

Respect, Honesty, Teamwork and Achievement. 

Congratulations to the following students, who have recently been presented with a Student Award for their recognition and demonstration of one or more of our School Values: 

Art Room News

Christmas tree for the City of Greater Geelong.

In Art the year 5-6 students have been busy decorating the large wooden Christmas tree for the City of Geelong. With the Cats winning the grand final this year, we chose a footy theme to decorate the tree. It is on display in Johnstone Park in the CBD. 

The Surfside Christmas Windows Display

Well it is that time of year again to decorate the school corridors with Christmas murals. The idea stems from the famous Myers Windows displays that are created in Melbourne each year. To make the murals each grade picked the theme, brainstormed ideas, and then created the mural piece by piece. The murals are on display in the school corridors so please take a wander through the halls to view this impressive display!  

What's happening in our classrooms????

Foundation 

English: Foundation students are continuing to develop their oral language and phonemic awareness skills through daily Heggerty practice. We are revising previously taught spelling patterns and consolidating the Magic e rule at the end of words. Students continue to receive small group instruction in reading and we are working toward assessment of reading in week 7. We are focusing on the components of a sentence in writing and looking at letter sizing, an upper case letter at the beginning, spaces between words and a full stop at the end of a sentence. 

Maths: We are learning about division and sharing using concrete materials. We are also learning the language of position and location as well as statistics and probability. We continue to revise addition and subtraction concepts. 

Year 1 

English: Grade 1 students are continuing to revise their previously learnt phonics skills, focusing closely on the vowels. They have been introduced to the sounds oi and oy and the position that these are found within words to assist with spelling. Students continue to work in small groups during reading, ensuring that they are working at a level that targets individual needs. Comprehension, fluency and vocabulary building are a consistent focus in all reading lessons in Grade 1. Students are continuing to build their understanding of when a sentence is and is not complete. We are finishing up our unit on persuasive writing and will begin to explore letter writing, including the features of a letter and their many different purposes. 

Maths: In Maths students are revising efficient strategies when adding and subtracting. They are continuing to build on their knowledge of place value through the use of renaming 2 digit numbers into tens and ones. Students in Year One will start a unit on statistics and probability where they choose appropriate questions to ask and gather data. Students are continuing to practise counting and are striving towards achieving individual counting goals.

Year 2 

English: Grade 2 students have been continuing to build their fluency and stamina in reading time with independent chapter books, decodables and fluency passages. Students have been enjoying a class serial, as well as mentor texts linking to our genre of persuasive texts. They are also continuing to build their vocabulary, comprehension skills, and fluency through a range of structured reading activities and small group work with their teacher. In writing time, students have been developing their own persuasive letters and will continue to work on this as they design their own bedroom. They have been working on editing sentences, with a particular focus on adding punctuation. In Word Work students continue to revise concepts. 

Maths: In Maths, Grade 2 students have been learning about chance and how likely it is that certain events will occur. They are beginning to explore 3D shapes with a focus on naming the shape and recognising its features such as how many faces and vertices. Students are continuing to revise concepts from the year and are still working towards their targeted mental maths goals

Year 3 

English: Grade 3 students have continued working in their small book discussion groups, having robust discussions about a chosen text, clarifying any unknown vocabulary and sharing predictions. They have continued to develop their understanding of world rivers and elaborated on their answers using conjunctions. In writing students have explored poetry, in particular haiku, limericks and cinquains with a focus on high-level vocabulary. They have also investigated the prefixes non-, im- and com-. 

Maths: During math sessions, students are continuing to review previously taught concepts focusing on knowledge learnt yesterday, last week and last month. In class they have solved money based problems using efficient addition and subtraction strategies and interpreted graphs and data sets as well as creating their own bar and picture graphs. They have developed their understanding of mass and capacity during Kitchen sessions.

Year 4 

English: In Reading, students have been working on their ability to comprehend and identify the difference between fact and opinion through the use of their own independent readers, our class novels and the online platform “Kids News”. Learners have also had the opportunity to work on their own personal reading goals by creating reading logs in their workbook and by using the guided Red Box/ Blue Box cards differentiated to their own ability. In Writing, students have been developing their knowledge of ways to state their opinion and the write convincing/ persuasive arguments about topics such as 'The Fresh Food Fair', how to convince their chairs to come back to work and topics that appeal to their hearts. In Spelling, we have been learning how to identify prefixes, suffixes and base words. For example, Students have investigated the prefix ‘-dis’ and the base word ‘-cover’. 

Maths: In Maths, our number focus has been on consolidating multiplication up to 10x10 and introducing the area model to solve 2 by 2 digit multiplication. We will also begin exploring multiplication’s connection to division and both fractions and decimals in the coming fortnight. Students have also revised 2D shapes and explored 3D shapes and their properties.

Year 5 

Reading: In reading we have been continuing with Book Club, which is going along nicely, groups have been working together to gain a deeper meaning of their chosen text. Students will also utilise short articles linked to the current floods and previous bushfires to answer questions to help with their reading comprehension. 

Writing In writing we have been working on adding voice and personality to our pieces of writing, while continuing with the writer’s workshop process. Information reports on the European continent have been written to highlight our geography investigation. 

Maths: Following on from our work on fractions we are looking at decimals and the values of tenths and hundredths. We are also starting to investigate statistics and probability through the collection and collation of data to create graphs. 

Investigations: Continuing our Geography unit, we have explored the continents, North and South America and Europe. Students were able to follow their own line of inquiry, continuing to learn about the different customs, landmarks and geography of the countries contained in the continents. Next up is the Asian continent!

Year 6 

Reading: During reading the Year 6s are learning about poetry. We are learning about the elements of poetry and how they are written. Students are learning about the purpose of writing poetry and answering questions about specific poetry text. Students are exploring elements of poetry including definitions, structure, rhyme, rhythm, patterns, free verse and fixed poems. They are exploring sound devises used in poetry and identifying main ideas expressed in poetry. 

Writing: Students are using the reading lessons to then write, create and construct their own poetry. Year 6’s will have the opportunity to create different types of poems including Simile, Colour, Cinquain, Limerick and Diamante poems. Students will use the elements and structure of poetry that they are exploring to then have the opportunity to create these themselves. Students will have to apply the elements of poetry to their own writing. Mathematics: Year 6’s used their Fresh Food Fair results to construct relevant graphs using real life data. Students have correctly constructed line graphs and plot data on these. Students are learning the best methods for collecting and arranging data using tables and tally marks and constructing graphs accordingly. Within the statistics and probability unit of work, students will identify the range, mean, mode and median from different data sets and learn to identify these elements. Students are looking at chance and probability and learning how to recognise these as fractions, decimals and on probability scales. They are using samples to predict probability and construct tree diagrams. Students will also play a number of games to experiment chance and probability experiences themselves. 

Investigations: Students will take part in a 6-week Investigation Rotations. 2 weeks of 6 lessons (three per week) will be dedicated to Government, Indonesian and Information Technology coding. Students will visit each of the other Year 6 teachers for these lessons.

Travel Smart on Fridays

Results for week 6 of Travel Smart are:

Whole school total was 41%

Golden Shoe winners: 

• Junior - J3 with 50%
• Middle - M19 with 50%
• Senior - S15 with 71%

A big thank you to Penny for supporting this initiative.