Learning News

This week our wonderful teachers and students were able to showcase their learning when we had several people from the CSO and Quirindi School visit our school to look at our Annual Improvement Plan.

After meeting with the leaders, the visitors completed Learning Walks through our classrooms, observing our teachers and students in action, looking closely at our classroom wall displays and asking the students the 5 questions -

What are you learning? Why?
How are you going?
How do you know?
How can you improve?
Where can you go for help?

Our visitors were very impressed with our fabulous learning environments, calm classrooms and insightful responses from our students.

Congratulations to all of our students and staff for letting their light shine!

Kindergarten

This week, Kindergarten students have been reading the picture book, Pig the Pug by Aaron Blabey. We enjoyed having a giggle about the funny storyline and learned some new rhyming words like pig and wig. We worked hard to create both characters, Trevor and Pig, from the picturebook.

Miss Fraser

Year 1

In PDH, Year 1 students have been learning about different emotions. They have learnt that a person’s facial features and body language can tell us what someone is feeling. Then they explored how their actions and words can affect a person’s feelings. They had to complete a cause and effect chart to think about a scenario and then decide what emotion might happen after. Spectacular work Year 1! Miss Myers

Year 2/3

This week in Year 2/3 we have been continuing to build our understanding of recording information through our Listening Post activity. To successfully complete this task the students must watch a video based on a topic and then record any key facts that they have learnt. This week the students watched a video on Magpies and how we can live with them. Here are some of the amazing things we have learnt about the Australian Magpie.

Year 4

Creative Arts is a subject that Year 4 thoroughly enjoys. Over the past fortnight, Year 4 have been learning how to draw self-portraits. They have learnt about the importance of drawing the features of their faces lightly and being able to section their faces for correct facial feature placement. After the students had drawn their faces, they had to colour them in with either crayons or pencils. This provided the students with the opportunity to add some dimension and different texture to their fantastic self-portraits. Well Done.

Miss McDonald and Miss Maunder.

Year 5/6

Stage 3 have been exploring different types of forces and are beginning to recognise them in our everyday lives. We experimented with the force of push by making rockets! Students used small smartie containers, paper, sticky tape, water and alka-seltzer tablets to observe the push force in action. Students shared some ideas about what was happening inside their tube rocket to produce the thrust that launched it upwards and discussed ways in which we can modify the experiment eg. less water, more tablet and shaking the tube. The students were amazed with how far the rockets flew!

Numeracy News

There are many ways we can learn about numbers with our children at home. Go on a number hunt together and discover places where numbers are used such as:

a clock
television
computer keyboard
calendar
telephones
car licence plates

Counting the beats to your child’s favourite song and getting them to clap their hands or stamp their feet to the beat is a fun way to get your child counting.

Count with your child the number of buttons as you do up a cardigan or shirt.
Encourage your child to count the number of pegs used to hang out the washing.
Count the number of steps from the front door to the letterbox.
Count the number of eggs in a carton, and again after some have been removed.
Count the number of times you and your child can throw a ball to each other without dropping it.
Read and talk about stories and rhymes that use numbers.
Sing songs and nursery rhymes that include numbers such as Five Little Ducks and Baa Baa Black Sheep.
Have your child count as far as they are able to go and then encourage them to join you while you continue counting.

Kindergarten

In Kindergarten we have been learning all about numbers! Students have been focusing on numeral identification of numbers from 1-10. As part of our learning, we have been exploring how numerals can be represented using a collection of objects and drawings. We have had a great time getting to know ways of showing numbers. We have also been developing our ability to quickly recognise a collection of objects instantly. Wonderful work Kindergarten! -Miss Fraser

Year 1 Maths

Year 1 have been investigating even and odd numbers. They discovered that even numbers always have a ‘best friend’ so their rows are even, and odd numbers always have a part that is the ‘odd one out’ all by itself. Year 1 used Numicon (number) Shapes to make their number to see if it was even or odd. They realised that even numbers end in 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8 and odd numbers end in 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. Fantastic detective work Year 1! Miss Myers

Aisha Butcher investigating the number 15

Year 2/3

This week in Year 2/3, we have been learning about Two Dimensional Shapes. In particular we have been investigating a range of Quadrilaterals and Polygons. As a part of our learning we also used pattern block shapes to create a range of regular and irregular shapes. Here are some of our fantastic shape designs!

Mr Beaumont

Year 4

This week in Year 4, we have been learning about how to round numbers to the nearest 10, 100, 1000 and 10 000. The students have utilised their knowledge of place value to help them solve a variety of rounding questions, whilst also using the rhyme of ‘5 or more we raise the score, 4 or less we let it rest.’ Wonderful Work Year 4!

Miss McDonald and Miss Maunder.

Year 5/6

Stage 3 has been learning about the place value of decimals. After collaboratively creating a visual representation of the place value of the whole number (left of the decimal point) and decimal places (right of the decimal point), students created a number in their decimal place value chart, using a random number generator to give them the value of each digit. Students then identified the value of digits in a variety of numbers and represented this value using numbers and words. Amazing work Stage 3!

Miss Summerell & Miss Rasche

St Michael's Primary School, Manilla

'Let Your Light Shine'

Issue 3 · 10 Mar 2023

In this issue