Apollo Community Report 

Newsletter Term 2 17th June

As we are drawing to the end of Term 2 we would like to acknowledge the hard work and the results that the students students of Apollo have achieved. We as teachers are proud of the effort and resilience that our students have shown in our Community and the Values that they continue to show. Semester 1 reports will be released in Week 9 and Parent Teacher Interviews will be organised for Week 2 of Term 3.

Reading

Throughout Term 2 students in Apollo have worked through different Reading Strategies to improve upon their Fluency and Comprehension. They have been working to understand the different features of a fiction and non-fiction text and evaluate and analyse comprehension. This last week students have been working on Critiquing a story and discussing as a whole class or in small groups what makes a story interesting to them. Students have completed Book Reviews on the fiction stories they have been reading where they rate it out of 5 stars and explain how the story makes them feel.

Writing

During Writing this Term students have completed Information Reports where they researched their favourite animal and completed subheadings that were appropriate to this topic. Students brainstormed, planned, drafted, revised, edited their Information Reports, using Epic Books and Kiddle to find appropriate information that was put into their own words. Students then completed another Information Report that was linked to their Inquiry Topic of “Can we harness the Sun’s energy?”. Students have moved onto Procedural Texts where they have to describe the equipment, materials and method of completing a task such as making a paper airplane, a recipe or an origami artwork.  

Maths

Students in Apollo have completed the topic of Measurement and Geometry this Term. They have worked on the properties of a shape such as the sides, faces and corners. We then moved onto telling Time, from O’clock to half past and building towards quarter to and quarter past and touching on 24 Hour Time. We encourage students to practise their time skills as it is a valuable skill in later life. Apollo students then worked on angles and their properties. Data is up next where students will be tallying a range of data. This data will then be displayed onto multiple graphs.

Inquiry

Apollo students have been working diligently on the Inquiry topic “Can we harness the Sun’s energy?” They discussed topics such as heat and how it is produced and their uses. The topic then moved onto how humans use the sun, discussing ideas such as solar power, heat, health and sustainable energy. Students displayed their understanding by completing an Information Report on the Sun.

SEL

Throughout this Term we discussed the strengths and weaknesses that we all have and how we can continue to improve upon our skills and decision making. Teachers at AHPS completed a Berry St Professional Development where we consolidated our understanding of how students learn and how to best improve upon our student’s readiness to learn. We have been using techniques such as ready to learn scale, brain breaks, morning routines and relationship building activities to get our students in the right frame of mind to learn.

Have an awesome holiday everyone and we look forward to seeing you back in Term 3!

Apollo Teachers