Term 2 Curriculum Newsletters
Prep
The Prep area is abuzz with excitement in preparation for our 100th Day of School! We are absolutely amazed by their progress and enthusiasm as learners as they proceed past the halfway point of their first year of school, and we can’t wait to continue this journey.
Literacy (Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening)
In Literacy this term, students will continue to develop their sound knowledge, letter formation and further expand their understanding of sentence structure. Students will analyse fragments (incomplete sentences) and complete sentences that begin with a capital letter, use appropriate finger spaces and punctuation such as full stops and question marks. We will continue our learning about how we can extend a simple sentence by adding adjectives, ‘when’ and ‘where’. We will also learn how to write compound and complex sentences using the conjunctions “because” and “but”. Handwriting of uppercase and lowercase letters will be practised daily to help with correct sizing and direction.
Students will learn to read decodable texts with growing fluency and automaticity by practising reading with their reading partners daily. They will also continue to expand their sound knowledge by building, writing and reading words with four and five sounds. They will learn how to read and write words with digraphs (two letters that represent one sound) such as ff, ch, sh, th and ng. We will read a range of rich picture books together, particularly focusing on wonderful Australian stories about our native animals, and build our comprehension skills through class discussions.
Mathematics - Skills (Counting and Comparing Collections & Measurement)
In Numeracy, students will continue to develop their number knowledge and skill in being able to count and compare collections of 20 or more objects. Through daily practise, we will revise handwriting of numerals and accurate pronunciation of two-digit numbers, particularly teen numbers, when counting forwards and backwards. We will build on our skills in interpreting and solving number stories and representing the solutions using concrete materials and addition and subtraction equations. Students will expand on their knowledge of different measurement areas such as height, length, mass and time and learn how to use the correct vocabulary to measure and compare these units.
Inquiry: It’s Alive!
For our Biology unit ‘It’s Alive!’, we will look at Australian animals and investigate some of the following questions: ‘How do we know if something is living or non-living?’, ‘What do living things need to survive?’ and ‘What are the common features of animals?’. We will conduct a number of experiments in class to investigate the needs of plants, animals and humans. Students will visit the Werribee Open Range Zoo in the last week of the term as our chosen excursion to complement all our learning about Australian animals.
We ask that you please continue to read with your child every night, practise their handwriting and counting forwards and backwards to 20 and beyond. Please also make sure that your child brings their charged iPad to school every day.
As always, please keep checking Compass and Seesaw for important information throughout the term.
Thank you for your support,
The Prep Team
Grade 1
In Literacy, students will work on further developing their knowledge of spelling patterns and Polysyllabic Words, (please refer to the Term 3 Extended Code, Scope & Sequence hand out). This term our reading focus will be on non-fiction texts. Students will be exploring the features and vocabulary of the genre while gaining an understanding of our inquiry unit. As writers, students will practise completing a sentence when provided with ‘but’, ‘because’ and ‘so’ sentence stems. Students will identify and define adverbs and match them to common verbs. We will be creating informative reports, with a focus on descriptive vocabulary. Students will work on further developing their editing skills, such as checking for correct spelling and punctuation.
In Numeracy, students will further reinforce mathematical concepts through daily review sessions. Students will write numbers and number bonds to 100 by partitioning tens and ones. We will represent numbers to 100 using base ten blocks and use efficient strategies to solve addition and subtraction word problems. Students will choose suitable questions and collect data using tally marks. We will work on creating a pictograph from a tally. Students will investigate how to use informal units to measure and compare the length of two or more objects. We will revise the concepts of time, using o’clock and half past terminology.
Our Inquiry unit is ‘School Safari.’ Students will explore and learn to care for living things in our school environment. They will identify and describe the external features of small animals and how their features help them to move, feed and protect themselves. Students will learn how different habitats meet the needs of living things.
Grade 2/3
The 2/3s are diving deeply into their Term 3 Inquiry topic, Waterworks, by investigating the use of water at home, at school, in the community and around the world. We will learn about the water cycle, and the impact that humans have on the environment through waste and pollution. How can we conserve this precious resource, water? That’s the big question the 2/3s will try to answer this term, and into the future.
Please check the Kitchen Garden roster provided by Trish. If you can come along and help out with your child’s Garden session we would be most appreciative, and no doubt Trish will have some water-saving tips for us all!
Literacy sessions this term will focus on reading and writing informative and persuasive texts, related to our Inquiry topic. Students will develop their understanding of the texts they read by answering comprehension questions, and summarising the main idea and important information. We will continue using the Sounds Write program to learn and review letter sounds and spellings, to assist with decoding and writing. Students will focus on adding variety and interest to their writing by including a range of sentence types, including compound and complex.
Book Week will be held in Week 9; look out for information about this special event on Compass, closer to the date. (You may like to start thinking about costume ideas for our much-anticipated dress up day!)
This term the 2/3s will consolidate their ability to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems using a range of strategies, e.g. diagrams, split, vertical, knowledge of counting patterns and number facts. They will investigate fractions of shapes and collections (1/2, 1/4, 1/3, 1/5, 1/10). We will use formal units to measure length (millimetres, centimetres, metres) and mass (grams, kilograms), and further hands-on activities will involve creating models of 3D objects such as prisms and pyramids.
Finally, an exciting event for the Grade 2s to look forward to is our upcoming school camp, to be held at the end of this term on Wednesday 13th and Thursday 14th of September (two days/one night). Stay tuned for notes and information about our visit to the Angahook Holiday Camp.
Grade 4/5
Beneath our feet
This term, the grade 4/5’s will be focusing on a inquiry unit titled, ‘Beneath Our Feet.’ We will start the unit by looking at soils, rocks and landscapes and how they change over time. Students will be provided with hands on experiences in describing rocks and how to choose rocks for a purpose based on their features. We will investigate how landscapes change over time and investigate Australian features such as Uluru. Later in the unit we will be examining natural disasters such as avalanches, raging rivers, tsunamis and even disasters which have been in the media lately including earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
In Literacy, our work will be heavily based on our Inquiry unit. In Reading we will start by reading about rocks, soils and minerals and then looking at the structure of the Earth through a number of different resources. As last term, we will be taking notes using the Cornell note taking system. A large focus will be on topic specific words such as mantle, igneous and organic. While having the students explain these words in their own terminology. We will discuss how authors and illustrators make these factual books absorbing and hold the readers interests by using various techniques. In Writing, we will mainly concentrate on organising and writing ‘Explanation Texts.’ Topics will include explaining earthquakes, erosion and other natural disasters. The literary focus will be putting our understandings in our own words, using meaningful illustrations and developing multiple paragraph outlines.
In Mathematics this term, at the start of sessions, students will be participating in daily reviews of all maths topics. We follow a different system of implementing Maths where rather than doing a mathematics aspect once a year, we now revisit these skills regularly throughout the year so that the concepts can be embedded into our memories. Some of the main focus areas for this term will include fractions, where we will convert between improper fractions and mixed numbers, while adding, subtracting and multiplying these fractions also. We will work on interpreting data displayed in tables, implementing multiplication strategies and constructing 3D shapes from their nets.
Grade 6
This term in Inquiry, we are beginning a new unit on Civics and Citizenship. We will be exploring the concept of democracy, investigating Australia’s systems of government, and learning about what it means to be an Australian citizen. The 6s will also be preparing for our camp to Canberra, which will be in the second week of Term 4. The students will have the opportunity to make connections to what they have learned in the classroom to the experiences they have on camp.
In Reading, we will be analysing biographies and persuasive texts. We will look at the structures and features of biographies, as well as the language features of persuasive texts. The students will have the opportunity to investigate the ways authors use language and other literary devices to persuade their audiences. Our focus in Writing will coincide with Reading, and the students will be producing several biographical texts as well as persuasive texts. The students will incorporate new skills and literary techniques in a range of texts, with the aim to both inform and persuade their readers. Towards the end of term, the students will also be participating in a class debate, where they put their new persuasive skills to the test in a group setting.
In Maths, the students are continuing to develop their understanding of number and place value, as well as exploring the areas of measurement, geometry, probability and statistics. We will cover topics ranging from fractions, decimals and percentages, time, angles, chance and probability, and interpreting a variety of graphs and data sets in our statistics topics. The students will also continue to participate in daily reviews in daily reviews of mathematics topics from all areas, including number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability.