SPOTLIGHT
Spotlight on Year 1
InitiaLit is well established in Year 1 and the children are showing success as they master the phonics, reading and spelling skills. The children have been taking part in rotational groups as part of our morning Literacy Block. They participate in Guided Reading lessons with the staff and members of the Intervention Team and work through independent tasks.
Fr Chris has visited us in the last week and they have enjoyed being active in our sports lessons.
Year 3 Spotlight
Year 3 have successfully finished NAPLAN. We've had a few busy weeks and the students have been focused and dedicated to these tests, they've displayed resilience and come out smiling. We celebrated the end of these tests with popcorn and a movie afternoon last week. They deserve to be congratulated for conquering NAPLAN like pros!
In Art, the students have been learning about the french artist Henri Matisse. We’ve studied and replaced his styles of art ... from Fauvism, Still life and finally, collage. We’ve spoken with french accents and listened to french music as we've replicated this traditional art over the term. Ask the students about this French artist and what style of french art they liked replicating the most.
In Maths, there's been lots of hard work on fractions, all our work has related back to foods like fractions of pizzas, chocolate blocks and bags of lollies. Feel free to practise these new fraction skills at home by sharing 1/10 of your treats with the kids.
MaST update...
MaST Project in Kindergarten
Along with their many other amazing adventures at their new school, Kindergarten students have been making some amazing discoveries in Mathematics as part of the MaST project.
Students have been given a variety of opportunities to represent and manipulate 2D shapes in different orientations. This grounding in concrete material will give students a sound foundation of exactly what a shape is, and allows for many oral language opportunities.
At the end of Week 6, Kindergarten completed some wonderful ‘Shape Pizza’s’ to demonstrate their knowledge of the different shapes they had encountered during this unit.
LANGUAGE LIFT
What is LanguageLift?
LanguageLift is a small group oral language program for children in Kindergarten to Year 2 who need support in developing their oral language skills. Oral language involves skills in both understanding and speaking. These skills are important because they support the development of reading and writing. LanguageLift has been developed by MultiLit and is based on the findings of high-quality research from speech pathology and education.
Why has my child been selected?
At St Nicholas, LanguageLift will run in Kindergarten and will commence in Term 2. Children are identified for LanguageLift through a screening test/checklist and a short oral language assessment provided with the program. Students whose test results indicate they would benefit from additional support in the development of their oral language skills, will be selected for the program.
What does participation in LanguageLift involve?
Mrs Bevan will work with small groups of children for 30–40 minutes a day, four days a week, using the carefully structured LanguageLift lessons and materials. Each lesson includes activities that will help students to: • understand and use new words • speak in complete and grammatically correct sentences • listen to, understand and tell stories.
How effective is LanguageLift?
LanguageLift is based on the current evidence for how children most effectively learn to understand and use oral language. Previous trials of LanguageLift in schools showed that children who participated in the program made significant improvements with their vocabulary, grammar and story skills. According to their teachers, the children who participated also significantly improved in using their language skills in everyday activities in the classroom and playground.
If your child has been identified for this program, you will be contacted via email before the end of Term One. We are excited to be able to offer this program at St Nicholas and look forward to supporting our students with their oral language development.