Around the School

"The standard you walk past is the standard you accept." 

- Lieutenant General David Morrison (OA)

Welcome back for Term 2. I hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday with family and friends and used the beautiful weather to get away or simply indulge in having a pleasant time at home. 

The children have returned to school eager about their learning and the other extracurricular activities that the school has on offer during another busy and exciting term. The staff are enthusiastically looking forward to these new and valuable learning experiences that will take place throughout the term. 

It was great to conclude last term with our Easter Hat Parade and Easter Raffle. It was fantastic to see the awesome array of hats and an absolute pleasure to share this as a school community. A huge thank you to everyone involved who contributed to the success of these wonderful events. It was greatly appreciated by the staff and students at St Joseph's, hopefully, there will be more of these opportunities available as we move forward this year. 

As mentioned last term the staff  will continue their work on the 'Living Well, Learning Well' Framework to enhance the learning and well-being of our students. This term we will also continue the MaST Project in Stage 1 and are very excited about Stage 2 taking up the offer to be a part of this Armidale Diocesan Mathematics Initiative. Thank you to our staff for embracing this opportunity,  we are so lucky to have such dedicated professionals at St Joseph’s. Please see the information below to assist your child at home.

Stage 1 - Position 

Here are some fun ways to teach your kids positional language in a way they will remember.

What is Positional Language?

Positional language words refer to where things are positioned or where they appear in relation to other things. We also call these “prepositions,” and you may have memorised a list of these words at some point in school. Teaching your kids this positional vocabulary through games and activities will help them grasp the concepts and give them some early mathematics and geography skills. See position words flashcards or Position words.

Stage 2 - 2D Space

The main way a parent can add to the experience of tessellating shapes is asking gentle questions along the way. Prompts such as "I notice that you're making a pattern. What can you tell me about your pattern?" are helpful in getting children to describe their thinking. Tessellating tiles come with a deep mathematical structure. Kids notice that structure through their play. There's not really much more needed in order for children to have a productive experience playing with them. Some 2D language - circle, triangle, quadrilateral, parallelogram, rectangle, rhombus, square, trapezium, kite, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, symmetry.

Have a wonderful week!

Greg O'Toole