Classroom connections
We hope that by showcasing the learning from each year level in this section of our newsletter, we give you, our HEPS community insight into the amazing things that happen in our classrooms on a regular basis. Please enjoy a snapshot of our wonderful learning from the last fortnight.
Foundation
In Foundation...It was great to reconnect with each other after the school holidays! We played ‘school holiday bingo’ to see what our classmates had been up to in the school holidays. We also completed a few teamwork activities, practising our collaboration skills. In Literacy, students have been learning that ‘ai’, ‘ay’ and ‘a_e’ all make the long 'a' sound in words. We also have been looking at punctuation and trying to use punctuation such as full stops, exclamation marks and commas in our writing. We have also been busy practising our decoding skills to read words! Students have been exploring place value in maths and have used some hands-on materials to discover what the tens and ones columns mean. They have worked hard to identify the ‘value’ of a number, depending on what ‘place’ it is in.
Level 1
1EJ
What an amazing start to Term 3 it has been for our Level 1 students!
Numeracy
Throughout our first week of term, students have been learning about place value. We have been playing mystery number games by using clues about the different place value columns and ensuring that each column only has one digit.
We have also been learning about 3-D shapes. Students went on a nature walk to see what shapes they could see around the school grounds. They have been creating shapes with playdough and learning about how many faces, edges and vertices, shapes have as well as sorting everyday objects into the different types of 3-D shapes.
Reading
In reading we have begun the term with making text-to-world connections. We have been reading lots of books that have different world events in them such as pollution and floods. Students have demonstrated a strong understanding on how we can connect the events in a book to those that are happening around the world.
Jolly Phonics
Our focus for our Jolly Phonics sound this week was /wh/. We always start off with a whole class brainstorm where we think of as many words that have our focus sound as we can. This week, students brainstormed their words inside a whale’s spout of water. Students can then create their spelling words using sensory play items such as salt and rainbow rice trays, playdough, letter stamps, magnetic letters and stencils.
Writing
In writing this term, students have been learning all about poems with the theme of Winter. We started by thinking of as many words as we could that relate to Winter which will helps us when creating poems throughout the next few weeks. Our first poem that we have started writing are acrostic poems. The Level 1 team can’t wait to see what amazing poems the students create!
Level 2
It has been so lovely to see students return to school enthusiastically after a well-deserved mid-year break. Students have enjoyed sharing their holiday adventures with the class and have used their holidays to inspire their first writing project for the term – a sentence acrostic all about their chosen holiday event!
2MY is privileged to be joined by one of HEPS international students for the next 6 weeks. Students have been enjoying getting to know Felix, playing tag with him in the yard and showing him how school is conducted here in Australia. This week, Felix spoilt the class with wrist balloons as a gift. Thanks Felix!
Literacy
Level 2 students have begun learning about poetry this week, with acrostic poetry being our first poetic adventure. The coming weeks will see us exploring cinquain, alliterative, adjective, and free verse genres of poetry. Students enjoyed using their holidays as inspiration for their Seed, before drafting, editing, revising and publishing their poems.
Numeracy
Level 2 students have been investigating their multiplicative thinking this week by exploring arrays. Students have been experimenting with various strategies to calculate the total of their array including skip counting, repeated addition and cementing their known fact. They have been exploring how to ‘pull apart’ arrays in different ways.
COMING UP IN LEVEL 2:
READING: Inferring, analysing, maintaining fluency and solving words.
WRITING: Cinquain, alliteration and adjective poetry.
NUMERACY: Multiplication and Division
INQUIRY: Light - natural. vs man made & prisms, mirrors and rainbows
Level 3
Welcome back to Term 3! We are so excited to see all of the children back in the classrooms and we are looking forward to a productive term of learning.
Inquiry
This term our Inquiry Unit is ‘Forces and Functions’ and we will be investigating how things work in the world around us. There will be lots of experimenting and designing happening in Level 3.
Maths
In Maths, the Level 3 students will be learning about multiplication and division. It’s really important that the students practise their times tables consistently throughout the year, either by reciting them outloud or by using an app or playing games.
Literacy
We are learning all about synthesising for the first couple of weeks this term. Synthesising is when we grow our knowledge by adding new information to what we already know about a topic. We have been learning about forces this week in reading, particularly what forces racing cars need. This knowledge will help the students to write explanation texts on different physics topics for the first half of Term 3.
Friendology
We will be focusing on Friendology this term in Level 3, with a strong emphasis on what ‘Friendship Fires’ are, how to deal with them and that it’s ok if our friendships change. If you want to find out more about Friendology please visit: https://urstrong.com/
Finally, here are some photos of our amazing inquiry projects from last term. The students did a fantastic job of researching and creating a poster on an early explorer.
Level 4
Welcome to a new term. Term 3 promises to be filled with fun and learning for all.
It has been great to welcome our students back into class. It was certainly a big break for many of our students with beach, interstate and overseas holidays, movies and birthdays, sleepovers and sleep ins! It is always lovely to hear the students sharing their stories and reconnecting. Some of our students spent time reconnecting by drawing classmate portraits and they are just too cute not to share.
Our students have been working hard with their poetry writing this week, in particular diamante poems. We have focused in particular on nouns, verbs and adjectives and the specific structure and features of this style of poetry. Enjoy some of the students poems below.
During Week 2 of term, we will have a visit from Downball Australia and all students will participate in a fun and energetic session and have the option to participate in a lunchtime round robin.
We look forward to continuing to share our learning journey with you all throughout the term.
Birthday
Exciting, joyful
Dancing, singing, laughing
Party bags, gifts, toys, food
Eating, opening, wrapping
Fun, cool
Day
By Diya
Puppies
Silly, wise
Running, playing, walking
Gimli, Corgi, Kelpie, German Shepard
Barking, digging, sniffing
Smart, wise
Puppies
By Kit
Friendship
Kind, loyal
Playing, helping, laughing
Elsie, Vienne, Zoe, Olivia
Skipping, caring, eating
Annoying, fun
Friend
By Parker
Puppies
Fluffy, cute
Jump, run, sleep
Toy, bone, kennel, bed
Lick, bite, bark
Energetic, excited,
Puppies
By Olivia
Rain
Wet, rainy
Dripping, raining, drizzling
Thunder, storm, puddles, cloudy
Dropping, falling, splashing
Gloomy, blue
Rainfall
By Madison
Rain
Wet, splashy
Falling, dripping, splashing
Rainforest, clouds, star, fire
Setting, rising, burning,
Shining, hot
Sun
By Josh
Level 5
Inquiry
‘The Journey of Discovery’ is beginning in 5CB!
Students are beginning to explore the complexity and scale of their world. They will apply scientific knowledge and understanding of scientific methods as they discuss new discoveries. Their journey has started by researching scientific discoveries that have changed our world!
Writing
Our writing focus is revisiting narratives. We have brainstormed the structure of narratives and we are exploring the language of science fiction stories. Students enjoyed creating their own synonym pic-collage to include a broader range of vocabulary in their narratives.
Reading
Students continue to identify the introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution of their good fit book. They have been learning about support characters and subplots that add interest and complexity to a book.
Maths
This week students have been learning about factors and multiples and are applying this knowledge to the lattice and area method multiplication strategy. They will consolidate these strategies to assist them with multi-step multiplication challenges and multiplying decimals.
Level 6
Maths
In Maths, Level 6 students have been exploring, investigating, and creating a new garden space and playground for HEPS. This real-life maths problem has enabled students to explore mathematical concepts involving measurement, geometry, and finance, as well as problem solving and landscape design principles and visual perspectives. Students have been working in groups or individually and have had to respond to a design brief that Mr Corso posed to the cohort last term. Students are required to submit their designs with a detailed annotated diagram of their proposed design, which includes costings, scaled diagrams and a covering letter. The Leadership Team (Mrs Elliott, Mr Corso and Mr Leonard) will be selecting 3 designs, that they will take to school council, that may be considered in the actual redevelopment of this space at HEPS.
Inquiry Expo – last week of Term 2
Last term, Level 6 students showcased their unit of study on Australian History via our Expo. Students created many different dioramas, posters, audio files, biographies and displays that helped to depict and explain the learning and understanding around a significant Australian event and person. We had many visitors from the HEPS community who were able to see for themselves the various dioramas that had been created and the highly creative designs from our Level 6 students. From the scenes of Gallipoli to the Victorian Gold Fields and Eureka Stockade, to the Blue Mountains, students were able to share the wonderful scenes that they had recreated. This Term, our focus shifts to Science – our Solar System, circuits, light, states of matter and the digital realm.
