Secondary 9/10 

Mathematics

The focus in maths has shifted to fractions and decimals with students exploring the difference between fractions of a whole item (eg an apple) and fractions of a collection (a bag of apples shared). The revision unit on time has been concluded with a focus on calendars and telling the time in five minute intervals.

English

In writing the students have just finished their exploration of poetry. The students enjoyed the creativity of composing poems of many types about topics which interested them. We are now revisiting "Narrative Writing "and recapping on the skills they developed with this text type earlier in the year.

In reading we are concluding our explicit focus on comprehension and reviewing the reading strategies we have explored across the year. We have introduced "Independent Reading" this term. This involves the whole class, including the teacher and aide, reading silently a text of their own choice. Once the students are able to sustain this independent reading, teachers will start conferring individually with students about the texts they are reading and the strategies they are practising.

Integrated

Classes have swapped their focus in Integrated Studies in term 4 to either" Electricity "or Changing State. SMV, SJG and SBF are now working on electricity and SCI, SSB and SKA are now exploring "Changing State".

Social Competencies

Our 9/10 team has recently finished up their learning about Drug Education. This week we started our Personal Learning unit in which we focus on our attitudes towards school and getting ready to be great learners next week. Students have all identified their strengths in multiple areas such as word smarts, number smarts, person smarts, planning smarts, music smarts and physical smarts. Meanwhile, our PreCAL team finished up Drug Ed by looking at ‘healthy foods’ and ‘only sometimes foods’ to reinforce the concept that everything we put into our body has an effect.

Some websites to visit at home:

DrinkWise: https://drinkwise.org.au/ (parents tab)

Drug and Alcohol information for parents: https://positivechoices.org.au/parents/

Courtney King

Social Competencies

Steam

The students have one week to go in their first STEAM group for the term, apart from the Special Effects group. Students have enjoyed exploring their first unit working together to create a solution for their design challenge.