We have had a fabulous fortnight! 

• In English we are exploring retelling stories.  This week, we read Blossum Possum by Gina M. Newton and we loved re-telling the story using puppets! Students have become very engaged in character portrayal and depicting events in order in the stories we have read.  They have lots of ideas about how we can extend our retell using props, costumes and puppets. One of our most important focus areas during our book discussions is on the differences between and purposes of imaginative and informative texts.  

• We are encouraging all the students to share their knowledge and opinions about stories as this helps everyone to build their understandings.  To support your student to build their comprehension of stories you read together, you can ask them to predict what the story will be about and what might happen. After you read the story, you can ask them to tell you what actually happened.  Help them put events in order and ask why they think things happened the way the did.  Perhaps they might be able to think of a different way the story could have ended.  

• In Maths we are consolidating our knowledge of numbers.  Counting to forwards to 100 has been a real highlight this week.  We are also busy practicing counting forwards and backwards from 20, so if you can provide some additional opportunities at home, it would be really beneficial.  In statistics and probability, we have completed activities relating to data that involve collecting data and representing it at the same time. We encouraged the students to physically arrange themselves to answer a simple yes/no question, and we have used multiple ways to represent the information we collected. Using hands-on materials has allowed the students to fully engage and focus on making inferences from the information we collected.

• Swimming was just sensational this week and a big relief from the hot weather!