Thursday 31st October - Mission Day Stalls - Don't forget to bring your money.  All items 50c each.  

Thursday 14th November - The Annual Twilight Swimming Carnival - 4.00 - 8.00pm

Friday 22nd November - Starry Starry Night

Wednesday 27th November - Year 6 Graduation Dinner

Thursday 28th November - End of Year Mass

Friday 29th November - Last day of school

This term our attendance to date is 63%. 

In Literacy we have been writing information reports about the Saltwater Crocodile and the Great White Shark. The students will then have an opportunity to choose a familiar animal to write an information report independently. We have been revising the tricky words that the students have been learning. The tricky words will be coming home if you wish to practice them further. 

We will also begin to design our habitats for the chosen animal. It would be fantastic if anyone would be able to bring in empty tissue, shoe or similar size boxes. 

This term we will also be learning about the following units: 

HASS: Out and about on farms

Students explore Australian farms as places where people live. They are given an insight into ways Australian farmers are producing food and fire, for food, clothing and shelter

Visual Arts: Warm and Cool Colours 

Students will be able to identify warm and cool colours. They explore the arts and learn how artworks can represent the world and that they can make artworks to represent their ideas about the world. They share their artworks with peers.

Kind Regards

Miss Andrieka Knight

This term our attendance is 88% (we are aiming for 95%).  In Literacy, we have been learning ‘ch’ and ‘tch’ words. When the vowel is short and the ‘ch’ sound is after the vowel we use ‘tch’ (catch), when there is another sound between the vowel and the ‘ch’ sound we use ‘ch’ (lunch).  We have been learning to use high modal verbs and expand our vocabulary to persuade our readers. The students have been practising reading with expression and fluency. We have also been working on our writing stamina ready for Year Two!.  Our tricky words for next week are: laugh, people, every.

In Maths we have been learning about fractions and that ½ is 1 of two equal parts.  We are extending our learning to practise repeated addition and begin to use our number sense to discuss multiplication (3 groups of 5 bananas is 15).  We are applying our knowledge of fractions to time - half past 10 means the minute hand has travelled half-way around the clock face, a quarter to 2 means the minute hand as travelled ¾ of the way around the clock face.

We have been celebrating the month of Mary by learning the meaning behind the words in Hail Mary.  We can say the Hail Mary in English and in Auslan. We have been learning about the Annunciation and are fascinated with Gabriel the Angel, and the little donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem.  Little Donkey is the song Year 1 will be singing at Starry Starry Night, and each student will be invited to dress in costume of Jesus’ time. We will send more information home closer to Week 7.

What a wonderful term so far! Swimming is a hit on Friday’s and we are enjoying our Starry Starry night practices. 

We had a wonderful day on Friday putting our design ideas into action.  The students needed to be able to do the following when creating their raft;

1. Describe what you need to make to others
2. Chose appropriate materials based on their features and uses
3. Communicate design idea using a labelled drawing 
4. Communicate design idea using a 3D model
5. Evaluate how you did (photos coming soon)

The Year Two's will be making Origami crosses for our Mission Day item to sell on Thursday. We are decorating these with Aboriginal Symbols, just like Thancoupie decorated her pottery. These will be for sale for 50 cents.

This terms attendance is quite low with only 67% of students attending school in the green zone. Hopefully sickness is behind us now so we can wrap up our units and get to assessing student’s knowledge and understanding over the next few weeks ready for reports. 

It has been wonderful meeting with lots of you recently to discuss your child’s progress. If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch. 

Thank you!

What a fantastic start to the term we are having in Year 3. The students have been engaging with the Prayer of the Rosary with such commitment and reverence. We are learning how each of the mysteries are linked to the rosary and why they have been included. Also in Religion we are looking at the many faces and names of Jesus. It feels like the list could go on forever but what a man he was to gain so many titles.

In our writing lessons we are making great gains in improving our language features for our procedural texts. There has been a talented mix of vocabulary that the students didn’t think they could use to make procedural texts interesting.

Our Math lessons have been focused around fractions and some work on chance. Making predictions and then performing a monitored learning event has been insightful. The students are realising that sometimes our predictions are not always correct and there is no certainty in some events. When looking at maps, we are becoming very familiar with our continents and oceans as well as our Australian borders.

Our Science lessons about heat are starting to get ‘deeper surface level knowledge’ with us moving towards understanding the creation process of heat and how it can change.

With Daniel Morcombe Day it is important that our students understand the safe and unsafe actions and feelings that they might experience or be exposed to. The lessons around this has clarified what we need to do when we get in a situation we are not sure of.

With a lot of sickness around and some of us having time out for personal reasons, our attendance has dropped significantly. We only have 55% of our students attending 95% or more of the time this past fortnight. With only 5 weeks to go we need to make every day count. 

Firstly, I just want to thank all the families for making time to see me in the last fortnight and celebrate all the learning that has been happening in grade 4. It has been really valuable to use that time to reflect and acknowledge how far we have come since the start of the year. My door is always open if you want to discuss any concerns further.

We have moved on from studying multiplication to looking at multiples and finding the pattern in those multiples. We have had a few ‘aha’ lightbulb moments this week when we have understood the concept. We have been exploring this concept in small group rotations by playing games, working with the teacher and using Ipad apps to further our understandings.

Geography this term is about maps and locations of countries in relation to Australia. We will be exploring what the words country, continent, and other similar words mean. We will also be learning about the different weather and features of these places.

In writing, we have completed a quick unit on persuasive texts and are moving onto narrative texts this week. In this unit we will explore the features of narratives and the vocabulary that keeps us hooked in these books.

Our attendance is 67% of students are attending 95-100% of the time. Every day counts.

Wearing red for Daniel Morcombe this week.

We are well into the swing of our “Changing Landscapes” Integrated unit. So far we have looked at different types of landscapes in our lives and categorised them into environmental, cultural, economic and technological.  We discussed different aspects and events of early Australia and how this had an impact on the environment and growth of our country. We sorted many different topics into these 4 areas (e.g. farming, mining, population, pollution, land clearing, immigration) and are now exploring some issues like deforestation, global warming, nuclear waste, online shopping to name a few and how these impact us and our environment. This week the students will choose a topic that interests them, write an inquiry question about it and start researching their topic.  

In Maths we have continued to work on word problems about division and multiplication and what strategies to use to solve these. In Religion we have learnt what the Annunciation was, how Mary reacted to this and the significance of this event in the bible and Mary’s life.  We have enjoyed saying the Rosary and learning about the different Mysteries.

To complete our History unit the students worked really hard on a writing piece about the Eureka Stockade and the significance this had in Australia’s history. Our Science unit is all about Light and how this occurs, what effect light and how it is transmitted.

So lots of great work going on and interesting discussions with depth.  We have been talking about the PB4L and how this impacts and encourages making positive choices and also accepting consequences and being resilient. 

Keep working hard guys!

In Year 6 this term so far our attendance has been at 67%. We hope to be able to meet or exceed this figure throughout the remainder of the term as the students complete their primary schooling and prepare for high school. Over the next few weeks students will be consolidating their learning of the Year 6 curriculum and completing several assessment tasks which will be reflected in their final reports at the end of the year. It is therefore most important that all students make the effort to attend school every day.

On Wednesday in week 2 we spent the morning at Western Cape College, where we were welcomed by members of the Year 7 staff and school leadership. As well as a tour of the school, our students had the opportunity to experience what life in a Year 7 classroom will entail, and some of the special subjects that will be available, such as cooking, plastics and drama. The Transition program at Western Cape will continue with visits to the school in weeks 5, 6 and 7.

Fridays this term all students are having swimming lessons at the Weipa pool. Most of the Year 6 students are fairly confident swimmers, but Mrs Turner and her team are helping us to improve our skills as well as enjoying the opportunity to cool off. The school swimming carnival on Thursday 14 November will give us a chance to show what we have learnt. 

In the classroom we have continued to draw on the camp experience, especially in Technology and English. The students have been writing and preparing presentations about their activities at camp, some of which were presented at the week 3 assembly. At the camp, we spent some time learning about different types of prayer, including the Examen and the Rosary, and we have continued to explore these in our Religion lessons back at school.