Dear Parents / Guardians

Our story for the week was Little Red Riding Hood. Students made puppets to retell the story to each other. We have been focusing on segmenting and blending consonant, vowel, consonant (cvc) words e.g. cat. 

One of the activities that we do in class is called a lucky dip where students are able to pull an item out of the bag and then tell us what the item is and what it starts with. If the item is a hat students even have a go at sounding the word out and writing it down; e.g /h/  /a/ /t/ and writing the beginning middle and end sound down. 

In maths we are continuing with the calendar in the morning and the concept of how long events take to do. We are also counting forwards to 20 and beyond and backwards from 20. Students are answering simple questions to collect information and make simple inferences. 

In Science we have been looking at waterproof and sun smart hats and students designed and made their own hats. They used different materials to make their hat sunsmart and waterproof. 

This week we created artworks modelling the Biology of snails, ants and worms.  We used scientific vocabulary to label the bodies and their habitat. Next week we will be building upon this through oral story telling and writing the facts we know in an information report.  We celebrated St Joseph’s Feast Day and discussed Joseph as a father, carpenter and husband. We learned about the story of Easter, commencing with Palm Sunday, Last Supper, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  We role played the stations of the cross and will be performing Station 13 and Station 14 in the whole school video. In Maths, we learned that one half is one of two equal parts. We also learned about the features of 2D and 3D shapes.  We can use mathematical vocabulary such as faces, sides, vertices and angles to describe our shapes and sort them into groups. Next week we will be learning how to gather useful data and represent this in picture graphs and bar graphs. We will introduce analysing graphs to make meaning.

Whilst our attendance was 88% this fortnight, I would like to thank parents for keeping students home when they are unwell.  Please help us to keep our school community and wider community safe by keeping students home if they have cold or flu like symptoms, or are generally feeling unwell.

Year 2 have been busy over the past two weeks!

Each morning in the literacy block students are participation in spelling, writing and reading activities.  Our freedom machine narratives are almost ready for publishing and students are starting to think of new ideas tro write their own stories.  We have focused heavily on the structure of a narrative including orientation, problem/complication and solution.

In maths over the past two weeks students haave been gathering data from their peers to create tables using tally marks. They have enjoyed learning new things about their peers including things they have in common.  The students are now turning the information they have gathered into a range of different graphs including picture, coloumn and bar graphs.

Our classroom is looking bright and colourful with new self-portraits on display.  Can all families please send in a photo of either a family member or pet that the srudents can ust to create their final art piece for the term.  This photo/picture will need to ve at school by Wednesday 25 March.  

All parents have been sent the email link to sign up to their child's Seesaw account.  Please ensure that only immediate family members have access to this account.  The students are still learning how to complete activities in Seesaw and we will endeavour to have more posts in the coming weeks and terms.

We have been continuing our unit on measurement to look at mass and volume. We learnt new words like ‘hefting’ which is an informal way of measuring by juggling an object in each hand to figure out which object is heavier. We checked these measurements of mass by using scales and consolidated learning though independent tasks. We moved on to begin looking at volume where students predicted how much water would fit in various containers and then checked their measurements by filling the containers outside.

In the grade three classroom, we have been focusing on working independently and showing initiative. This is in the Australian Curriculum as a general capability which means a skill that students learn across subject areas. We have been discussing what it means to work independently - to show resilience and give it a red hot go by ourselves before asking for help. We also discussed what it means to show initiative which is to move on to another activity when the task set by the teacher is completed. This gives students a sense of agency in their learning to be able to choose what activity they would like to do after their task is completed without interrupting the teacher. The activities they choose have been negotiated with the teacher to ensure it is complimenting their learning time and not disrupting the learning of other students.

On Friday we celebrated Harmony Day in our classrooms with some activities that allowed us to reflect on the different cultures and beliefs that make up our world. It was amazing to see the diversity that can be found even in the one activities like making the masks -  the students took the idea and ran with it in different and wonderful directions.

Our attendance for the last fortnight has steadily been declining but in the current climate, that is to be expected. Last week in particular, we had 12 students at school everyday with many students at home recovering from cold and flus. Please continue to let the office know if your child is sick.

Just a quick reminder to sign in to Seesaw if you have not already. Please check your emails for the sign in link which is to be used for immediate family members only. With the absence of parent teacher interviews, it can be one way families can keep up to date of the learning in the classroom. For any questions or concerns you have about your child, please email me. Children might sometimes only confide in family members and I could be unaware of the issue.

Design and Technologies

On Friday the students in Year Four created their Marble Run Track to explore force and motion. The goal was to maximise friction and move the marble down the board as slowly as possible, using provided supplies. The students worked together collaboratively and experimented with their tracks to come up with solutions to improve surface speed.  

It was a fantastic day and we all had a great time constructing and displaying our Marble Run Tracks.

Maths

In Number and Algebra Year 4 are continuing to practise recalling multiplication facts up to 10 × 10 and related division facts. The students are developing efficient mental and written strategies and use appropriate digital technologies for multiplication and for division where there is no remainder

In Statistics and Probability the students are selecting and trialling methods for data collection, including survey questions and recording sheets. They are constructing suitable data displays from given or collected data Include tables, column graphs and picture graphs   where one picture can represent many data values.

Reminders

Auslan is on Monday 

Library Day is Wednesday – please ensure Library bag is packed on that day

Physical Education is Thursday – please wear Sports Uniform on that day

Health is on Friday

Our email addresses are mturner@cns.catholic.edu.au and sulanas@cns.catholic.edu.au

we will endeavour to return your email within 24 hours.

Kind regards,

Ms U and Ms T.

As we move into the tail end of the term students are beginning to finalise their learning in many units of work from a variety of key learning areas. This doesn’t mean we will never look at these topics or concepts again but rather that we will continue to touch on them throughout the year, while making room for new learning. Often the concepts learned during Math and English are stepping stones to the next concept we will cover. 

With that being said, we have been learning about length and perimeter and will now be focusing on area. The students have gained a solid understanding of how to calculate perimeters of a variety of shapes and are able to represent these in a number of ways using measurements of millimetres, centimetres, metres and even kilometres. Our understanding of numbers and the place value system have allowed us to make accurate calculations and show the measurements. 

In our writing lessons, students have been practicing their editing skills, with a focus on punctuation and spelling. We know that when we write well our readers want to continue reading our work. The past week or so has also shown students work with a partner to create a narrative based on a picture stimulus. The partnerships have had to agree on all elements of their narratives. They soon learned that two minds are better than one and used this to their advantage. We have had stories where characters are flying over vast snow covered land, to characters needing to defeat abominable snow men, to even little puppies getting stuck in snow covered holes and needing rescuing. The Year 5 student’s imaginations are creative and this is going to be a great benefit to them when they go into completing a written assessment next week. 

Our Religion lessons have been all about the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit as well as Project Compassion. The students have been responding to our Caritas videos each week using an online platform called Jamboard. This allows students to write a response and add it to a class communal noticeboard. Students have acknowledged the needs Caritas have offered to people all over East Asia and Australia and what challenges these people face on a daily basis in their countries. We have tied in our understanding of place from Geography lessons and a locating the mentioned countries on a world map. Each week, the students are getting better at navigating their way around the online platforms and are even at the point where they are helping each other and could teach others within the school. 

On Friday we celebrated Harmony Day and National Day Against Bullying. The students started their day off with a simple prayer and reflection where students were asked to light a candle to remember those who have experienced bullying in the past. We also added anti-bullying messages and displayed these in our room. Linking Random Acts of Kindness and treating others kindly is always a wonderful way to start a day where we celebrated harmony and peace. 

Attendance this past fortnight has dropped a little due to illness. It is nice to see parents and students staying at home to rest when they are unwell. With these uncertain times we are encouraged that if we are sick to stay at home and to continue good hygiene to prevent the spread of germs. Our students are getting better at part taking in good handwashing and even have the singing voices to go along with it. Just ask them about the many songs we have sung these past few days. 

With all the uncertainty and students absent over the last few weeks, it has been a challenge for everyone to stay focused, however I am proud of the way the students have handled the situation. 

This week the students present their Science presentation on a volcano to another class, they are looking forward to that. In Religion, we have been exploring rituals and symbols of Judaism and the importance of Judaism in the bible. Our Project Compassion investigations were also interesting to see how other people in the world live and the challenges they have overcome, with the support of Caritas.  Our Maths learning has been very rigorous, Integers were a challenge, but everyone GOT IT by the end of the week.  Last week we did 3D shape investigations and this week we are learning about Complex Angles (like complementary, supplementary, corresponding, vertically opposite) and how to measure them with a protractor.  We are enjoying learning about the different types of Government in Civics and will be constructing our own Triarama in class this week.  Great discussions in class and I am impressed in the mature way the students are dealing with the Coronavirus event.

Take care everyone!