IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

TarraWarra Museum of Art – TBC

Celebrating Book week – Friday 27th August

Grade 3/4 swimming program – Monday August 23rd – Friday August 27th

Grade 1/2 swimming program – Monday 30th August – September 3rd

Grade 5/6 Ski trip – Monday 30th August

Prep swimming program – Monday September 6th – Friday September 10th

Grade 5/6 Aussie sports expo – Postponed until Term 3 or 4 (Date to be confirmed)

This week in our remote learning art room we looked at landscapes and the way different artist use viewpoints to create interesting compositions. Students could choose from three different activities and like always, the artworks they produced were wonderful!

In one activity students had the opportunity to make paint from products found in their kitchens and use this paint to create a landscape of their own. Another option was to draw a landscape in oil pastel (or whatever materials they had at home), exploring perspective and warm and cool colours.

We also were lucky enough to have a bonus activity, which was the opportunity to participate in a community installation project shared with us by Bec Noble from Little Lady Blooms.

Thanks to all of our students who uploaded their work. It brings me such joy to see what you are creating and to have the opportunity to share it with the community.

Enjoy your weekend.

Vanessa Imberger

Art Teacher

Congratulations to the Preps for adjusting so well back into remote learning. It has been joy seeing your smiling faces and sharing all the incredible work you have been doing at home.

This week in Prep’s word of the week is ‘frog’. The sentence of the week is… ‘Come here and see an old frog.’

For reading we have been using Decodable Readers Australia to practise our reading strategies.

We have been writing about frogs, using the sentence starter, ‘I like…’ and playing with rhyming words.

We met Deon Gilbert our “froggy expert” to chat all things Corroboree Frogs! Thank you so much Deon for answering our questions!

In maths, we have been learning to skip count on a number line, using tens frames and making models solve maths problems.

Thank you for another fabulous week.

The Prep Team.

What champions you all are! So many smiling faces have greeted us in the morning check-ins and WOW…participation in live lessons this week has been wonderful. Once again, thank you to all the parents and caregivers for your ongoing support.

This week we have been working on the reading comprehension strategy Check For Understanding. Remember the check mark is available on last Tuesdays learning blog. We have seen many colourful checks online. Its not too late to make one to use as a book mark.

Thank you to those students who bravely shared their writing this week. Here are a couple of pieces from Harry and Alira. 😊

Until next week, stay safe and be kind to one another.

Well, here we are again, connecting through our computer screens in the world of remote learning. How amazing are our kids? They have, once again, seamlessly switched to learning from home and taken this latest lockdown in their stride. We hope that they look forward to our daily check-ins as much as we do. It’s a great chance to remain connected to each other, find out what people have been doing with their time at home and play a few fun games too.

In the learning this week, students have been practising their reading with fluency. You’ve probably heard your child reading aloud and recording it on a device, before listening back to themselves and setting goals as they seek to improve their flow and expression. Writing tasks have explored some different poetry formats, including diamante and bio poems, in addition to continuing to practise their skills through writing pieces of their own choice. We have some passionate writers in our grades and it has been fantastic to have children sharing their writing during our online writing sessions.

Warm ups in maths have been providing children with activities to practise their mental strategies (working out in their head without writing an equation) for multiplication, which is the important first step in learning the times tables. Multiplication learning no longer focuses on memorising the times tables, as many of us had to when we were in school, so these mental strategies are essential building blocks needed for future maths in Grade 5/6 and beyond.

For instance, the mental strategy for multiplying by 4 is the double-double strategy – double the number being multiplied by 4 and then double the answer (eg. 4 x 6 is calculated by doubling 6 to make 12 and then doubling 12 to make 24).

If your child already knows their times tables, their next step is to apply these strategies to larger 2 and 3-digit numbers, and working out the answers without writing an equation down. Each day on the blog you will find a poster with the strategies for the times tables, so happy multiplying!

We’re so proud of our 3/4 legends. They’re making the most of this tricky situation and completing some amazing learning along the way. Keep it up kids! We hope to have you back in the classroom really soon!

Hello to all our wonderful families!

We hope you are all coping well during this challenging moment, and have had some time to enjoy a little bit of quality time together. As always, we’ve been blown away by the strength and resilience shown by all of our exceptional Grade Five and Six students as they’ve once again found creative ways to adapt their learning into an remote environment. Well done to all of you, we are so very proud of your efforts.

This week, as part of our reading we have been looking at comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences between key characters in various pieces of writing to help students analyse the choices made by authors and how these impact both the story and their audience.

In addition to this, students have been utilising the writing process to create a piece of their choosing which enables them to demonstrate the new skills and knowledge they’ve been learning so far this term as they look for ways to creatively incorporate this into their writing. We’ve seen some incredible examples of students extending themselves to incorporate new ideas and approaches into their writing.

For maths, we have started examining the area of measurement, looking at how students use length to solve various sets of worded problems, whilst also tackling some challenging Mathletics tasks.

Finally, students have continued learning more about government and democracy in their inquiry unit by investigating concepts such as equality, power and the values which underpin Australian society.

Great job to all of our students on their efforts this week, we can’t wait to see you all back in the classroom!

Warm Regards

The Grade 5/6 Teaching Team