IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Important school dates to remember:

7/11-11/11 – Dental Van

11/11 – Curriculum day (Whole school)

15/11 – Ocean swim – Life Saving Victoria – 5/6

24/11 – ‘The Final Word’ G6 Cyber safety

25/11 – School assembly 2.30-3.30pm

1/12 – Elephant Ed – 5/6

7/12 – Grade 6 Graduation

8/12 – Elephant Ed – 5/6

8/12 – School Concert

12-14/12 – 5/6 Camp

14/12 – Gr 6 Big Day Out

16/12 – Christmas themed bake sale

16/12 – Grade 6 leavers assembly 2.30-3.30pm

20/12 – Last day of Term 4

Week 5 went by so quickly that we nearly missed it!

This week our classroom was jammed packed with learning and lots of laughter!

Our literacy space has been a crowd favourite this week. Across Reading and Writing we have been researching Australian endangered animals. Using the iPads we investigated key features, common threats and needs for survival of our chosen animal. Reading had us noticing key texts features such as headings, sub-headings, contents, tabs on websites and tables. Using our new knowledge that we researched during reading, we brainstormed key words specific to our endangered animal in Writing and then used these key words to form sentences.

The Preps are so passionate in their current learning and are committed to support endangered animals in their fight against extinction. Make sure you come along to our ‘Book Fair’ this coming Wednesday to purchase our best seller to help us on this journey!

‘Wheel’ was our word of the week in SMART Spelling. Our sentence, ‘Some of us have been looking at a big truck wheel’ is exactly what we did, we checked out the wheels of monster trucks, which the preps thought was “super cool!”.

Maths looked a little different this week! We revisited areas that we had previously explored so that we can check in on where our kiddos are sitting in their Maths learning. Number formation, connecting names, numerals, and value as well as collecting and interpreting data were the areas that we revisited.

Friendly reminders:

Wednesday 9^th November – Prep Book event!

Friday 11^th November – Curriculum Day

News from Prep:

It has been a great week. We have been writing about the endangered animals to get cash to help them survive like having more breeding programs. We all had to decide on an animal and then we got to use the iPad to look them up and write about them. We are turning our writing into a book. It was interesting. We found interesting facts.

Week 5 has been a short but fun week in Year ½ 🙂

Literacy 

In Reading, we have been learning about ‘Checking For Understanding’ and ‘Crosschecking’. Both reading strategies focus on reading with meaning and ensuring that we stop at a word/sentence if it ‘doesn’t look right, sound right or make sense’. Ask your child to teach you the arm actions that help us remember this sequence (it reminds us of the Macarena!).

In Writing, we’ve been hard at work on our Narrative writing unit. We recently completed a Writing Common Assessment Task and reflected on our progress and next steps. We each selected a Writing goal from the below list and are remembering to attend to this goal each time we write:

• Use a range of appropriate and effective punctuation (! ? ” ” ,).
• Use interesting and engaging word choice.
• Use a strong introduction (beginning), complication (middle/problem) and resolution (ending).

Next week in Literacy, we are learning to use and interpret punctuation to improve our fluency and expression, and to demonstrate our comprehension of the text. In Writing we are focussing on publishing our work on our new Chromebooks – we can’t wait!!!

Numeracy

In Maths, we are practising efficient addition strategies such as doubling (6+6), near-doubling (6+5), add 10, friends of 10/20 (6+4 or 16+4) and adding common numbers (e.g. 18+6 is easier to add when we think of it as 20+4). Efficient strategies such as these, assist us to be the best mathematicians we can be.

Next week in Maths, we are practising our efficient subtraction strategies such as take away/subtract 10, and bridging to 10 (e.g. 19-6 is easy to work out quickly when I think of it as 20-5).

Inquiry

Thank you to all of our students who remembered to complete their backyard safari map and bring it back to school. Many of you found the minibeast we are currently investigated, in your own garden!

In Inquiry this week, our Minibeast Unit has lead us to investigating snails!! We have looked at their body structure and features, where they live and what they eat. They are fascinating creatures and have many connections to the minibeast we explored last week, worms. Do you have snails at your house? Why not investigate them!

We hope you had a wonderful Cup Week and we look forward to an exciting Week 6! 

The Year 1/2 Team 🙂

This week our 3/4s completed their health and sexuality education unit as part of the Catching on Early program. It’s an important part of the curriculum and has unfortunately been something that hasn’t always been delivered in recent years due to pandemic disruptions.

On Thursday, students were broken into small groups by gender and year levels to learn the correct names of body parts, changes that occur through puberty, consent and how babies are made. All students learn about both male and female bodies and had the opportunity to ask questions anonymously through a question box.

These topics are a far cry from our usual learning, but we were blown away by the level of maturity students demonstrated. As you can imagine, some students were a little apprehensive at first but they settled into the subject matter comfortably and we were really pleased with the learning outcomes.

Well done 3/4s! Onward to Week 6!

As usual, it’s been a busy time in Grade 5/6 land. We’ve been digging deep into all learning areas, plus initiating scientific studies and some have begun transition sessions at their new high schools!

In literacy, we have been learning how to compare and contrast texts; fiction, non-fiction, characters, stories, writing style/author’s craft and authors themselves. It’s impressive to see how thoughtful and expressive the student responses are – a key skill we’ve been working on. In our writing session, we’ve been working through the five stages of writing to publish stories, complete with front covers and blurbs. We’ve been seeing the most creative stories, with inferential sentences, figurative language, interesting word choice to elaborate ideas and add detail, dialogue and even suspense – applying all that we have learnt up to now in this piece has been the goal.

In maths, the Order of Operations has been investigated, with students applying their growing knowledge around the four operations and exponents to solve complicated expressions using the correct process. It’s been wonderful to see students persevering, showing determination and pride towards their challenging tasks. We are currently working on chance and probability, describing the probability of events using fractions, decimals and percentages.

In Inquiry, we’ve selected our science experiment investigations and have been learning about scientific writing as a text type. We’ve also determined our control and variables for our cohort experiment – “How Does Soil Type Affect the Growth of Radishes” – the fastest growing crop we could find. We set the experiments up next week. We will be recording our observations, and 25 days later, we can test the nutrients in each crop.

Just a reminder to families, we have a number of events coming up in the calendar – including Surf Lifesaving, Cyber Safety and Elephant Ed (Health/Puberty). Keep an eye on Compass for notices.

Our Grade 5 students have been able to spend time with their buddies, who are nearly Grade 1 students.

We know both the nearly grade 1 students and our grade 5 students had a lot of fun with much needed laughter when they were able to play games together.

Dear parents/carers

The 2022 NAPLAN national results are published this week.

Of course, NAPLAN results are not everything. They focus on two particular aspects of learning – literacy and numeracy – not the full range of knowledge, skills and attributes that we seek to develop in our students.

While not everything, they are one important measure we can use to assess the progress of our school, and the learning of Victorian students relative to their peers across Australia.

While our key focus is on each of our individual students, you may also be interested in what the NAPLAN results show about Victorian schools overall.

The Department of Education and Training has analysed the results for Victoria, and found that Victorian students have achieved some of our highest results ever, maintaining our place as one of the highest performing jurisdictions, along with NSW and ACT.

For example, in 2022, Victorian Year 3 students achieved their best ever Reading results and were again the strongest readers in the country.

Indeed, Victorian students performed particularly strongly at the primary level, with Victoria ranked first or second on eight out of 10 NAPLAN assessments, including all five assessments at Year 3.

There was also pleasing evidence of improvement at the secondary level, with the 2022 cohort recording the equal highest proportion ever of Victorian Year 9 students achieving in the top two bands of Reading. Writing results also showed improvement across Years 5, 7 and 9 students.

I do want to take a moment to recognise these achievements and acknowledge the very hard work of not only the teachers and staff in our school but in all schools across Victoria, especially given the substantial challenges of the last two years.

That said, the department has identified areas where further work is needed. These priority areas for improvement are shared with other states and territories facing similar challenges, such as lifting numeracy results.

My comments on these overall results don’t change the fact that we will continue to work together with you to do all we can to ensure every one of our students have a strong sense of belonging and connection to our school and that we continue to help each one reach their full potential.

Thank you for all your support and all the work that you do to help us ensure that our school, and Victoria as a whole, is one of the best places for children to learn.

Yours sincerely

Nerae Preece