Welcome back for Term 3!

We are all excited about the upcoming school concert to be held on Thursday 13th September at Bunjil Place.

Foundation and Grade 1 students have 4 songs each to perform plus a whole school song.

FOUNDATION

• The Lion Sleeps Tonight – The Lion King
• I’m On My Way – Brother Bear
• You’ve Got a Friend in Me – Toy Story
• Hi Ho – Snow White

GRADE 1

• Let It Go – Frozen
• Just Can’t Wait To Be King – The Lion King
• Walk Like a Dinosaur – Ice Age 3
• Life Is A Highway – Cars

WHOLE SCHOOL SONG

• We’re All In This Together – High School Musical

We are already enjoying learning our dances with Semra from The Footsteps Dance Company. These take place each Wednesday.

We all had a wonderful day at Maru Koala and Animal Park. During the information talk, the Rangers showed the children a stick insect, a lizard, a snake, a wallaby, a kangaroo and a koala. We learnt about the animals habitat, their diet and how they survive.

We had lunch together then we went around the pirate ship playing mini golf.

Next we had a tour of the park and looked at all the animals like the wombats, ponies, rabbits, dingoes, koalas and the Tawny Frog Mouth. The Ranger gave us some feed and we went to feed the kangaroos. We had a great day!

As part of our working with Berry Street, we have introduced Brain Breaks into our daily program. Recent research into learning has suggested that our brain requires frequent downtime for optimal learning. Brain breaks have been associated with improvement in children’s’ concentration and offering relief from stress. The most effective brain breaks incorporate some level of physical movement in order to stimulate neurological pathways.

During Brain Break time, students choose the following:

• Mindful colouring
• Block building
• Reading
• Yoga

Yoga has proved very popular with the children. Although the break only lasts for several minutes the children seem refreshed and ready to focus on new learning.

In Mathematics we have begun our unit on Shapes.

FOUNDATION

Simple 2D shapes

• Squares, Rectangles, Triangles, Circles
• Recognition
• Knowing their properties
• Knowing how to draw them

Simple 3D shapes

• Recognition of Cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones

GRADE 1

2D shapes

• Polygons
• Hexagon and Pentagon

3D shapes

• Features of 3D shapes – sides, corners and faces
• Prisms

Shape is now open on Mathletics.

Reading takes place each day in the Foundation/1 learning area starting at 9am. This term, students will continue with Read to Self time and reading their good fit books and practicing an allocated reading strategy from the CAFE reading framework.

Foundation Reading

• Students are working hard to read the Golden, Red and Blue Magic Words
• They are practicing to identify repetitive phrases in texts and look at the picture and the initial sound in a word to read new words
• Students will also begin writing a book response/report where they will find their favourite part of one of their good fit books and record and draw a response
• Students will be involved in small reading groups of 5-6 students where they will work with the teacher and be supported to read a text at their reading level (e.g. Level A, B, C etc)
• During our whole class reading time, students will be involved in shared reading where they will join in with a text from a large big book and learn reading strategies from the CAFE reading framework. Our big books are written by children’s author ‘Joy Cowley’

So far we have read – Dan the Flying Man, Danger and The Jigaree.

Grade 1 Reading

• Students are working hard to read the Second 200 and Third 300 Magic Words
• During whole class reading time, students are reading Information texts about Animals and Environments and Expanding their Vocabulary by learning the meaning of new and interesting words they find in the text
• Students are learning the Text Features of an Information Text and learning to read the labelled diagrams in the text
• In addition to read to self time, students are creating fact files of the animal they read about in the text
• Students will be involved in small reading groups of 5-6 students where they will work with the teacher and be supported to read a text at their reading level

The Junior Learning Community visited the Life Education van on Friday. Students enjoyed meeting Harold the giraffe puppet, who helped them to discuss how to be friends with others and the importance of safety.

Children have been working on their Harold activity books in class and these will soon be sent home for you to share together.

Grade 1’s have been learning about patterns we see in numbers. We have been looking at counting patterns such as:

• Counting by 2s
• Counting by 5s
• Counting by 10s

We have been using numbers ladders and number lines to help see and record number patterns.

In Mathematics, Foundation have been learning about Patterns. This includes:

• Copying a pattern
• Making a pattern using shapes, colours and numbers
• Continuing a pattern
• Finding the mistake in a pattern
• Finding the missing piece in the pattern

Pattern is now open on Mathletics to complete!

At the start of the year, a note went home regarding Mathletics.

Mathletics is an online Mathematics program and each student has a subscription to this program with their individual profile.

Your child also received a log in card which is stuck in the inside cover of their diary.

Mathletics Homework

Mathletics is part of the Homework Program and it is expected that students complete some activities on Mathletics at least once a week.

Not all Maths units/topics will be open on Mathletics however students are assigned certain activities to complete.

Please ensure that your child completes some activities each week on Mathletics.

Thank you Kindly.

Mrs. Thomson

Happy Easter to everyone and I hope you all had a lovely holiday break.

Welcome to Term 2! This term is 11 weeks long and a very thorough and engaging learning program has been designed by the Junior Learning Team. There is a significant amount of curriculum that will be taught therefore it is important that students attend school daily unless they are sick due to illness. Please remember to phone the office if your child is going to be away from school and a written note must be provided to the teacher upon your child’s return to school.

This Term is also a reporting term and all parents will be provided with their child’s mid year school report towards the end of the term. Parent Teacher Interviews will also take place.

All students have now settled into the new school year and so this term, we are encouraging all students to be independent especially in the mornings. This includes:

• Carrying their own school bags
• Entering the building by themselves when the doors open
• Putting their items away independently
• Handing any notices to teachers independently.

We look forward to an exciting and busy term ahead!

Mrs. Thomson