Peachester State School

It is hard to believe that the halfway point of Term 1 is almost here and we are looking at a very quick run towards Easter. Please take a moment over the week to acknowledge and celebrate the hard work of your family in making the start of this year a great year already.

Students can feel proud of the way in which they have engaged with learning, bringing their best every day and continually demonstrating our PSS Values. Our Prep students have settled in well to their new learning environment and are now certainly working out what life at ‘big school’ really is like.

As you will know, our drive in 2023 is all about reading - we are all readers at Peachester! Congratulations to several of our classes who are consistently reaching 100% of students reading every night. Our older students who are on Lexile, have read over 715,000 words - and this is just the Lexile books that have been borrowed. There are many other books that have been accessed too!

Issue 1 - Phonics

Research has shown that there are six key components that contribute to successful beginning reading. Because of the importance of these components, they have become known as the 'Big Six’: oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. In the early years of schooling, literacy lessons will incorporate the Big Six.

How does phonics contribute to reading success?

Phonics builds on phonological awareness. During phonics lessons at school, children learn to connect the sound or phoneme to the letter of the alphabet or group of letters that is used to represent it.

• Teach children to write their name. Use a capital letter at the beginning and lower case for the rest of the letters. Write it for them and let them trace it, copy it, make it from play dough or draw it in sand.
• Point out words and letters when reading together. ‘There’s the letter M, it says mmm for Mummy. Can you see the S that says sss for Sam?’
• Encourage children to find the letters in their name or the names of family members and in other places such as books, signs, product packaging and shop windows.
• Point out different fonts, different ways to write the same letter, when reading and in your local environment.

The Prep/One class have had a very busy few weeks. We were sad to see some of our friends move to the new Year 1 and 2 class however we are looking forward to having visits and doing activities with them.

In English we are looking at the purpose of story books. Imaginative stories are for entertainment and enjoyment. Different stories do this in a variety of ways. Our class has been looking at the different stories we read and deciding  why we like them and what aspects of the story make them enjoyable. The students also will look at the characters and events in the story and choose their favourite parts. So far we recommend - “Where is the Green Sheep” and “The Very Cranky Bear” as we have really enjoyed these stories. As part of our show and tell this term students will bring in their favourite book from home and tell the class what it is about the book they enjoy.

Our Show and Tell roster for the term has been sent home. Each child has a set day and there is a particular topic for each week. Please help your child to organise their show and tell and think about what they would like to say. Show and tell is a great opportunity for the students to develop their oral language skills and they love sharing things from home with the class. 

Year 1 /2 enjoyed settling into their knew class this week.

We read a story called Gary. Here is our re tell of the story.

Gary

Gary was a pigeon who could not fly. He kept a book of maps and tickets because he liked adventures.

One day he leaned over too far and fell into the travel basket and got taken to the city. All the other birds flew home BUT Gary could not fly.

Gary was very smart and looked in his book and found a map that showed him the same symbols as he saw on the maps in his book. He followed the maps and got home by catching the train, tram, boat and bus.

Year 2/3 have been enjoying Science this term, observing our class mealworms as they grow and change. Did you know that the mealworm is not actually a worm?

In English, we are learning to identify the Orientation, Complication and Resolution in a narrative. Later this term students will be writing their own narrative about a familiar animal character. Students have been really engaged during writing time and are learning to create fantastic descriptive sentences to show the setting.

‘The vines dangled and tangled in the dark, gloomy forest’.

-Maddie

This week, students learnt about some of the dreaming stories from our local area. We listened to the Dreaming stories about Tibrogargan and Coonowrin. We then incorporated this knowledge into our science conversation about living versus non-living.

Students then created their own artistic representations of the mountains.

I would like to thank families for their commitment to reading this term. We have had a fantastic start to the year. So far, we have had two days of 100% signed reading folders. The students are very excited to reach their goal of 5 days of 100%. We are hoping to reach this goal early next week.

On Wednesday this week, reading folders were not changed as Miss Rose was not at work. It was fantastic to see that students had remembered to read a home book instead and parents signed it off.

This week we officially recognised our Captains in our badge presentation ceremony. It was a lovely morning with some very proud grown up smiles as they pinned the badges on their children. We all then enjoyed the delicious cake.

We also spent time with our Prep/1 buddies and enjoyed some reading Friday afternoon. We are all keen to spend time with them again next week.

We have a busy couple of weeks coming up. Next week we have our first excursion on Thursday, the GRIP Leadership day at Bokarina. Then on Friday we have our first interschool sports day playing Softball at Glasshouse. We are looking forward to updating you all on how we go.

Please call at Admin for further details or email: admin@peachesterss.eq.edu.au or peachesterpandc@gmail.com

VOLUNTEER POSITIONS VACANT

Executive Committee:

- President

- Vice President

- Treasurer

- Secretary

www.pandcsqld.com.au

Other positions:

- General Committee members

- Fundraising Coordinator

- Book Club Officer

- Tuckshop Convenor (1 x morning/week)

- Uniform shop assistant

We have had feedback that pumpkins aren't ready yet for judging, so we are postponing the judging until Mid March.  So you still have time to grow those LARGEST, PRETTIEST, or WEIRDEST pumpkins.  We are asking people who want to register their pumpkin to complete some basic details on the Registration Form on the noticeboard under admin.  This way we can keep you updated on exact details of when pumpkins are due for judging.  If your pumpkin is ready now and you want to eat it (or afraid rats will get to it) please email (peachesterpandc@gmail.com) and we can organise a photo and measure.  Otherwise, keep those ready pumpkins in a cool/dark area away from rats!

Keep those pumpkins growing team Peachester.