Pre-School Team:
So far this term we have been focusing on developing children’s oral language skills and extending their vocabularies by introducing them to topic-related tier 2 and 3 words. We have been intentionally teaching this through socio-dramatic play especially in the home corner area which we have transformed from ‘Dinosaur World’ to an airport. This has allowed children to use topic-related, tier 2 and 3 words such as fossils, archaeologist, paleontologist, excavation, turbulence, destination, etc. It has also allowed children to participate in reciprocal shared conversations that demonstrated at least 5 rounds of conversational turn-taking and provided children with the opportunity to role play different professions and take on different perspectives.
We are making good progress with our quality improvement goals. In regards to children’s numeracy skills, 50% of children can recognize numerals from 0-10 as a minimum, 97% of children are able to rote count from 0-10 as a minimum using the correct verbal sequence and 80% of children are able to count collections to 10 using one-to-one correspondence and the correct verbal sequence. In regards to children’s oral language skills, 58% of children are able to produce complex sentences and 62% of children are able to use pronouns and prepositions of time and place correctly and are also able to recount at least 2 features of an event without prompts in a well-sequenced and logical manner.
This term we would like to welcome Cherylynne Catanzariti to the Preschool team. Cherylynne will be working with us on Thursdays and comes to us with a wealth of knowledge and experience. She has worked as an educator and an Aboriginal Community Educational Officer for the past 25 years and is also, a Kaurna language and culture teacher.
Reception – Catherine Room 1 & Tahnee/Nicole Room 2:
Welcome back everyone! Room 1 and 2 are so happy to reunite with our students and families for another term of learning.
In English, we have continued building our phonological awareness with daily Heggerty and Sound Inquiry sessions. Our knowledge and understanding of letter-sound relationships has grown significantly. We are beginning to transfer this phonemic awareness into our writing lessons to spell unfamiliar words. We have had a focus on our handwriting and sentence construction - using self-editing skills to check for capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. The students have been creating recounts to describe past events from their weekends and recess time. In Modelled Reading, we have been identifying nouns and verbs and describing the main characters from the text.
In Maths, we have been consolidating our understanding of Number. We have had a range of hands-on learning experiences to engage the children in making connections between numbers, numerals and quantity. The students have shown their abilities in partitioning and different ways we can make a number, counting on and sequencing forwards from 1 and any starting point, subitising, conserving an amount and trusting the count. Our students have been expanding our key vocabulary using “one more” and “one less” in context to help us sequence and develop our reasoning. We have also looked at shapes and geometry and are beginning to explore patterns. We have noticed a real difference in our numeral formation from Term 1 to now! With Tierney Kennedy, we hope for our lesson sequence to help build retention and recalling previous learning in our students.
For Health, we are continuing our Protective Behaviours lessons as a part of the Child Protection Curriculum. We have focused on identifying and deepen our understanding of feelings. These lessons are reiterated in real world contexts throughout our school day as they present themselves in class during our learning or social situations out in the yard. We continue to engage in rich discussions about healthy eating while we share brain break, recess and lunch together.
In Science, we have started growing beans in a bag as we focus on Things That Grow. We are excited to see them sprout and keep a diary as we observe the changes.
We are so proud of all the growth and achievement we have seen already this year from our students.
Rec / Year 1 – Anita Room 3 & Christina Room 4:
Welcome back to Term 2, it is great to see everyone back at school for an exciting term of learning! Well done to all the children in room 3 and 4 for settling back in and starting the term persisting with their learning and striving for accuracy. This term we have been continuing to learn our sounds through SSP. We have been focusing on a sound each day and exploring the different ways that sound is represented. We have been using the speech sounds in words and the sound clouds to edit words we write to improve our spelling.
During modelled reading we have been focusing on the text type Recount. We have been exploring the text structure and features of texts. Our grammar focus has been time connectives and verbs. We will also be focusing on pronouns, simple/compound sentences and punctuation. We have been writing recounts with a focus on the orientation of the text. Our success criteria is to include when, who and where. We are now exploring the sequence of events in our recounts.
In maths, we have been using number strategies to solve worded problems about skip counting patterns. We have been using arrays to solve multiplication. We are currently exploring the duration and sequence of time within daily tasks. We have continued gaining automaticity with numbers to 100 and are continuing to investigate partitioning numbers into tens and ones.
Year 2 – Mary and Marie Room 5 & Morgan Room 6:
Welcome to Term 2! We are delighted to have the students back and are looking forward to a busy and exciting term ahead. This term we are lucky enough to be joined by Miss Morgan in Room 6. In English, the students are continuing to enjoy their daily involvement in SSP / Spelling activities and they are becoming skilled at applying new strategies in everyday tasks. As part of homework practice students have been given individualised decoding sheets to strengthen their phonics.
We are continuing with modelled and guided reading with a focus on fluency. In writing, we have started our units on narrative and procedure, whilst reviewing our work on recounts and descriptions from Term 1.
In Maths the students have been enthusiastic about learning different aspects of fractions, money, time and recognising the number processes. As a whole staff we have been exploring with Tierney Kennedy and working on interleaving which involves covering all topics to build retention at their level.
This term the students are enjoying fine motor morning on Thursdays. This involves hands on activities where students can develop skills in painting, cutting, threading, playdough manipulation, puzzles and mosaic tiles. This is extremely important as it develops children’s handwriting skills, as research shows the correlation between handwriting automaticity and general writing fluency.
In Health lessons we are focussing on Protective Behaviours as a part of the Child Protection Curriculum. We would like to congratulate the students on all their hard work so far this term, keep up the great work!
Year 2/3 - Georgina Room 9/ Year 3 - Sabrina Room 10 / Year 3/4 – Belinda Room 12:
Student in rooms 9, 10 and 12 have settled back into term 2 learning with persistence and positivity. In writing we have continued with our exposition texts, exploring structure, evaluative language, connectives and modal verbs. We have enjoyed exploring books and investigating sequencing, identifying detail, cause and effect, comparing and contrasting and finding the main idea. Students are continuing to work on identifying phonemes in words and being able to represent these using appropriate graphemes.
In Numeracy our focus has been problem solving in number. We have also been working hard to increase the resilience and confidence of our students and their ability to take risks and experiment with their understanding and knowledge. The year 3 students should be very proud of how they approach their very first NAPLAN experience.
Year 5/6 – Rachael Room 7 & Elliana Room 8:
This term in Year 5 and Year 6 we have been working hard preparing for NAPLAN. In Literacy this term we are focusing on Explanation Texts and Procedural Texts in writing, with a grammar focus on Verb Groups and Noun Groups in Modelled Reading. We are continuing to develop our skills as balance readers throughout Guided Reading and are looking forward to starting our book study on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Throughout our book study, we are sharpening our reading comprehension skills, fostering of love of reading quality classical fiction and creating lifelong readers.
In Numeracy, we are incorporating parts of Tierney Kennedy’s work and continuing our focus on foundational number skills. Students are enjoying a problem-solving task each Monday, that is connected to the learning of the week.
This term our focus in HASS is Civics and Citizenship, looking at institutions of democracy and in Science, in the classroom students are learning about states of matter.
Our Year 6s are excited to of received their Year 6 Jumpers.
Year 4/5 – Andrew Room 13 & Cathy Room 14:
In term 1, students in room 13 and room 14 engaged in lots of positive and rich learning. We had a number of external learning experiences: Kids Helpline to discuss internet safety, Port Adelaide Football Club for STEM and healthy lifestyles, Be Active Education where students practiced and developed their teamwork, and we concluded the term with our annual sports day which was a whole school celebration.
In literacy, we focused on the genres of narrative and exposition, with a key focus on exploring the purpose, structure and language features of each text and giving students the opportunity to compose these texts through the planning, constructing and editing process. Reading involved introducing guided and modelled reading.
In numeracy we focused on number around place value and multiplicative thinking. We looked at the properties of number and did sufficient work around multiplication and division written and mental strategies.
In HASS we looked at Indigenous culture, Australia and first contacts. In science we looked at the Primary Connections unit of Among the Gumtrees.
Students have settled well into term 2 and we are looking forward to our Zoo Snooze excursion in week 8.
Junior Primary / Primary Art – Sue Graham:
This term students will participate in a block of Drama and Visual Arts Studies.
In Drama, students study certain dramatic elements. We are concentrating this term on voice, character and movement.
Our youngest students will engage in play-based activities where they will use props, costumes and music to assume different characters. Older students will look at how voice and powerful oration is used to persuade people. They will write short speeches and using basic oration techniques.
In visual Arts, students are creating artworks based on the Art elements of line and shape.
Our Choir will continue to rehearse each week. The Festival of Music students will participate in a master class to be conducted by a senior choir trainer from the Festival of Music Organization.
In our Kitchen Garden we are experimenting with creating mini glass houses to raise seedling. Students will learn how to create optimum conditions for germinating seeds in the cold weather.
They will also plant cold weather vegetables to supply the kitchen part of our program.
Primary Science – James Yates/ JP Science – Marie Lionello:
In Science this term we are continuing our work within the Physical Science strand, using Primary Connections units.
JP students are investigating light and sound and how they travel and are used for many different purposes. Students have really enjoyed learning about shadows.
Middle Primary Students have been learning about heat and are currently investigating how different objects and materials can be heat conductors or heat insulators. Students were really engaged when looking for different heat sources around school and then identifying which ones were heat producers.
Upper Primary classes have been exploring light sources, with a focus on light being used for different purposes and how light travels from a source to an object to help us see. We are now currently investigating transparent, translucent and opaque materials.
Junior Primary / Primary Language- Thi Hien Danh:
This term, students are being exposed to the Vietnamese cultural story of “How the tiger got it stripes.” Students across all year levels will be watching a short video clip about this story. Then they will sequence this story with the provided pictures. Students in Reception will orally retell the story and students from year 1 to year 6 will rewrite the story.
In conjunction to this task, students from year 3-6 will have the opportunity to be working in small groups with me to read short paragraphs weekly about the different characters from the story written in Vietnamese.
Reception to year 2 students will be focusing on roll play in making and design masks for each character from the story.
PE – James Yates
We have had an extremely busy start to the term in PE. Primary classes have started a unit of work on Basketball in which we are focusing on several key fundamental movement skills. These include throwing, catching, bouncing, dodging, running and jumping. We are also focusing on sport specific skills including shooting, passing, dribbling, attacking, defending, game knowledge (rules) and teamwork.
In years 5&6 students have also been busy at lunchtimes trying out for the SAPSASA teams we have on offer (netball, soccer & football). The teams are in the process of being finalised and will be announced at the end of week 3. I have been very impressed with the number of students giving new sports a go!
We also had 18 students participate in the recent SAPSASA Cross Country Carnival, in which students had a fantastic day! Student results to be announced soon.
