On Wednesday, we welcomed Vinh to 2EV. He is a new student in our school. He has moved here all the way from Vietnam and is doing a wonderful job, as he learns a new language and a new way of schooling.
During Writer’s Workshop we continued to learn the difference between questions and statements, learning how to recognise them when reading and learning how to write our own. This will assist us in becoming strong sentence writers which will add value to our book writing in Writer’s Workshop.
In Maths we started to dive into learning about shapes. First we started off by discovering what we all already know about shapes. We used pop sticks to create as many different shapes as we could think of and recorded next to them what we know about them.
This week we had the SEDA Collage Soccer Clinic visit. Year 12 students taught us soccer games and soccer skills. The children had lots of fun!
To end our exciting, busy week we had our Book Week 2023, dress up day! Everyone went to an amazing effort to dress up.
Wondering what we have been up to?
Well during Maths lessons we have continued to sharpen our skills in counting money and recognising money.
Items around the room had prices put on them, and the children walked around the room and took photos of the items they wished to ‘purchase’. They then calculated the total amount of money they would need to purchase all of the items of their choice.
During Writer’s Workshop we have been trying to create ‘Legendary’ standard books! Legendary standard books are place in the Legendary display folder on our ‘Bump it Up’ wall.
Our ‘Bump it Up Wall’ clearly shows us what a ‘good’ standard, ‘great’ standard, ‘awesome’ standard, and ‘Legendary’ standard book looks like, that way we can create books and know what kind of a grade we might receive. A Legendary standard book is an A graded book.
We had a look at Mantaj’s soccer book which was place in the Legendary display.
Lisa Burman came to visit us too! She is an expert in Writer’s Workshop, Reader’s Workshop and Word Study. We were very fortunate to have her come and teach us word study lesson where we focused on regonising the ‘g’ sound and investigated how we can use this knowledge to help us become better word scientists and spellers.
We have been focusing on building our writing stamina too! We do ‘quick writes’ where we choose a topic, any topic at all and we write only about that topic, everything we can think of. A 15 minute timer is set and we have to write without talking, without stopping for the whole time.
We have been learning about maps, learning how to find places on maps, learning how to follow maps to get from one place to another, and learning how to give directions on how to reach a destination.
We have been learning about the seven continents and how they are located on a map of the world.
We also completed a study on one of the continents of our choice.
Welcome back families!
We have been busy little workers getting back into the swing of things since the two week break.
During Writer’s Workshop, we have continued to work on our books and talk about the structure of a narrative. We have been analysing the text we read to work out what is happening in the beginning of the story, the middle of the story and in the end. We have also been checking our text to see if we can identify the who, the what, and the where in the story, as well as discussing how different stages and parts of stories make us feel particular ways.
We have been working on becoming better readers too. We have been learning how to identify when our brain needs quick micro breaks, what to do when our brain needs these breaks and how to get back into our reading once the break is over, all in a quick way, which causes little disruption. The children have had paper and other tools on their desk with their books, to turn to during the micro breaks. This helps us become concentrated readers with great reading stamina.
During Word study we have started looking at the long ‘a’ sound. We have learnt how to make the sound, we have identified the sound and written words with the long ‘a’ sound in them. We have also discovered that the long ‘a’ sound can be written with a few different letter combinations, such as ‘a_e’, ‘ai’, ‘a’ and ‘ay’.
We read the book, ‘The Snail and the Whale’, which helped us make these discoveries.
During Maths we have been learning about Australian money, we have been identifying the different coins and discovering their value. We have been adding up different quantities of cents to make $1 and $2 and identifying all of the different combinations of coins we can use to make $1. We have found our 10 and 5 times tables very helpful for this.
During Art, we talked about warm colours and cool colours. We identified which colours are cool colours and which colours are warm colours and created this amazing art work to show our understanding of how these colours can be used effectively when creating art work.
We had some beautiful sunny days were we made the most of it and took the opportunity to get outside and burn off some energy. Four of the girls in 2EV, Aria, Anna P, Helena and Emilia wanted to practice their literacy skills during this time and decided to use their shadows and create four letter words with their arms, hands and bodies.
We also met our year 5/6 buddies! We interviewed our buddy to learn as much about them as possible.
Welcome to the final week of Term Two!
This week we had, Miss Lilly, a return student from Holy Family join us on her Year 10 work experience. The children enjoyed having her around to help them.
We continued to learn about measurement this week, learning how to measure length with a particular focus on learning how to use a ruler to measure in centimetres. Children practiced estimating the length of objects in centimetres, then measuring the length of objects in centimetres to check their estimation. Children also compared the length of objects, stating which object was longer or shorter and even worked out how many centimetres longer one object is than another. We also completed a colourful art piece which involved measuring lines and using rulers too.
In Religion, we also learnt about the four Gospels. The children learnt that the New Testament is made of four books, which are called the four Gospels, the Gospel of John, Mark, Matthew and Luke. They learnt that each book tells us about the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and each book is written in a different way. They learnt that while each book may tell the same story of Jesus each is quite different sometimes one adding more details or less details than another.
We read the story of Jesus Feeds Five Thousand, four times, each time from a different Gospel, we then discussed and talked about the similarities and differences between the four versions of the story.
After this discussion children drew the image they saw in their head while they were listening to the four different versions of Jesus Feeds Five Thousand, they then rewrote the story in their own way taking bits and pieces away from each of the four Gospels to rewrite the story.
We have had a wonderful Term filled with so much learning.
I hope that each of the children have a wonderful school holiday break and I am looking forward to seeing them all again next Term! I will not be at school on the first day of Term 3, as my youngest son is starting school and I wish to be there for this very important milestone in his life. I will see your children on Tuesday Week 1, Term 3. They will have a relief teacher on Monday of Week 1, Term 3.
Hi Families
This is a reminder about Thursday!
The children will be finishing school at 12:30pm.
The reason being that we have some cyber safety experts visiting the school and throughout the day students in grades 3 – 6 will be educated on cyber safety.
After this, once the children go home, the teachers will all head to the hall to be educated on cyber safety.
During the day I will make a point to readdress cyber safety with the year two students in 2EV. We have talked about it earlier in the year, but I will refresh their memories.
The children will only need to bring their Recess to school on Thursday, as there will be no lunch time break with school concluding at 12:30pm.
Our Library session will be on Friday this week as it would usually be on a Thursday. During this session they will have the opportunity to borrow books for the holidays.
In the evening there will be an opportunity for parents to be educated on cyber safely, we welcome you to attend this information session.
Please see the advertisement below.
Welcome to Week 8! I am sorry, I forgot to press post last week!
This week we celebrated National Refugee Day. The children learnt about the refugees, what it means to be a refugee and watched a clip of children sharing their experiences living without a home.
After, we talked about the kinds of things we would include in a bag if we were to donate a bag of goods to a refugee child without a home.
We created the the bag and items from paper, have a look…
This week we have continued to learn how to tell the time. We created a chart which helps us understand when AM and PM is and what kinds of activities we do at different times of the day. In addition to this we practiced, practiced, practiced reading the time over and over again, and writing the time in digital and analogue form.
It was Catholic Identity on Friday. The theme for this year’s Catholic Identity was kindness. Jesus was sent to Earth to show us how God intended this world to be. Jesus was a precious role model for us, and in Jesus’ acts he showed nothing but kindness.
Did you know that reading is super important for your child’s learning?
Children who read often have larger vocabularies, they can spell more words correctly, they are more creative when engaging in their own writing, they have great memories, they have improved general knowledge, reading comprehension and verbal fluency.
Reading for just 10 minutes a day exposes your child to more than 600,000 words in one year— that’s more than double the word exposure of a child who only reads for 5 minutes each day.
In 2EV we engage in 40 minutes of independent/silent reading every single day! Imagine how much word exposure that gives! As a teacher I value reading immensely and this is why I dedicate a whole lesson every single day, just for that!
We have three rules during Reader’s Workshop and three rules only…
1. Sit down unless you are getting a new book or unless you need to speak to the teacher.
2. READ – no pretend reading.
3. Zero talking.
Last week, we spent a lot of time learning about clocks and how to tell the time!
This is never an easy concept to teach and usually needs to be broken up into small steps.
First, we started basic, what does a analogue clock look like and how do you draw one correctly? We learn which numbers are on a clock, how many numbers, where to position the numbers and how to position them accurately, how many minute lines go between each number, how many hands the clock has and what they do.
After we worked all of that out, we had a go at drawing a clock together as a group and then we had a go at drawing our own clocks as accurately as we could.
The next step was to work out which space on the clock belonged to which hour. We worked that out as a group and then we had a go at colouring the correct hour’s space in the correct colour.
Once this was done we could start working out how to tell the time – o’clock, half past and quarter past.
This week we will continue practicing reading the time, learning about AM and PM and talking about the different things we do at different times of the day.
This week was also full of lots of other learning experiences too!
During Writer’s Workshop Tanish recreated his own version of one of his very favourite books. Have a look…
