I apologise for the delay. I hope you all had a wonderful long weekend.

During Literacy we have continued focusing on making our books and ensuring that we include the writing techniques we have been noticing authors include in their published books. During Word Study we have continued studying different high frequency words, learning how to read them, how to spell them and how to use them to create sentences.

Last week we had a couple of new students start – Shimmer and Jack. They are a bit different from the rest of the students in the class with the main point of difference being that they are Fan Tail Goldfish.

The children were very excited to meet our two new class pets. They decided on their names and researched how to care for pet goldfish before creating information books about how to care for goldfish.

MISSION WEEK/RECONCILIATION WEEK

This week has been so much fun as we have prepared for Mission Day.

On Mission Day all of the classes in the school sell items which they have made to the children within the school. The money which is spent goes to a number of charities to support children and families who are less fortunate than us.

The children in the school work hard to make a range of different items to sell, as a group we decided to make play dough to sell. The children in 2EV had so much fun making this play dough.

You wouldn’t believe how many learning opportunities popped up, just from making play dough.

We started the week by learning how to write a procedure and how to create ‘how to’ books. Of course we did this by working together to write a procedure for how to make play dough. This covered majority of our literacy learning for the week.

This lead us into our maths learning for the week, as the children needed to understand fractions and measurement in order to measure the ingredients accurately. Division also came back into the picture, as the children had to work out how to best divide their play dough up for selling. This covered our maths learning for the week.

This week was not just Mission Week, it was also Reconciliation Week. National Reconciliation Week is intended to celebrate Indigenous history and culture in Australia and foster reconciliation discussion and activities.

We discussed the importance of  Reconciliation Week and also explored Indigenous culture. The children learnt how to create Indigenous symbols and use these symbols to create art work stories.

We also spend  some time creating persuasive posters for our play dough.

Have a look at the photos from this week… we captured so many!

Welcome families,

This week has been a busy week.

In mathematics we have taken a break from focusing on partitioning and place value and moved onto learning about division.

For the first time today we talked about what division is and practiced dividing numbers of objects between a certain amount of groups. We practiced as a class first and then we had a go at doing it on our own.

On Wednesday, it was National Simultaneous Story time and this year the book was titled ‘The Speedy Sloth’. As a school, along with most other schools and Kindergartens in Australia we read this book together on this day.

Yesterday we read a book called 13 words!

The author is very creative and introduced 13 words to her story, one by one and each time a new word was presented she had to think of her own way of adding it into her story.

After reading this book everyone in the class put pencil to paper and had a go at doing the same. I gave them one word at a time and they had no idea which words they would get, each time a gave a new word they had to think of a way to add it into their book.

Have a look at their creativity!

Today is Sorry Day.

On this day we remember the Indigenous Families and the Stolen Generations. Us as teachers, teach the children about the significance of Sorry Day and we teach them about the history of the Indigenous Peoples and the Stolen Generations.

Today we read, ‘Sorry Day’ and talked about how devastating this time would have been for the Indigenous People many years ago and the lasting trauma these events still cause for Indigenous families today.

The children then created presentations to show their understanding of Sorry Day.

During most lessons we listen to music. The genre changes depending on the mood for the lesson. Music helps the children focus. Have a look for yourself. All of the children are working so hard, they are very focused on their learning.

During Writer’s Workshop the children have continued to read like writers, noticing different techniques and skills in published books and applying them in their own books. Have a look at Anna D’s book. She has seen flips and cut outs used in published books and decided to use them in her own book.

Hi Families,

I am sorry you did not hear from me last week. I just wasn’t in the classroom. I was at work, but I was doing my own learning and finding ways of improving my practice, so that I can be a better teacher for your children.

Sadly, I missed out on our class Mass, but thankfully the teacher filling in for me took some photos of our three ‘super star’ readers.

Thank you, Matilda, Aria and Kevin.

This week we have been working hard in Maths, learning about Place Value. We have been practicing partitioning big numbers into their groups of hundreds, tens and units using blocks and also using a place value table.

In Science we have continued our investigations about water, water usage within the school, water access points within the school and where water comes from.

Today’s Friday assembly was a little different to our usual assembly arrangement. We met in the hall to sing the National Anthem, acknowledged the Kuana land we are on and engaged in whole school prayer, but after that the year 5/6 students split up and taught the other students in the school a lesson with a focus on outdoor learning.

Our class was taught by Mason and Zara in Year Five. Their lesson focused on using nature to learn. The children created portraits using materials from the environment, including dirt, leaves and sticks.

Have a look at what they created.

Welcome back to all of 2EV!

We hit the ground running here in 2EV. We have been straight back into it, learning all news things to start this Term off on the right foot.

In Maths we have been looking at place value. To start off we have been learning how to look at groups of ten and work out how many groups of tens there is within a number and how many ones or units are left over.

We started by looking at grouped numbers and calculating how may numbers we can see, from base ten blocks and unit blocks.

We then created place value ice creams.

Once we were used to the concept of tens and units using blocks we played a class game where we spun the wheel which generated a random two digit number. We sat in a circle with a mini white board each, and practiced placing the two digit numbers in their tens and units columns.

This week for Science we have been learning about water. We first explored what water looks like, feels like, sounds like and smells like. We explored this using the water in our water bottles and recording our observations. At the conclusion of the lesson we all came together and shared our observations, recording them on the large white board.

After this we researched the answers two four questions about water and recorded ourselves answering the questions. Have a look at what Tanvi and Anna D recorded…

Click on the links below to see Anna and Tanvi answer some of the questions about water.

Movie on 5-5-2023 at 2.14 pm

Movie on 5-5-2023 at 2.08 pm

Movie on 5-5-2023 at 2.28 pm

For Religion this week we had a look at God’s creation story and how everything came to be what it is. The children then recreated a digital version of the story, remembering the order in which God created each part of the world and everything in it.

During Writer’s Workshop the children have been learning how to read like a writer, and continuously search for ideas and tricks to use in their own writing.

I am looking forward to seeing what we learn in Week 2.

Enjoy your weekend.

Spider Plants Go Home

Hi Families,

After an exciting Term of looking after and caring for our spider plants it is time for us to move on and start learning about other things to do with Science, ecology and the environment.

As ecology is so special to me and also a very important part of what we do here at Holy Family we will continue learning about ecology, our Spider Plant chapter is, however, ready to close.

So, now what?

I know that not everyone is into caring for plants and some might say that they kill every plant just by looking at it, but I am hoping I have taught your children all they need to know about caring for their Spider Plants.

Here is some basic care information just in case they forget.

I recommend you re-pot the Spider Plant with fresh new soil as soon as you get a chance. They have little flying bugs living in the soil and this will help get rid of those. They are more annoying than anything else but if you want to keep the plant inside, I recommend re-potting into a slightly larger pot with all new soil. This can be done by, pushing the sides of the pot in to loosen the soil, then tip the pot onto its side, gently grab the plant and lightly pull and the whole plant and soil should come out. Carefully loosen the soil around the roots and allow as much soil to come away from the roots as possible, then give the roots a rinse under fresh water.

After this, all you need to do is fill the new pot almost half way with fresh soil, place the plant roots down into the soil, then pour some more soil around the plant to cover the roots. Last of all, give it a water.

The Spider Plant likes a well lit shady area, in indirect sunlight. It can live in the shade outdoors or by a window indoors (not a window that gets strong afternoon sun). They love the humidity of the bathroom if your bathroom has a window.

They only need water once every two weeks in winter and more often in summer. Wait until the top two inches of soil are dry before watering. Over watering can kill plants.

When you water it, take it off of its under tray, water it until water runs out of the bottom holes, allow the plant to sit until water stops dripping from the bottom, then place it back on its under tray. Never leave it to sit in a tray full of water.

If you choose to put it in a nice pot, make sure you leave it in a plastic nursery pot with drainage holes underneath and place it inside of the decorative pot. Most decorative pots do not have draining holes in the bottom and water draining is essential.

Happy plant caring!

This week was HOLY WEEK!

We started the week reading the story of Easter.

Esrom helped!

After, we focused on one part of the story, ‘Jesus washes his Disciples’ Feet’. We read about this in the Bible and had a good chat about the very important dialogue between Peter and Jesus.

Peter says, ‘You should not wash our feet, you are too important.’

Jesus replies, ‘No one is more important than anyone else. We are all equal. We are all  God’s children’.

After we recreated this reading from the Bible and used water colours to illustrate the story.

We used this art work to create a Holy Week presentation to present at our Holy Week Assemblies throughout the week. Have a look at our presentation below.

During Writer’s Workshop Aria has been creating a book all about her teacher, me.

Have a look…

More Writer’s Workshop

Have a look at Mantaj’s book about ‘a prison escape’.

Tanish started a book about Air Conditioners…

During Word Study we learnt how to write word sums, which show our thinking and spelling when we write words with a suffix. We first write the base plus the suffix and then the whole word.

Have a look at the photos for a better understanding…

Our Spider Plants are growing! Have a look at those lighter green leaves shooting out from the centre of the plant. We recorded these observations.

This week we also talk examined a healthy spider plant and an unheathy spider plant. We discussed what we could see which showed us that the plant was either healthy or unhealthy and we then discussed why the plant may be healthy or unhealthy, what has it been getting too much of or too little of?

Helena

Mantaj

Happy Easter to everyone! I hope you have all had a wonderful time with your families. The children enjoyed an Easter treat from me on Thursday afternoon.

This is a quick post for Week 9! I am sorry I missed it.

End of Term busyness has really kicked in!

During Word Study we have continued our investigations with suffixes. We had a look at the Suffix ‘ed’. We searched through many books and found as many words with the suffix, ‘ed’ on the end. This lesson was influenced by Anna D who discovered this suffix in her readers after we explored the suffix ‘er’ and ‘est’. Anna was able to recognise a different suffix while reading one day. She decided to start recording them each time she saw one, the words then became the basis of our next suffix lesson.

As word scientists we examined the words we found as a group and discussed what happens if a word already has an ‘e’ on the end, such as ‘smile’, do we add another ‘e’ when adding the suffix ‘ed’ or do we delete an ‘e’? We also spoke about a word like ‘worry’ and what happens to the ‘y’ when we add ‘ed’ to the end.

During Writer’s Workshop children have continued creating their books. Samar had a go at making a comic and Esrom decided to make an Information Book about the different planets. A few of the children have even started making books about me!

During Maths we continued learning our 2 times tables, and skip counting by 2. The children took photos of large groups of objects around the room and out on the balcony. They then put the photos onto their laptops and used the drawing tool to circle the groups of two and skip count by two to find out the total amount of the item.

We have been practicing discovering the plot of a story, this better helps us realise that we should have a clear direction for our stories when we write them too. We had a go at finishing this sentence after reading our books… ‘This book is about the time when…’

So much learning happened this week.

Let’s start on Monday… unfortunately I was absent but the children had a good day with Mr McCarthy who took them in to look at the Billabongs and showed them how to pick our vegetables from the vegetable garden and deliver them to the canteen.

After one day away I returned to work and received so many lovely messages and gifts from the children. Your children are incredibly sweet and kind.

During Writer’s Workshop the children have been creating many different books about many different things, one of those things happen to be ‘me’.

Have a look….

During Maths we have been learning how to count on when working on our addition problems. We have also been learning how to skip count by two!

Guess what! Our spider plants finally needed more water. This was their first watering since we planted them into soil. Have a look at the children in the photos below. They had control of the care of their Spider Plant. One by one they were given the moisture metre, which they used to test the moisture levels in their soil. They had to read the reading and decide if their plant needed water or not. If their plant required water (they all did) they had to fill up the watering tub and water their Spider Plant outside. This whole process was facilitated by Esrom another student in the class who has been taught how to do all of these processes earlier in the year, which means he was able to pass his knowledge on, help the other students and answer any questions they had.

This day was the best day!

I love Harmony Day, it is a day full of happiness and an incredible celebration of culture and inclusion.

We had a wonderful day and the children looked fantastic in their cultural dress and orange colours.

We watched a wonderful Harmony Day assembly performed by the other Year Two classes at Holy Family.

After that we spent the whole day creating art works, we painted and crafted, it was so much fun! We did all of this with the intention of creating a display in our classroom which represents our happiness together as many different cultures but all as one and all as the one who God created us to be. We are all children of God, no matter where we come from in the world! I will post a photo of the display tomorrow once we finish putting it together.

We also had a picnic lunch on the oval with all of the other children in the school.

Have a look at our photos.