Hello Parents/Guardians,

This week, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching and getting to know all of your wonderful children. As we continue our journey together throughout the rest of the school year, I’ve made a couple of adjustments to our routine.

1: Laptop Use Before School

I’ve discussed and emphasized to the students that laptops will no longer be allowed before school. I would like them to view these devices as learning tools while at school and instead encourage them to socialize away from their devices in the morning. Since the students are already keeping their laptops inside during recess and lunchtime, no further amendment is required there.

2: Dojo Points

To encourage and support learning and kindness, I have created Dojo points for our class. They will earn points throughout the day for various actions and work their way towards both individual and whole class prizes. Currently, their Dojo characters are in egg form, but in the next few weeks, they will hatch, and the students are rather excited about this change and incentive.

In addition to the above adjustments, I wanted to remind families that we have a fruit break every morning for students. During this time, we take a break from learning, get some fresh air, and consume fruit. This time is exclusively reserved for consuming fruit to assist with brain fuel.

Please let me know if you have any concerns or questions. I am happy to respond to emails or talk in person before or after school.

Kind regards,

Emma

Emma.hatch@holyfamily.catholic.edu.au

Dear Parents and Guardians,

I’m thrilled to present myself as Emma Hatch, taking on the 2EV teaching role during Elizabeth’s maternity leave. Over the past five weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching 5KF and immersing myself in the wonderful community here at Holy Family.

Fresh from teachers college last year, I come with plenty of enthusiasm and dedication for the teaching role. I eagerly anticipate the opportunity to nurture and guide your children through the teacher transition and remainder of the school year. Additionally, I am excited to forge strong connections with the families of 2EV students, as we collaborate to cultivate a safe, enriching, and vibrant learning environment for the year 2s.

Kind regards,

Emma

emma.hatch@holyfamily.catholic.edu.au

Maths

This week we looked at patterns, we started to explore what we already know about patterns before we learn more about them.

We also looked at problem solving using multiplication and place value.

We worked on the problem below…

Science

During Science we continued to look at mixtures, we investigated different mixtures we come across on a daily basis, what they are made up of and how we can find out what they are made up of.

Religion

During Religion we discussed how God wants us to do the right thing. We read a book about a boy who made many wrong choices. We explored his wrong doings and corrected them by recording what the right thing would be to do in those situations.

Health

During Health we discussed places and people who make us feel safe, we recorded what our safe places would sound like, look like and feel like, we then drew a picture of our ideal imaginary safe place.

Reader’s Workshop

During Reader’s Workshop we further investigated what we had been learning during Writer’s Workshop and recorded the beginning, middle and ending of our chosen narrative book.

Writer’s Workshop

During Writer’s Workshop this week we discovered what a setting is and how we can discover the settings in the books we read as well as writing about the setting in our own books. We discussed how a setting tells us the time and place of what is happening in our story, the words could tell us and sometimes the illustrations can give us the information we need about the setting of our story.

Science

This week we continued our investigation into mixtures.

We first revisited last weeks prediction about what certain ingredients would look like once mixed together.

We tested the experiment for ourselves and mixed the three separate mixtures together to test our predictions.

After we created a map about mixtures and investigated when we might use them, where we might find them, why we might make them and how they might feel or look.

Writer’s Workshop

This week we continued our author study into Nick Bland. We discussed text type, and discovered that he always follows a narrative structure when writing his books. We discussed how narratives always follow the same structure – a beginning – which tells us the who, what and where, the middle which always has some kind of a problem and the end where there is some conclusion made, the problem is either solved or not solved and the story ends.

We read ‘The Very Brave Bear’ and after we analysed what the beginning, middle and ending of the story was.

Religion

In Religion this week we talked about the three requirements God has of us….

To act justly, to show mercy and to walk humbly.

We discussed what the three meant and created presentations which show represented our understandings.

HASS

In HASS this week we had a look at how the Indigenous Peoples make stories. We talked about how they use symbols to represent words.

We then looked at many of their symbols and what they mean.

We watched an Indigenous Australian create a story using the symbols, she discussed why she chose to use each symbol and what her story meant.

The children then had a go themselves, writing words on the back of their symbol pictures to articulate their stories.

Word Study

In Word Study this week we continued to look at suffixes, particularly the suffix ‘ing’. We recapped on how last week we learnt that the word has a base and a suffix and we practiced separating the two. We also talked about how the base alone, (eg jump) has one meaning but when we had the suffix ‘ing’ and change the word to ‘jumping’ the meaning of the word changes.

This week we practiced turning the words into word sums, (eg. jump +ing = jumping) we then followed by turning our word into a sentence.

Mother’s Day Crafting

On Friday the children used their creativity to create a card for each and every one of their mothers. They were very engaged in this activity and all put in as much effort as they could for their mums.

Happy Mother’s Day Mums of 2EV. You are all doing an amazing job! Each and every child in our group is wonderful, and we all know that mums play a big role in creating these wonderful children.

I hope you all enjoyed receiving your gifts and cards from the children today.

Science

This week in Science we started a new topic! This Term we will be looking at mixtures.

We made three predictions about what we thought three separate lots of  substances would look like once they are mixed together.

Next week we will get to see for ourselves and see if our predictions were right.

Religion

In Religion we recapped on what we learnt last Term about Jesus.

We learnt about Jesus and the many kind things he did for others. We learnt that Jesus was a teacher, a teacher who showed us how to live as God intended us to.

He showed us how to be kind to one another, how to care for one another, how to love one another and how to include every one. Jesus never left anyone out. No one was better than anyone else.

We read a book about kindness, we then reflected on what acts of kindness look like.

The children were given agency in the way they presented this work. Some chose to write it out, some chose to make a book using paper or their laptop, some chose to make a poster, some used their laptops to photograph acts of kindness and some used their laptop to film themselves acting out acts of kindness.

Writer’s Workshop

For the first half of this Term we are doing an author study. The author we are studying is Nick Bland. We will be exploring his many different picture books and studying his crafting techniques, we plan to use them in our own writing.

This week we read The Very Cranky Bear. We focused on Nick Bland’s use of Big and Bold to exaggerate some of his words and add expression to his writing. We talked about how it is kind of similar to using an exclamation mark.

As with all Writer’s Workshop lessons children are given agency. They can write books about whatever they like and if they want to they can have a go at including some of the things they have learnt during the mini lesson.

Numeracy

This week we had a look at number lines. The children engaged in a series of number line challenges using their laptops. They had to fill in the missing numbers to a range of different types of number lines some which did not start at 0, some which included numbers in the 100s, and others that skip counted by 2, 5, 10 or sometimes 50.

Jazzabelle and Sebastian had a go at creating a number line and then had a go at filling in the missing numbers on the number lines.

HASS

In HASS we are learning about communication – different forms of communication and the most effective ways of communicating.

After discussing the many different forms of communication we know. The children were tasked with the job of creating a party invitation to their imaginary dream party. The children had to decide which method of communication would be most effective before creating their invite in that way. Some created an email, some created a card, others created a poster and some created a text message.