To the families of 5/6 LF and 5/6 EP,

Today marks the end of another school year. The culmination of 4 terms of learning and what a 4 terms it has been!

This year was the first time in my 5 years of teaching that I have worked in a setting with ‘double’ classrooms. To be honest, at first I was unsure how I would find this experience or whether I would be able to build relationships with that many kids within a room, which is my passion and strength as a teacher.

I finish the year having felt that I achieved that! The group from 5/6 EP didn’t feel like the class next door and instead were just an extension of the students in my own class and how lucky I was to be able to work with such a bubbly, energetic, charismatic and sometimes sassy group of students.

To the students of 5/6 LF, I couldn’t have hoped for a better group of students to start my Holy Family journey alongside. There have been some interesting and no doubt tough conversations along the way. But I am hopeful that you loved the year, the class, the journey we experienced together and maybe even sometimes your teacher (haha). I hope that I have taught you as much as you have taught me, this year!

You will all be missed and I hope and look forward to seeing and hearing of your successes in the future. If you become famous, you know where to find me!

To the parents and caregivers, an enormous thank you! I know both Elia and myself have felt incredibly supported this year. You have backed us in with our decisions and the way we do things! Again, no doubt some fantastic and probably some tough conversations along the way. But everyone has had the best interest of the kids at the heart of what they’ve done and that is all any of us could hope for.

My personal teaching philosophy is that ‘kids don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.’ Both Elia and I have done our best to support the students across the year with this in mind. In the hope that we can enable them to be the best students and more importantly people that they can be within our care. Our goal was to encourage their personalities to shine rather than to squash them and I am hopeful that has been achieved across the year.

I wish you all the best for a merry Christmas and happy holidays with your loved ones.

Enjoy the break!

You will all be missed and I will see some of you next year.

All the best

Mr Flanigan

Hi families from 5/6 LF,

A quick reminder that tomorrow at 9 am is our assembly with our buddy class. The students have worked really hard and are looking forward to dancing and singing their hearts out on stage.

Please feel free to come along and support, if able!

kind regards,

Luke Flanigan

Hi families and welcome back to term 3!

We trust that you had a restful and enjoyable break over the holidays.

As a teaching pair we have been very pleased with the way the students have returned to the classroom, this week.

We have decided to provide a bit of a write up around our learning plans for the term:

Mathematics:

Students will be learning about shape, angles, the Cartesian plane and data across the term.

We will be spending one double lesson per week focused on specific number skills to revisit concepts we covered earlier in the year.

Shape = A large focus around nets, elements of shape (edges, vertices and faces) and 3D shapes
Angles = Elements of an angle (what angle is it? the degree of the angle etc)
Cartesian plane = transferral of shapes across a Cartesian plane, co-ordinates and some grid referencing linked to mapping
Data = creating data specific questions, comparing 2 data sets, creation of data representations

We may potentially extend data for some of our year 6 students into mean, median, mode and range (but this will be decided as we move through the concept)

English:

Reading = a large focus on inferencing, decoding and comprehension questions. We will be incorporating a larger aspect of group work throughout reading to promote oral language and idea generation amongst peers.

Word study = we are looking at grammar and punctuation. We will also delve into some aspects of functional grammar and sentence structure to support writing. Vocabulary sessions will also be included to support students in expanding vocabulary use through written and oral opportunities.

Writing = our term focus will be around information reports and informative writing. We will also be doing work on narrative writing, where we will be going a little bit deeper into unpacking known structures of narrative writing and how we can use this to enhance our own storytelling.

History:

A focus on the 1800’s Australian history and the 1900’s Australian history, with the gold rush and federation of Australia being significant points of interest. Students will be tasked with creating narrative recounts from the perspective of people living in these eras.

Science:

Earth and space science = students will be tasked with expanding their knowledge of our solar system. students will create a plan for a colonisation of one of the planets within our solar system, linking to researched elements students will incorporate how the colonisation of a planet would occur, what would be beneficial and compare it to events taught through history lessons to link to Australian history.

STEM:

Students will continue working with Mrs Blackley and have started the term working on Makers Empire

Religion:

We will continue to work across the crossway curriculum in the teachings of Jesus. We will continue to conduct student led prayers and incorporate value discussions and lessons as required to promote positive and respectful relationships.

Health:

The continuation of the child protection curriculum will occur during health lessons. These include things like ‘trust networks, safe relationships, levels of power in relationships, the body etc’

Drama:

Students will be involved in drama activities, culminating in the creation of a performance that they will both script and perform.

Spanish and P.E lessons will continue to run as usual across the term.

Homework:

Students have been provided with 2 optional homework projects to work on across the term. These are certainly not compulsory but the request was made by several students and so we have created these projects. The projects are not extension work and will not be work missed by students who do not complete them, however, will act as consolidation for those students who do choose to complete the activities

Other learning:

Fitness activities will occur on Tuesday mornings, where students will be involved in some element of running.
Positive messaging will continue to be a consistent theme, where students write positive messages to other members of the class. These messages are then displayed and most importantly are regularly looked upon and appreciated by those who receive them.

Additional exciting news:

• Miss Papillo and myself will be engaging in discussions with an expert in ‘2 way learning’ to look at how we can further imbed Aboriginal perspective into our science learning.
• student crossing monitors will begin over the coming weeks
• Book week in week 5
• Both classes have their buddy class excursions (week 8 and 9)
• Students will be involved in learning and creating sock balls for socktober

As always, if you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact Miss Papillo or myself.

Kind regards,

Elia Papillo and Luke Flanigan

Hi families,

Some photos from day two.

Trailer ride, boat ride, caving, archery, cart riding, maze, sheep show and lots of fun!

See you all this afternoon

Dear families,

A few photos from the first day of camp. All students have settled into the camp and spent today either caving and taking a boat ride on the river or exploring the gym and the river on a boat.

An amazing start!

Hi 5/6 LF families and welcome back to term 2!

I trust that you have had an enjoyable break over the holidays and are ready to get back into a term of learning.

I will provide a brief summary of what we will be focusing on in each area this term and suggestions for how you could support this at home.

MATHEMATICS

• Breaking down of worded math questions in preparation for NAPLAN in week 2.
• Percentages and links between percentages, fractions and decimals
• Decimals (adding, subtracting and the place value attached to them)
• Measurement of time (12-24 hour time) looking over time tables to make plans
• Measurement (volume and capacity for year 6) but all components of measurement
• area, length and perimeter

Reading

• Reading with fluency, taking time to notice aspects like commas and how they impact reading.
• Predictions being made from texts
• Inferencing through visual prompts
• inferencing from within text (what does it really mean? what is really happening? how are they really feeling?)

Word study

• commas, punctuation and editing
• functional grammar
• sentence structure and elements that advance writing

Writing

• Persuasive and Narrative prompts in readiness for NAPLAN
• Procedure writing (focus on creating a bushfire evacuation plan)
• informative writing (focus on creating a bushfire news report/ climate zone information report)
• Roald Dahl author study

Science

• focus on natural disasters
• focus on how animals and particularly plants have adapted to natural disasters (bushfires)

Some ideas for how you can support the students at home:

Maths – asking questions about the learning (have students explain what they are doing in class) to support their justifications.
Involve students in shopping trips to incorporate real world scenarios for measurement, percentages, decimals through money etc

Writing – discuss the text structure with students of relevant genres.
Explore family recipes or instructions for activities (to support procedure knowledge)

Reading – practice reading at home, and a loud for fluency.

Ask students questions linked to their books, what might happen next? why do you think that? etc

To support inferencing, ask any questions linked to emotions that aren’t stated, for example:

‘Stacy barged into the kitchen.’

Why did she barge in? How was she feeling? Why do you think she was feeling that way? What clues have you used? etc

If you have any questions linked to any of this, please feel free to get in contact with me.

I will also email out some inferencing questionnaire sheets across the week to support further learning at home.

Kind regards,

Luke Flanigan

Dear families,

Our cohort have been lucky enough to be asked to be involved in some learning research through the University of South Australia. The research is being supported by the university and (CESA) Catholic Education of South Australia.

The research is looking into how problem-based learning can improve the learning outcomes for students across content areas. The research will involve a master’s student and former assistant Principal coming out to our site and collecting data (questionnaire) from the students in each of the year 5/6 classes. This data will be collected on 3 occasions, and it will be considered whether the students show any significant improvement.

Two of the year 5/6 teachers spent a day last week doing some STEM training for this topic and they will be teaching lessons each week to their classes to support the research. The other 4 classes will simply be completing the questionnaire.

5/6 LF and 5/6 EB will be the classes doing the lessons each week and the other 4 classes will simply be doing the questionnaire.

The researcher from the University cannot collect the data for the research unless she has parent permission. The researcher will not be collecting names and simply responses to her questions throughout the activities.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to email me at:

Luke.flanigan@holyfamily.catholic.edu.au

Dear families of 5/6 LF and EP

Today our students completed the 2022 Harmony Day assembly for Holy Family.

They did an amazing job of acting, editing, animating, creating and performing for the assembly. It was an exceptional effort from an amazing group of people! Much like Harmony Day is about people coming together for a common purpose, the students were certainly able to do that to put the assembly together.

For my class, I have sent the assembly link out via email this afternoon and for 5/6 EP, I have little doubt that your email will be out in the coming days, if it is not out already.

Elia and I are certainly very pleased with how the assembly turned out and are incredibly proud of the students for their amazing work in putting it together.

We hope that you enjoy our assembly and as always, thank you for all of your support!

Have a great weekend and fingers crossed we will have you in to share in some of these memories in person in the not too distant future.

Kind regards,

Luke Flanigan

Last week the students of 5/6 LF participated in an inferencing challenge.

With inferencing being a major target area for improvement in our reading data, it was important to start the focus on inferencing work with a fun and engaging activity to ‘hook’ the students into the activity of inferencing.

Students were partnered up and then completed either hiding a chocolate or writing a clue for where they had hidden the chocolate. After pairs had completed the hiding and creation of clues, they were able to go about using their inferencing skills to locate their chocolate.

Many laughs were had and chocolates enjoyed!

If you are interested in supporting the development of inferencing skills at home, here is some information:

Inferencing is loosely termed as a combination of prior knowledge and predicting. It is the reading comprehension skill of using what we already know to predict a logical outcome. It is often linked to questions regarding the emotions of characters within stories.

For instance:

If we see a person in the middle of the oval with their head in their hands after the recess bell, we know that they are upset and that something has likely happened. No one has told us this, we haven’t asked and we haven’t read this information anywhere, but we are able to determine this based on our previous experience of what upset people look like and by making a logical prediction.

The skill with inferencing is being able to transfer this into characters and information within text we read.

If you are interested in supporting some inferencing development at home, please let me know and I will send home some inferencing question stems that you could ask your child, while they are reading at home.

Here are some photos of last weeks activity and as always, thank you for the ongoing support!

Kind regards,

Mr Flanigan

Today in the Curiosity Forum section of the school the students of 5/6 LF presented their chemical science presentations on solids, liquids and gasses and the location of these states of matter in the water cycle. Students used posters, animation, skits, green screen acts and PowerPoints to present their work and did an amazing job!

Here are some photos of their efforts!