Welcome Back & Learning Focus Week 1

Hello and welcome back to school! We hope you all had a wonderful Easter break catching up with family, friends and rest of course! This term is an 11-week term and hats are no longer required during lunchtimes but recommended during sunny days as the weather slowly drops into winter.

This morning, we had a whole neighbourhood meeting where we discussed about the upcoming events at school as well as our learning focuses for the week. One particular event starting this week is our exciting ‘Drumming Classes’ with Kofi! The year 3/4’s drumming classes will go for just under an hour and will commence on Wednesday. Some students will also be given the chance to finish any work on their groups artefacts and presentations.

This week’s NEW provocations include:

ANZAC Day Heroes:

As next week is Anzac Day, we wanted to have a focus on the event whilst connecting it to our inquiry of groups. The students will be involved with a starting workshop where they will identify what Anzac Day means, listen to stories that happened within the war and finally choose their own Anzac Day hero – who their chosen hero is, where they came from, what their responsibilities were in the war and most importantly what group/s were they a part of during the war.

Design A Meeting Place:

To build on thinking we started last term about groups, measurement and 3D shapes, this term we will be designing a meeting place for groups that we are exploring. This week, we will begin by brainstorming ideas about the purpose and features of meeting places then finding ways to categorise these, discover similarities and then improve aspects of our meeting places. Later in the term, we will draw scaled plans and create models for our meeting places.

Talk with each other about places that you meet with groups that you are a part of. What features draw you to this place? Is the purpose for your meeting social, professional, recreational, educational or a mix of these or another purpose you think of?

NAPLAN Preparation & Timed Writing:

In order for students to properly prepare for NAPLAN this term, we have set out a series of questions in which they are required not only to answer but explain inside their workbooks HOW they worked their answer. All subjects will include Reading, Maths and Grammar with some writing practice included. This week, all students will be completing a timed writing piece while having a specific focus on their writing goals from last term. From here, teachers will looking carefully as to whether the student has achieved their writing goal and provide them with a new writing goal for the next five weeks.

Wellbeing:

Connecting with our new focus on Anzac Day, students will listen to stories that happened during WWI. Here, they will come to learn how the Anzac’s came together through hardships of the war and how they can relate the stories personally themselves.