Class and Sports News

PRE-PRIMARY CLASS NEWS

The Pre-Primary children are enjoying coming to school everyday and are becoming independent learners.  At the beginning of each day the children participate  in a range of table top activities to consolidate literacy and numeracy skills.

This term in Religious Education we have focused on how God demonstrated his love for us by making us all special and unique members of his family. We marveled at our similarities and differences and let our friends know how wonderful we are. God blessed us with numerous feelings, so we took part in a number of discussions and tasks to help understand them better. The students also explored the concept of ‘New Life’. The children wondered about the importance of new life, and how it is precious and wonderful. Through discussion, observation and real life experiences the children discovered how they can see signs of new life all around them. The children explored the Easter Story through books, movies and symbols. Through these experiences, the  children were able to reflect on the true meaning of Easter and  celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.

In English, we have participated in many hands-on, authentic experiences to complement our learning. Some of these experiences include; box construction of characters from stories, digging for letters in the sandpit, taking photos on the iPads and creating sound Pic Collages, and also using the Beebot to find and identify different sounds.

Throughout the term, we have been introduced to many new sounds through the Sound Waves Phonics Program. To extend our learning in the area of phonemic awareness, we have been listening to stories, creating brainstorms and practising to segment words and blend known sounds. We have also had fun playing sound games and using different media to create pictures of objects that begin with the different sounds that the students have been exposed to.

We have also been developing our reading and comprehension skills through the introduction of a different big book each week. This has provided us with the basis in which to introduce the concepts of print (front cover, title, direction of print) using picture cues and initial sounds to assist with sound predictions of the text and using one to one correspondence when reading. The students have been eager to partake in small group, Guided Reading sessions and have had the opportunity to practise the skills they have been exposed to in the whole group reading sessions.

This term in Mathematics, we have learnt many new skills and concepts such as, ordinal numbers, days of the week, two dimensional shapes and explored measurement. We have also consolidated our knowledge of numbers one to ten, using one to one correspondence when counting, and matching quantities to numerals.

We have used an array of concrete materials to develop our mathematical knowledge and understandings. Some of these tasks include; racing cars to learn ordinal numbers, using number cards and stones to practice sequencing and counting and measuring one another using unifix cubes and popsticks.

This term, as part of our Physical Education sessions, Miss Witkowski has been running the PMP (Perceptual Motor Program) to develop our gross motor and fundamental movement skills. It has been fantastic to have the help and support of our parents each week, as they very generously have given up their time to assist with the implementation of the program. A big thank you to both Miss Witkowski and our parent helpers. The Pre-Primary children have really enjoyed their sessions with you.

The Pre-Primary students have worked very hard this term and it has been wonderful to see their growth in all curriculum areas, but we have especially seen a noticeable difference in their social and emotional development. They are amazing!

YEAR TWO CLASS NEWS

The Year Twos are continuing to enjoy learning new things every day. Our focus on relationships encourages all children and adults to develop a positive way of living and learning together.

This term, through the RE Unit ‘Just Like Jesus’, we began focusing the children’s attention on how God created everyone as unique individuals.  We have explored and discussed our similarities and differences leading to the understanding that we all belong to God’s family.

During the Lenten season, the learning applied to the three ‘pillars’ of Lent.  These are prayer, self-denial and helping others.  We  discussed how we could make a difference during Lent and the children set their personal goals for serving God and others, to assist them to become better people.  We discussed and reflected on the different parts of Holy Week and what it means to us as Catholic learners.  Our prayer reflection for Holy Week saw us reverently and enthusiastically share the Gospel story from Matthew, ‘The Sermon the Mount’.

In our daily English sessions, the children are immersed in reading, writing and word study.  They are learning about different comprehension strategies and so far, have covered; ‘thinking about the main idea’, ‘recalling facts and details’ and ‘understanding sequence’.  The children are using these strategies to assist with literal and inferential comprehension.  Reading groups have proved to be a great avenue to put the different comprehension strategies into practice.  It is always a treat to have Mr Hille visit our classroom and work with the children in their reading groups.

This term the children have also been writing narratives and recounts.  For each writing style they follow a specific structure which is displayed to assist the children.  For example, when writing a narrative, the children are progressing from the concept of a ‘beginning, middle and end’ to writing an ‘orientation, complication and resolution’.   The Year Two children have worked hard in their writing so far this term and are proud of their achievements.

During Mathematics the children have been exploring number and place value.  They have looked at different ways of representing numbers and identifying number patterns.  The children continue with opportunities to group, partition and rearrange collections up to 1000, in hundreds, tens and ones.   In this curriculum area they have been exposed to many hands-on activities to consolidate their learning.  They have also have explored number sequences and have enjoyed finding patterns in these numbers. With a solid foundation of place value knowledge, we have begun to work on simple addition, paying particular attention to the positioning of numbers when writing sums.

The Humanities and Social Sciences programme has allowed us to learn about our connections to regional, national and overseas places.  The children have looked at the history of Kings Park and other local places and what they reveal about the past.  They have also read and compared Dreamtime stories that gives some insight into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 

In Science this term, Mr Capolingua has helped the children broaden their knowledge about water.  They have looked at the water cycle, the uses of water and the importance of water conservation.   

In Health, Mrs Limerick has worked with the children to identify healthy and unhealthy foods.  They are currently looking at the concept of including and excluding (?foods? ?people?) and how this impacts on their lives.

During Music, Ms Condipodero has been providing opportunities for the children to participate in a rich music and movement programme.

The Year Twos participate in a structured Physical Education programme.  Ms Witkowski leads them to learn specific skills and then participate in essential fitness activities where they put their skills into practice. In Italian this year Signora Formato is taking the children on an Italian journey through language, song and culture.

As the end of Term One approaches, the Year Twos continue to #ExpectGreatThings of themselves and others and look forward to developing many learning goals next term.

YEAR THREE CLASS NEWS

YEAR THREE INCURSION

On Monday as part of their Civics and Citizenship studies, the Year Three children were lucky enough to receive a visit from the City of Bayswater councillors, Lorna Clarke and Giorgia Johnson. Councillor Clarke and Johnson taught the children about the services offered by the City of Bayswater such as park maintenance, libraries, festivals, animal registration, rubbish collection and recycling. The children learnt the structure of the council and how the City of Bayswater is made up of four wards. Councillors Clarke and Johnson were very kind and answered our many questions.

On April 9, the Year Threes were lucky enough to have Mrs Mammone come into our classroom to share her fantastic knowledge on graphic design. She explained to us how to choose effective backgrounds, fonts, text size and colours to complement each other. After this, we then had time to use this information to perfect our technology skills on Pic Collage. We definitely learnt a lot from Mrs Mammone and loved having her in Year Three.

SPORTS NEWS

Fremantle Dockers Fundamental Gala Day

On Wednesday afternoon the Year One students had the opportunity to play mini football-based games with the Fremantle Dockers players. The students travelled to the new Fremantle Dockers training ground in Cockburn where they joined students from eight other schools. The Fremantle players introduced themselves before they joined the students in completing the fun activities. Students were challenged to run away from players during a tag game, work as a team to collect the most footballs; and run, skip and hop to glory in a team relay. The day concluded with students answering player questions to win prizes. Thank you very much to the Fremantle Dockers Football Club, Notre Dame University, and the Year One students who were excellent representatives of Infant Jesus School.

Miss Kate Witkowski