Class News

Year One Class News

The children have had a wonderful start to the year. They have settled into the routines of Year One extremely well and are full of enthusiasm to learn.

Our first inquiry unit for the year is ‘I wonder what makes me special?’, the children will be exploring how each individual is unique, different and special. Through hands-on experiences, the children will explore the similarities and differences of the physical features of themselves and others. While sharing their ‘About Me’ bags, the children will discover how we are different from others through our families, interests and our talents and abilities. In Religion we will learn that through Baptism people become members of God’s family.  We will reflect on how God created each person to be different and special and, through role-play, the children will discover that they are called to use their ‘specialness’ to show love for others.

During our Literacy Dedicated Time, the Year Ones will be working very hard to develop their reading and writing skills. During writing, the children will create short imaginative and informative texts. They will develop the skills to write fluently by focussing on correctly forming lower case and upper-case letters, checking for consistent size and by writing on the solid line. The children will become experts at using capital letters and full stops and checking for spaces between words in their writing.

During our shared reading, the children will be introduced to a variety of reading skills and strategies that enable them to read decodable and predictable texts. During our Guided Reading sessions, the students will use these skills and strategies to explore new texts while using knowledge of sounds and letters, high-frequency words, punctuation and directionality to make meaning when reading. The children are given many opportunities to read and re-read familiar texts so that they will become fluent, expressive and thinking readers.

In our Numeracy Dedicated Time, we will explore numbers from 0-50. Through hands-on learning experiences the children will work towards recognising, modelling, reading, writing and ordering numbers to 50.  The children will use their developing knowledge of numbers to count forwards and backwards from 0 – 50 using mathematical language including number before, number after, more than and less than. Through our daily ‘Days at School’ learning experiences the students will begin to investigate place value, including partitioning and stating the place value in two-digit numbers.

In Measurement and Geometry, the children will develop their skills to measure length and height accurately. Through varied learning experiences, the children will investigate how to measure the length of a variety of everyday objects accurately using uniform informal units, ensuring the units are placed end-to-end without gaps or overlaps and by selecting appropriate uniform informal units to measure lengths.

Throughout the term, the children will continue to explore how each individual is unique and special by building on their knowledge of families. They will explore the past and observe some of the changes that have occurred in our world through growing and changing. Through structured play-based learning experiences they will investigate differences in family structures and roles today and how these have stayed the same or changed over time.

Science in Year One is Fun! This term, the Year Ones have begun to explore Biological Science with a focus on identifying characteristics of living and non-living things. We ventured out into the playground and with a partner, classified objects according the criteria we learned in the classroom. In the next few weeks, we will look at the common features of plants and how parts of plants have a particular purpose as well as what a plant needs in order to survive. This will lead us to discovering different habitats and finally, what happens to living things when the habitat no longer meets their needs.

Health in Year One will focus on identifying strategies to use in case of an emergency or if help is needed. They will begin to identify locations of safe places and recognise the people they can turn to for help. They will also discover positive ways to show their emotions in different situations and how our body reacts to safe and unsafe situations. Finally, the children will contribute to making their classroom a safe and happy learning environment by being fair and respectful to adults and their peers.

In Music, Miss Condipodero will work with students on developing their intonation, pitch and aural skills through singing and building a wide repertoire of songs. We will focus on aurally and visually recognising simple intervals of the pentatonic scale using solfa and solfa hand signs. We will develop our understanding of beat, rhythm and standard rhythmic  notation  through rhythm activities and dictations, improvisation, songs and untuned percussion instruments – building on the foundation established in Pre-Primary. Students will listen and respond to music through movement and  improvisation,  sharing their music ideas, and develop an understating of other elements of music including, tempo, dynamics, form and timbre.

We are looking forward to working together in partnership with the Year One children and their families this year. We are eager to watch the children grow and develop over the year as they explore new concepts and learn new skills.

Year Six Class News

Wow, what a start to the year we have had! We have shared with each other the stories of our holidays (whether it was true or not!), we have set SMART goals and we are deep into our learning and have really got our heads down and into our work of learning straight up! We are so excited to be in Year Six and we look forward to being positive role models and leaders for our school community.

We are looking forward to many great opportunities this year including being commissioned as leaders of Infant Jesus School and receiving our leadership badges at the Whole School Mass next Thursday 14th February.

Confirmation, Camp and Graduation, later in the year, are also very special occasions that will be both exciting and memorable.

In Religious Education our first unit of work is about Vocation; we will discuss and learn what a vocation is and how we are called by God for this. Later in the term, we will focus on Lent and Easter and then our work on Confirmation will commence in earnest. Confirmation will take place on the weekend of Pentecost in June.

Our focus for Mathematics is on Number; place value, prime and composite numbers, correct use of the four operations and integers. We will also focus on the literacy of mathematics, so that we can work with increasingly difficult word problems. In measurement, we will be focusing on time and how to read and interpret a range of timetables.

In English, we will be writing Recounts and Narratives and will be preparing to write a letter to Mr Hille regarding our Student Ministry positions.  Our reading program will focus on comprehension and developing the children’s understanding and use of key strategies. During reading, the children will continue to focus on ways to better comprehend texts and use a variety of reading strategies to interpret and understand the message and intent of the author.

With a federal election looming, we will be learning and consolidating our knowledge of our democratic system of government in Australia and how this operates.  We are hoping to visit Parliament House later in the term to further extend this learning.

Mrs King is coordinating our Arts program and we will be integrating much of our Art with other learning areas, for example Lent and Easter. The children are excited about creating various artworks.

This term in Technology sessions, students will create an interactive quiz using the program, Scratch. Their quiz will be based around the important topic of digital citizenship. Students will learn basic programming concepts using block-based coding. They will work collaboratively to share their quiz with each other at the end of the term.

In Year Six we are eager to continue to learn, grow and try our best. We will continue to #ExpectGreatThings of ourselves, our teachers and each other, as we become the leaders at Infant Jesus School.