Class News

Year Three Class News

Time has flown… it’s already Week Five! This year we are looking forward to watching the children continue to grow and shine throughout their learning about the wonderful world they are in.

As Catholic Learners, the children have learnt the importance of human life and admire God for creating unique human beings. The children created their own representation of their souls and have brought them to life by animating them on their iPads. Exploring the Sacrament of Baptism is also a significant topic that the Year Threes will come to understand. They will appreciate Baptism and being in God’s ever-growing family.

The journey of Lent is an exploration time for the Motivated Learners to understand and learn that Jesus died so that humans can enter Heaven. The Year Three children will investigate the similarities between the Last Supper and the Eucharist, and recognise that by Jesus washing the Disciples feet he was showing love. The children will observe Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper as a resource to further discover and remember the significant role that this event plays in our faith.

In Mathematics, the understanding of place value into the thousands is the main focus. The children have expanded their knowledge of reading and writing numbers, as well as building upon their understanding that a digit in one place represents ten times what it represents in the place to its right. These Play-Based Learners will have lots of fun learning about coordinates as they map the school oval. The Year Threes also have the potential to become keen bankers through studying the Australian monetary system.

During English, the children will learn that reading can be for both pleasure and for gaining information. Reading groups provide an opportunity for these Nurtured Learners to develop their comprehension and decoding skills.

The children will invest lots of time into becoming authors as they write and publish their own exciting narratives. Learning how to use language features such as; dialogue, onomatopoeia and similes, enhances the children’s writing.

Later in the term, the Year Three classrooms will become a very persuasive place to be as the children write to convince their teachers to allow them to wear free-drees and use technology. Through the use of strong and emotive words, these creative writers’ point of view will be certainly heard!

In Humanities and Social Science, the emphasis is on community life and how it can affect peoples’ daily living. As Connected Learners, the children will learn how Australians make democratic decisions in our society and that prejudice has no place in our community. Some key events the Year Threes will discover include the Lunar New Year, Shrove Tuesday and Harmony Day.

Last week, the children were lucky enough to visit the Supreme Court of Western Australia to deepen their understanding of rules and laws in our community. They re-enacted a mock trial about ‘Alice in Wonderland’, while dressed in costumes. This was an amazing excursion where children enjoyed getting dressed in official regalia and sitting in the Supreme Court.

Technology plays a large part in the Year Three curriculum. It is important that along with developing technological skills, children develop a respect and understanding of the internet. Lessons in the iLab, with Miss Phoebe, will take place every week and for the first half of the term, there will be a focus on Digital Citizenship. We encourage parents to keep open communication with your child about using technology responsibly. In the second half of the term, these Contemporary Learners will begin to learn about coding. Coding is an essential skill that teaches students how to solve problems and work together in creative ways.  The Year Threes will be completing a mix of unplugged (not using a device) and plugged in activities to build up their basic programming vocabulary. They will begin by learning about simple commands, functions and loops using the App, Swift Playgrounds.

In Health, with Miss Witkowski the Year Three children have been focussing on physical health. They will develop knowledge, understandings and skills in relation to healthy eating and appropriate levels of physical activity. The Connected Learners will use the Australia Guide to Healthy Eating to analyse their daily food intake and will explore the benefits of choosing healthier foods. They will also compare the amount of physical activity they do against Australia’s Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines. Finally, the children will design and participate in physical activity, to increase their amount of daily activity.

In Science, with Mr Capolingua, the children will learn about the Earth’s rotation on its axis which causes regular changes, including night and day. As Innovative Learners, they will recognise the sun as a source of light and construct sundials with the purpose of investigating how they work. Then the Year Threes will model the relative sizes and movement of the sun, earth and moon in relation to one another.

Physical Education with Mrs Jenkins, will focus on team building activities. They have been involved in a variety of team building games designed to have them develop stronger relationships and trust among each other. The children will continue having fun working as part of a team to achieve different challenges!

In Music with Miss Condipodero, we continue to consolidate and build on our aural skills, learning through in tune singing, solfa, and a wide repertoire of songs. We consistently focus on developing our understanding of beat and a variety of rhythms through a wide range of activities. In Year Three we are developing our recognition of the major 2nd and minor 3rd intervals of the pentatonic scale and deriving simple solfa and rhythms from known songs. The students will compose their own simple binary form rhythm and melody and we will explore tempo, dynamics and texture in more depth through a variety of listening activities. They will listen and respond to a wide variety of classical music, through movement and expressing their music ideas.

Year Threes will become Life-long Learners and we can’t wait for the rest of the year!

Year Four Class News

Year Four is a special year for students at Infant Jesus School. We will be receiving the Sacrament of the Eucharist in Term Three and this has become a focus for us throughout the year. At the moment we are learning more about our conscience and how Jesus guides us to make choices that are good. We are also exploring the Sacrament of Baptism and how it brings us closer to God. As it is the beginning of Lent we are reflecting on our Lenten Promises and how we can do good for others.

In Mathematics, we are building on our knowledge of Place Value and focusing on rounding tricky numbers. Another focus area for the remainder of the term is the four operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. As part of the Measurement and Geometry strand, we are also learning how to convert units of time.

During English, we have been focusing on comprehension strategies and we’ve already looked at Finding the Main Idea, Recalling Facts and Detail and are currently learning how to better understand the sequence in texts! We are using our writing time to create information texts about Indigenous Australians before the explorers arrived … We have continued to expand our vocabulary knowledge to include many new words that we will use in our writing.

In Year Four our Integrated Studies have had us researching Indigenous Australians. We are learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and their cultures. Recently our focus has been on researching Dreamtime stories and their significance to the Aboriginal People. We have explored this by creating sand drawings and including it in our own Aboriginal art presentations for the term.

In Week Three we were all very excited to participate in our first swimming lessons at Bayswater Waves. As you can tell from our photographs, we all had a great time learning how to be great swimmers! One of our important goals as Year Four is to be more independent and responsible for ourselves and our learning. Therefore, being responsible for our belongings and being organised for swimming helped us to develop this goal.

Next term we will be sharing all of our new-found knowledge with the school community in our Year Four assembly and we cannot wait!

Year Five Class News

The Year Five students really appreciated the opportunity to spend their morning with Father Greg. For thirty minutes he answered their questions and talked about what they are learning during Religious Education Lessons. The visit was an important part of developing faith formation for the children and strengthening their own Catholic identity. The children then wrote recounts about their time with Father Greg.

“…First he asked us about we had been learning. We told him we had been learning about the roles of people in the church. He gave us information on bishops, deacons, popes and priests… In the end, we learnt a lot of things (mostly about Father Greg) which was great. We all have a lot more information which will help us in Religion. The visit from Father Greg was awesome.”  – Zara

“… Secondly, he talked about bishops and deacons. He told us that bishops took the role of the twelve apostles and the bishops have to continue that. He then told us that deacons can bless marriages.” – Erin

“…First, he told us about deacons and what they do. He told us that they assist bishops and priests. He also told us there used to be women deacons. He told us that there are over 5 000 bishops and over 100 000 priests, but only one pope.” – Gabriella

“…Father Greg was extremely funny and he had been to lots of places around the world. He taught us many things about deacons, priests, popes and even about his life as a priest. Everyone had plenty of questions for him. I learnt from today that women were able to be deacons in the past and that deacons assist popes and bishops.” – Vaishvi

” …We started off with what we were learning which are the roles in the church. I learnt that deacons can marry! Then we asked him some questions. Mine was, “How old were you when you were baptised?” The part I liked best was the answers he gave us because I got to know more of our parish priest.” – Jai

“…I had a great time with Father Greg even though he stayed for a short time. I feel blessed by Father Greg’s visit. I hope I see him again soon.” – Jean-Paul

Shrove Tuesday

In Year Three

The Year Three students were lucky enough to make pancakes for Shrove Tuesday. Pancakes were traditionally made and eaten to use up fatty foods before the 40-day fasting season of Lent.

In Year Six

On Tuesday 5 March, the Year 6 children celebrated Shrove Tuesday by making pancakes. We learnt that Shrove Tuesday is the traditional feast day before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday.  Traditionally, pancakes were eaten on this day to use up ‘fatty’ foods before the 40 day fasting season of Lent began. The pancakes were extremely delicious and super fun to make. Thank you to our parent volunteers who helped us!

Sports News

Swimming Training (Year 4 – 6)

Last Friday kicked off our very first morning of swimming training at Bayswater Waves! There were 24 children who braved the cooler weather and jumped in the pool for some extra swimming training. It was great to see so many children wanting to improve their swimming and trying for ‘personal bests’. The swimming training allows the Year 4-6 children to practise their stroke technique and gain some extra endurance training in the lead up to the Swimming Carnival. Training will continue after the Swimming Carnival for Interschool squad members only.

Swimming training is every Friday during Term 1, commencing at 7:30 am at Bayswater Waves.

Swimming Carnival

Details for the carnival:

Venue: Bayswater Waves Aquatic Centre

Date/Time: Thursday 4 April commencing at 9:15 am

Year Levels: Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 students

Departure Time: 8:45 am

Return Time: 2:30 pm

Students will need to bring swimwear, a towel, recess and lunch and a bag to carry them in. (No canteen orders)

• As this is an outdoor venue, hats and sunblock are mandatory.
• A Lifeguard has been organized to be on duty during the Carnival.
• Our Year 6 Leaders will be providing extra support in the water.

The carnival program is currently being put together and will be made available closer to the date.

‘Let’s Go Freo’ Program   

The ‘Let’s Go Freo’ Program is a two-session program that is designed to utilise the Fremantle Dockers resources and player expertise to assist students in making informed decisions for a healthy lifestyle. The program is only run in Term 1 and I am pleased to say our Year 2 and Year 3 children have been selected for this very popular program!

Details are:

SESSION ONE: PLAYER VISIT
Fremantle Dockers AFLW players will visit our school to run introductory skills sessions or an interactive in class session covering the following topics: SUN SMART, HYDRATION AND HEALTHY EATING.

Session One at Infant Jesus will take place in the Year 2 & 3 Physical Education class next week, Tuesday, March 12. We cannot wait to meet the players and learn some valuable skills!

SESSION TWO: LET’S GO FREO GALA DAY
The children will be invited to the Fremantle Dockers Football Club for a fun clinic and a tour of the facilities.

Mrs Jenkins
Physical Education Teacher