Pre-School Team:
We ended last term by learning about oral hygiene, discussing the importance of calcium, eating healthy food and drinking water. To support the children’s understanding of what can occur if we don’t look after our teeth we examined some extracted teeth and x-rays of decayed teeth that were kindly given to us by Sue from the Virginia branch of Dellamalva Dental. Children were also provided with a toothbrush and brushed their teeth every day that they attended preschool in week 10.
Returning to preschool this term was definitely not what we had expected and many of our children returned to preschool this week for the first time since the school holidays. We have begun the term by learning about COVID-19, what we need to do to keep ourselves safe and completing our own COVID-19 time capsule booklets. We have also been learning about our Solar System, singing songs and reading stories about planets, making rockets, dressing up as astronauts and travelling through space in the preschool rocket. To conclude this learning the children worked together to create a collaborative ‘Space’ themed poster. The children drew rockets, spaceships, astronauts, stars, aliens and planets. While doing this educators overheard children discussing which planet they were drawing based on the colour and size and providing their peers with positive feedback about their drawings. The children were very impressed with the final product. Another ‘Space’ themed activity children participated in was holding the planets up in the correct order from the sun. When holding their chosen planet the children were required to state the name of their planet and a fact that they had learnt about their planet. Then while holding the planets the children had to ‘orbit’ around the sun! Children have also been working hard on further developing their phonological awareness and numeracy skills.
We were very disappointed that our 3-Way Interviews had to be postponed. However as the health and safety of our children and their families is our number one priority we are continuing to plan and operate in line with advice from SA Health and unfortunately this sometimes means operating with little notice in advance. At this stage we are hoping to reschedule them for weeks 6 and 7 of this term.
Reception – Catherine Room 1 & Anita Room 2:
What an interesting start to the term we have had! Students returned in the second half of week 2 settled ready to learn in rooms 1 and 2. We have been focusing on recounts in both our modelled reading and genre writing lessons. We have really enjoyed learning about the structure and grammar features of recount texts and are using learning intentions and success criteria checklists to help us successfully write recounts independently. We have continued to revisit sounds during Inquiry time to further develop our phonics knowledge and reading. We will be introducing narratives and information reports later in the term. In maths we have been investigating and solving problems about the days of the week and will move into measurement where we will learn about length and height. We look forward to the rest of the term and the growth that students will continue to make.
Year 1 – Katrina Room 3 & Christina Room 4:
What an amazing start to term 3 in Room 3 and 4. This term we have been exploring the Habit of Mind ‘Taking Responsible Risks’. We are aware that we take Responsible Risks in our learning all the time! We don’t need to be perfect because making mistakes is how we learn. We are working interdependently (being able to work and learn with others) during our maths groups and SSP rotations. We have continued to learn our sounds through SSP. Through our whole class inquiry we are consolidating our yellow code sounds and will shortly be moving onto blue code. Our learning intention is to be able to identify letter-sound relationships and write the correct grapheme for each phoneme. During our rotations, we are working on learning and retaining the sounds of our individual code. In modelled reading we are focusing on the narrative genre this term. Each week we have a new text which we identify the grammar components specific for this particular genre. They include, noun and noun groups, descriptive words, the noun and pronoun relationship and compound sentences. In maths we have been applying and transferring our knowledge of number into learning about place value. We have been investigating the value of a digit according to its position in a number (tens, and ones). Our learning intentions include to understand the value of a number and to be able to partition numbers.
Year 2 – Mary Room 5 & Jess Room 6:
Firstly, we would like to congratulate the students of Rooms 5 and 6 on how well they settled back into school after a slightly disruptive start to the term. They demonstrated flexibility and were positive in their approach to online learning. However, it is so great to have them back in our classes again. We would also like to thank parents and caregivers for their support at home with the shift to online learning during that time. We loved you sharing your child’s learning through the ClassDojo application and appreciated you keeping us informed with any updates related to your child.
The students slipped straight back into the routines and enjoyed sharing all their holiday and lockdown adventures with one another. In English we have continued our Literacy Group work incorporating various activities including modelled reading, writing, grammar, guided reading and comprehension skills. Students are focussing on targeted reading goals and strategies during guided reading sessions and are working to develop their comprehension skills as they progress through the reading levels. In writing, we started this term with procedural text types which they have been really enthusiastic about. The students of Room 6 enjoyed making ‘Healthy Face Biscuits’ and writing about the process. Next we will be exploring the narrative text type where students will explore orientations of known narratives and developing their own, characters and settings before we move onto developing complications.
In Maths, the students are participating in lessons based on the concept of Subtraction. They are enjoying broadening their strategies for solving subtraction problems and applying their skills to solve worded problems. In Room 6 on Friday’s students are undertaking statistics and probability lessons and have already demonstrated impressive knowledge of the language of chance. In Room 5 they are also exploring 3D shapes and shape properties. The students continue to be enthusiastic about our weekly fine motor morning on Tuesdays between the two classrooms. They are developing important skills through activities such as painting, threading, paper construction and cutting. We are really looking forward to the Book Week Parade in Week 6 and cannot wait to see what are bound to be creative and exciting costumes.
Year 2/3 - Jenna Room 9/ Year 3 - Sabrina Room 10 /Year 3/4 – Elliana Room 11:
A HUGE congratulations to all students and parents in Rooms 9, 10 and 11 for how well they managed at home/online learning. It was something new for all of us, and we worked together as a team to help motivate students and keep their learning journey on track! We feel so lucky to have only missed 4 days of school in total over the lockdown! Looking at other states, we really are the lucky ones! This interesting start to the term has only highlighted how resilient, flexible, patient and persistent our students are! It really has bought classes’ closer together, realising how much we missed seeing each other’s smiles every day! Our online learning platform – Class Dojo worked extremely well. We enjoyed positing daily videos for students to watch and we were able to mark students work online. The photos and videos of students learning from home were a real treat to see! When student’s returned to school they expressed how much they enjoyed the new experience learning from home and had fun with their new teachers – thank you parents! J
As soon as students were back in the classroom, we didn’t waste any time! We slipped right back into routine and continued our learning journey. In Writing we are currently revising our narrative skills and learning some new techniques to help hook in the reader. ‘Sizzling Starts’ has really helped to bring out our students creativity, the beginning of their narratives have simply WOWED us! We are in the process of turning our Narratives into books, with a front cover, blurb and illustrations. I think we have some future authors on our hands! We are really looking forward to the book week parade in week 6. We can’t wait to see students in their creative costumes, inspired by their favourite authors and books.
Year 4/5 – Belinda Room 7 & Brooke Room 8:
We have been pleased about how quickly students have settled back into their learning after the lockdown.
In numeracy, we have started our fractions and decimals learning. We are also working on improving our number fact knowledge and fluency and we are learning how to effectively organise collected data in a table.
In our literacy block, we are focusing on reading and writing information reports with explicit modelled reading lessons targeting structural and language features. Students continue to develop their spelling knowledge through phonological, orthographic and morphemic activities in word study. This term our reading strategies are ‘retell and paraphrase’ and ‘making connections’. Students are learning the strategies in explicit lessons and are practising them during guided reading rotations and for homework.
In HASS, through geography, students will be learning about ‘Indigenous Perspectives and Australian Environments’ and they will also be completing year level assignments which focus on North America or Africa.
Year 5/6/7 – Andrew Room 12, Georgina Room 13 & Cathy Room 14:
All students have settled back nicely after the COVID interruption and have continued class routines as per normal.
In maths we began the term with the unit on measurement starting with Area and Perimeter. We will follow this up with angles. We have also continued with implementing Quick Smart maths to further assist students with maths fluency.
In reading, we are continuing our work in Guided Reading and Literacy Circles. Students are looking at the informative genres of explanation texts. During Guided Reading, we continue to unpack the language features, structure and visual features that make up these texts and this is supported by our inclusion of modelled reading and activities. Our book this term for Book Study is “Dragonkeeper” and ‘Wonder’.
We continue to use the ‘Sound Waves’ spelling program where weekly activities include segmenting words into their graphemes and syllabifying list words, sorting words according to letter patterns, spelling rules or base words and affixes and other activities to reinforce these skills and other spelling concepts.
This term we are looking at The Solar System in science. Our learning intention for these lessons is for students to gather information about the solar system and know how it was formed along with other phenomenon such as night and day, seasons and eclipses.
Junior Primary / Primary Art – Sue Graham:
Students have started a unit of work in the Performing Arts strand. They are looking at the elements of mime by carefully studying the work of classic exponents of mime such as Marcel Marceau and incorporating some of his signature style in their improvisations. It is a lot of fun!
Visual Arts is based on the book Busy Beaks by Sarah Allen as a lead in to Book week in Week 6. They are also studying author and illustrator Eric Carle’s work to incorporate some elements in a design poster for the Adelaide Fringe 2021.
In music students are learning are to clap on a beat and follow basic musical notation using percussion instruments.
Our choirs continue to rehearse and refine their performance skills.
In the kitchen garden students are identifying what seasonal vegetables to plant.
We love the addition of the new shade canopies. This will mean that we can work comfortably and safely on hot days as well as providing protection for seedlings and sun sensitive plants.
Primary Science – James Yates/ JP Science – Thuy Nguyen:
JP: This term in Science, junior primary children will be focussing on the chemical science aspect and a new topic called “What it’s made of?”. This unit will enable children to explore and investigate different types of objects around us and how they are made from different types of interesting materials. Through investigations, students will develop skills of observing, describing, comparing and communicating. This unit provides opportunities for students to explore, through hands-on activities, what things are made of in the school environment and the properties of the materials used to make them. So far, students have been going on a school tour to investigate different school equipment and observing what kind of material it is made out of. For instances, students observed that the friendship bench is made out of wood, and the school bins are made out of plastic. They have been working together to find out that around the school, there are various types of materials and are eager to learn more about this unit.
Middle Primary: students are investigating the three states of matter, solids, liquids and gases. We have started by identifying a range of different states of matter and looked at how their properties are different.
Upper Primary: students have been learning about physical and chemical changes and how chemical changes are caused when a chemical reaction is present and a physical change occurs when the substance stays the same.
PE - James Yates
JP students have continued on with their soccer unit of work. We have been focusing on passing, dribbling, ball control and shooting skills. Students are now starting to use those skills in small games.
Primary Students have started a netball unit, in which we are focusing on fundamental netball skills including passing, catching, defending, shooting and attacking. Students have been working hard learning all the rules associated with the sport and are moving into game situations.
Junior Primary / Primary Language- Thi Hien Danh:
This term, students across all year levels will be learning about numbers and colours. They will be continuing to develop a deeper understanding of how to write and count numbers in Vietnamese. Students will use their prior knowledge of numbers and colours to construct simple sentences. Some common pronouns will be introduced to students from year 1 to year 7. They will translate and compare common Vietnamese and English expressions as well as translating simple bilingual texts for classroom use. Students will continue to develop more understanding of the tones in Vietnamese language and use tone markers in their writing.
Student Support – Danielle Mathews and Thuy Tran
LLI:
Students have started their LLI lessons and we are back into our routine. It is great to hear students transitioning so well and settling into their learning. We will continue to monitor students and their growth and rearrange groups accordingly. We very much appreciate the patience and support of parents when it comes to grouping students in their like level reading groups.
Danielle:
I am new to Virginia Primary School, starting this term as an SSO to focus on supporting student intervention. I have enjoyed getting to know the students and their learning strengths and difficulties to support then further with their schooling. It is great to work with such friendly and enthusiastic students!
In the last few weeks I have been supporting some small writing groups, working with a group of year 3/4’s in their writing lesson where we have been focussing on Narrative writing, learning and consolidating the features of a Narrative text and making our stories more exciting to the reader by adding extra detail and exciting starters! The year 4/5s are writing Information Reports and focussing on the way we introduce a main topic and sub topics in that format. The year 6/7s have been exploring how the Solar System was formed and transferring their knowledge into writing an Explanation of this process.
All groups are making good improvements to their writing and I look forward to reading their final written pieces!
