Term 4 Week 4
Principal's Report
I am in Horsham Thursday and Friday for a Diocesan Principals meeting Thursday and Northern zone Principals meeting Friday. The school will be closed Monday and Tuesday for a curriculum day and the Melbourne Cup Public Holiday.
Today we welcome Lara Thompson back to St Joes as a student teacher. Lara is in her second year studying primary teaching at ACU in Ballarat. She will be here for 3 weeks in the Prep/1/2 room. Welcome back Lara.
Information
Thank You: St Joseph’s Community would like to thank St Joseph’s Parents and Friends for providing an amazing lunch for us at our celebration to remember 100 years since the laying of the foundation stones at the Presbytery and School/Hall. Many complimentary remarks were heard.
Melbourne Cup Long Weekend. Please remember the school will not be open on Monday or Tuesday next week. Monday will be a staff curriculum day and Tuesday will be the Melbourne Cup Holiday. Enjoy your Long Weekend.
Prep/1/2 Class News
It’s been a good week in the junior classroom with the students working hard in class on a range of topics. With the uncertainty of the weather, we planned for online learning this week as a back-up plan in case we couldn’t get to school. Thankfully this hasn’t been the case and we’ve been able to run business as usual. To make the most of the work that we planned for home learning, the students have been working through their daily tasks from their work booklets in class. Each day the students have had their own shared reading, spelling tasks, a writing prompt and numeracy based activities working on place value, number and addition strategies. It’s been great to see the students working so hard, showing good concentration and trying their very best with their set tasks. Well done everyone!
In writing this week, the students have been working on story structure in narratives, planning the steps to write in a procedure and using descriptive language when writing an informative text – sentences that describe an animal. Each day we’ve had a look at our set writing task, we’ve discussed what features would be included in the style of writing and the students have had a go independently. I’ve also allowed the students’ time to come back to their writing and to look for ways to edit for improvement. The students are encouraged to re-read their own writing out aloud to make sure it sounds right. This usually leads to the child realising a mistake they’ve made and self-correcting their error, which is what we want the students to be able to do.
In Art this week, the students have been learning about warm and cool colours. We also had another look at the three primary colours – blue, red and yellow and the students experimented with what colours can be made with each of the primary colours as a base. The students mixed colours and then painted blended backgrounds that incorporated either warm colours or cool colours and we’ll be adding to these later on to complete an art piece. Great to see such creativity taking place J
3/4/5/6 Class News
Students have been busy this week learning about The Great Barrier Reef in their shared reading, continuing with the natural wonders of the world theme. Students have discussed the information presented in the text about the reef and what issues and concerns there are about the future of the reef. Students have been working on an information report this week on one of the 14 highest mountains in the world. Students have chosen what format to present their report in and have researched and collated their information. Students will present these to the rest of the class and practice their public speaking skills. Students have also revised nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs (Year 3 and 4) and adverbial and adjectival phrases (Year 5 and 6).
In Maths students have continued to work on recognising and understanding the properties of 2D shapes. Students have also been continuing their work on data and graphing. Students have focused on interpreting and understanding the information shown in a graph through answering questions and posing their own statements. Students have been working on understanding the mean, median, mode and range of data through Melbourne Cup themed activities.
In Science students are learning about tectonic plates- what they are, how they move, different types of tectonic plates and what fault lines are. Students had a lot of fun experimenting with tectonic plate movements (transformation, divergent and convergent) using icing and cruskits.
Homework contract 30 and spelling words are due Friday please.
Community News
Humour
Donald Trump was heading towards his limo when a prankster tried to throw a paint bomb at him.
One of the President’s minders shouted, “Mickey Mouse”,
which surprised the prankster, who was then apprehended.
Later the head of security asked the minder, “why did you yell out Mickey Mouse?”
“I was so nervous”, he said, “I meant to say ‘Donald, duck!!!’”