This will be our last week of parent helpers, I would like to take this opportunity to thank EVERYONE for their help in our classroom this year, we have absolutely LOVED having you in our classroom and I know that we have all learnt a lot! Without your help many of our activities just wouldn’t be possible!

There will be no parent helpers on TUESDAY. This is because we have Day In The Life where all of us act as grade 2s for the day! You will be going into the current grade 2 classrooms and meeting the current grade 2 teachers – the groups you are in are NOT your grades for next year though, it is just a practise run to get you used to being in grade 2!

There is no homework this week but don’t forget to keep reading each night!

Children giving to children starts tomorrow. This is an opportunity for us to donate toys under the value of $10 to the Salvation Army and they will distribute these to children less fortunate than ourselves.

We are continue to use expression when we read aloud.

We are also continuing our work on poetry during writing sessions.

Our sound of the week is:

Our numeracy focus this week is problem solving and graphing.

Can you think of a worded Maths problem that includes addition, subtraction, multiplication or division?

e.g. My grandpa had 5 apple trees in his backyard. Each apple tree had 8 apples on it, how many apples are there altogether?

Students received their homework this afternoon. They have their spelling words but no maths homework this week. This is because they need to complete the family tree from Mrs. L for ICT so rather than overload you with homework tasks we thought we would stick to only 2 – spelling and family tree!

Carols practise is well underway for our annual Christmas Carols night NEXT Monday evening. Please note that we are asking the children to wear shorts, particularly board shorts if you have them. The can also wear reindeer antlers or a santa hat if they have them!

Don’t forget your white t-shirts for Mrs Daniele’s art class! ALSO, if there are any parents willing to help out this activity please contact Mrs Daniele (sorani.carla.c@edumail.vic.gov.au) to organise a time to come in as a parent helper.

From Mrs Langlands- Students have taken home a family tree template on Friday afternoon.  The idea is that students will do some research at home and complete template as best as possible.  Then they will bring it to ICT next Friday where they will copy information into editable template and save document. Please fill out the template as best as you can, and if your family structure does not fit this template, you’re welcome to adapt it.

Our reading focus is to ‘Adjust and Apply Different Reading Rates’ which means we change the way we read depending on the text to make it sound more interesting. Sometimes we might read faster while other times we might read slower.

In writing we will continue exploring poetry. We will publish a good copy of our 5 W’s poem and start to explore alliteration poems. In grammar, we will focus on similes.

Our sound of the week is:

The song is: Dear, little deer – eer, eer, eer.

This week, we will begin learning about graphing in Room 9. We have been lucky enough to practice this a few times during the year, but students will be able to play around with creating various graphs using real world data. We will continue to explore the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) in our other lessons.

What similes can you think of? Can you even turn them into a poem? Remember similes are where you compare two things together using the word ‘as’ e.g. As brave AS a lion OR similes can also use the word ‘like’ e.g. Singing LIKE an angel.  Here is a simile poem I found online:

The Basketball

The basketball is an aeroplane,
It flies down the court heading
Straight for the basket.

The basketball is like a heartbeat
Pounding rhythmically on the
basketball court.

The basketball is as smooth as butter
As it slides out of my hands and
Into the basket.

We are now past the middle of term 4, you will be grade 2s before we know it, I can’t believe it!

Thank you to everyone who did such a good job of participating in Wellbeing Week. There were so many kind messages for everyone and you all did such a good job of looking after each other, I think we need Wellbeing Week every week! Your affirmation posters will go home this week after I have laminated them!

We have our author visit this Wednesday. Mark Wilson will be coming to talk to the grade 1s from 12:15-1:00. He has written and illustrated books such as Journey of a Sea Turtle and Little Dolphin. He may even teach us some tricks to illustrate our own books!

We have a working bee happening after school on Wednesday, if your parents have some spare time on Wednesday afternoon please ask them to come along and help out to keep our grounds looking beautiful!

Mr Jackson is looking for parent helpers at the BBQ on Carol’s Night. If one of your parents can help, please sign up here: http://tinyurl.com/hpsbbq

Homework will be back to normal this week with Maths and Spelling words going home tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will also discuss days for you to share the information you collected from your interview, I can’t wait to hear about it all!

Our Cafe Reading focus this week is on Cross Checking, this is making sure the words sound correct, match the pictures and make sense! It is important because we must be able to monitor for meaning and know when it is necessary to pause and fix up the meaning instead of just continuing to read.

We are moving on to Poetry during our writing sessions, I can not wait! We will also be looking at all of the VCOP elements as we write.

Our sound of the week is 

The chant is ‘boy with a toy – oy oy oy’

This week we will be looking at all four operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. This is also our last week learning about the time.

This is our first week on poetry. What do you know about poetry OR can you write down a poem you know or one you have made up yourself!

Wow, what a busy week we had last week with Cup Day Public holiday, Mr Ymer’s visit and big changes to our specialist timetable. I am very impressed by how well you all coped with the changes that were made!

This week is Wellbeing Week so….

We will be doing a few activities this week that help us relax and think about our wellbeing, I can’t wait!

Homework went home last week – you need to conduct an interview with an older member of your family or friends (age 50+) about life when they were a child.

Here are some questions you may like to ask:

What toys did you play with?

What did you like most about school and why?

What was your special treat to eat?

What did you wear to school?

How did you get your food?

How did you travel to far places?

How did you contact your friends?

What was the most expensive item you bought as a child? How much did it cost?

You need to decide on the part of the interview that you found most interesting and be prepared to share it with the rest of your class next week!

You will also get words to practise for this week, these will go home tomorrow. No need to bring your homework book back though, we will just write them on a piece of paper!

Michael Ymer is meeting with the grade 1/2 teachers again on Monday so you will have specialist teachers during sessions 3 (Mrs Durando) and 4 (Mr Mutimer).

There will be a Remembrance Service held at school at 10:45am on Friday this week

Last week Gustav’s table won the weekly prize. He chose to take some of our classroom toys home for a few days, here are some photos of Big Bird and Rocco enjoying their time at Gustav’s house!

Our reading focus this week is on the comprehension strategy ‘Infer and support with evidence’. This means readers figure out what the author is saying even though it might not be written down. Using their background knowledge, clues from the text, illustrations, and captions, the reader makes meaning of what they are reading.

We are going to be looking at all of the VCOP sections in our writing this week. This is also our last week of writing information texts before we move on to poetry!

Our sounds of the week are:

Our major focus is fractions of a collection and our minor focus is on time durations (how long things take).

Heres a quick note about including maths at home!

Including maths in children’s daily life is easy. Make sure that you have tables up where the children spend time: on the loo door, the shower, or in their bedroom. Times tables and other maths charts are cheap and can be bought from Officeworks. Water crayons for the bath/shower also make problem solving fun. If your children aren’t comfortable with numbers, draw collections of objects and get them to do the maths while bathing/showering.  Pin up interesting maths facts, print out pi and put it around the house, prime numbers, anything that your child will be curious about and engage with (OK, this step is not for everyone, but it’s fun for the kids!).

Another way to include maths is to tell children a story problem along with their bedtime story. Evidence shows it boosts maths knowledge enormously! http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/bedtime-problems-boost-kids-math-performance

And a great maths Christmas present idea: any of Adam Spencer’s maths’ books (for this age, especially Mind Boggling Maths, Outrageous Puzzles, Enormous Super Cool Games Book of Numbers. It’s not a text book – it’s just fun with lots of numbers in it.) And Adam Spencer’s Australian, so win/win.

Most importantly, just include maths in how you talk about the world, whether cooking, observing outdoors, sports, or whatever your passion is!

Here is an inferring question for you to practise our reading strategy this week.

“When I woke up, there were branches and leaves all over the backyard.” What might have happened?

On Thursday from 11:15-12:45 we have Coach Approach. The expo will be a taster of a range of alternative sports and activities with elite athlete coaches delivering the program. Athletes in attendance on the day will be:

HANDBALL – Adrian Diez Garcia (Spanish National Team)
ULTIMATE FRISBEE – Clare Hollebone (Australian Frisbee Team)
SOFTBALL – Jade Hough (Australian representative)
CIRCUS – Byron Hutton (National Institute of Circus)

Make sure you have paid for this via the bulk payment at the office!

On Friday we have our whole school swimming carnival. A note about this went home today. I will provide you with some more information later in the week!

Homework went out today. This week you are focusing on an addition and subtraction game.

It is the Book Fair this week! We went up to the library today and had a look at all of the books on offer. It is open at 8:30am before school and remains open until 4:15 after school each day. Denise also said that if parents/grandparents can’t make it to the book fair, students can go up with their money during the school day to make purchases!

Our Cafe reading focus this week is ‘Asking Questions Throughout the Reading Process’. Some questions you might to ask yourself as you read this week are:

What does this mean?”

“Is this important?”

“How do I think this story will end?”

“What will this selection be about?”

“What does this word mean?”

“What did I learn?”

“Do I need to read this again?”

Our VCOP writing focus is on connectives. These are the words that join two sentences into one and make our writing flow. Some of these include and, because, but, although.

We are still writing information reports as a text type focus.

Our sound of the week is:

Cloud like a cow – ou, ou, ou.

We will be completing a range of assessments this week including PAT Maths, diagnostic testing and anecdotal testing.

What questions have you been asking as you read this week?