Reading

Reader’s Workshop is part of our daily routine. We have established expectations around what makes a good reader and what a ‘good-fit’ book is for each of us. We also looked at strategies to build our reading stamina so students could engage in 20 minutes of independent reading each day. The primary reading strategy we have focused on has been retelling a text after reading. Retelling helps readers recall what has happened in a story, develop their sense of story structure and demonstrate their understanding of the text's characters, setting and events.

Writing

This term, we have been learning how to write narrative texts. We have learnt about the structure of the narrative arc. We have used descriptive language to develop interesting characters and settings, and they have learned to correctly use quotation marks to demonstrate speech. We illustrate our knowledge through deconstructing texts in our  ‘Bump it up’ lessons. We collaborated and used a rubric to grade and order the texts. Writing samples and marking rubrics have been displayed in the classroom to support us in bumping up our writing.

Maths

Our first number unit for the year is complete. This unit required students to investigate several key features of whole numbers. Learning tasks engaged students in how to identify ‘odd’ and ‘even’ numbers; represent, recognise and order numbers up to five digits; partition numbers into their place value and expanded notation; and compare numbers using greater than and less than symbols. 

Our strand unit has focused on chance and probability with students identifying the language of chance and engaging in various chance experiments by formally recording their findings using tally marks, etc.

Student learning tasks included whole class, small group, paired, and independent activities that offered support and extension.

HASS

We commenced the year looking at rules and laws in Civics and Citizenship. We discussed rules and why we have them, which supported the development of our class expectations and the review of the school's Positive Behaviours for Learning (PBL) expectations. Our further investigations focused on democracy and voting. Each class puts this theory into practice by nominating and voting for their class representatives in the Student Leadership Team.

We also began our year-long History unit which will examine several celebrations throughout the year. Our first celebration was to investigate the perspectives of Australia Day and identify the difference between a celebration and a commemoration.

Science

We recently started our Science unit on heat. Students identified several heat sources around the classroom and classified them as either heat producers or heated by something else. Then we observed how electricity creates thermal energy, friction and chemical reactions in numerous real-life objects. We are currently discussing the transfer and conductivity of heat in different materials