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 can engage in 20 minutes of independent reading each day. The primary reading strategy we have focused on is inferring. Inferring helps readers to use their prior knowledge and text clues to pick apart texts and uncover meanings, themes and character motivations. We have been using our inferring skills while reading the BFG, making inferences about how the characters are feeling. Here are some drafts of our inferences. The next step will be editing. 

Writing

This term, we have been learning how to write imaginative texts. We have brainstormed our ideas and created class lists of interesting places, events and characters. We will use these ideas to create imaginative texts and incorporate our own  ideas as well. 

Maths

Our first number unit for the year is complete. This unit required students to investigate several 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. 

We are now using this knowledge to help us with addition and subtraction. 

HASS 

We commenced the year looking at rules 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 put this theory into practice by nominating and voting for their class representatives in the Student Leadership Team.

We are considering what a community is. We have discussed the importance of communities and what communities we belong to and why. Over the next few weeks we will consider how we can participate and make a difference in our school community.

We also began our History unit, where we 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.