Welcome to Term 2, 2014!

Dear Parents and Caregivers,
Welcome to Term 2! I do hope your children have had a lovely holiday and are feeling refreshed and ready for another term. Thank you so much for encouraging your child in their learning last term and also for supporting them in the Swimming Carnival and Cross Country events. We have planned another great range of wonderful learning experiences for the students for this term. Since my last newsletter, we have welcomed two new teacher aides, Mrs Narelle Ferrier and Mrs Pauline Davies to our Junior School team and we also welcomed the return of two teachers, Mrs Mikaela Cody and Mrs Trish Theobald back to room 4. We thank Mrs Barbara Ryan for teaching room 4 in their absence and this term she will be supporting Literacy, Numeracy and Science programmes in our Junior School until the next New Entrant class begins later on this term.

Values

Last term we focused upon the values of respect and kindness. This term we will revise these and also focus on curiosity and excellence. 

Fitness

Our usual fitness programme continues with Jumpjam on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8.40 a.m. and depending upon the weather will be held outside under the sunshade and outdoor fitness activities involving large balls on Thursdays and Fridays. 

Mathematics

The majority of our Numeracy programme is spent on Number and this term the focus will be on addition and subtraction and also fraction knowledge. Fun Friday problem solving activities will also support this learning. Alongside this, there will be activities involving Time for the first six weeks followed by Geometry focusing upon translation, rotation and reflection for the rest of the term. We also expect the students to use Mathletics to practice different mathematical concepts at home each day as part of their homework. If you have any queries about Mathletics, please do not hesitate to ask your child's teacher. 

Literacy

Oral language is a big focus in learning every day. It is important that the students can communicate their ideas clearly in a range of situations. They need to be able to be a good speaker and listener and also know how to ask and answer relevant questions so we will be working on this in greater detail. Reading programmes that cater for all learning modes occur daily. Your child will continue to bring home a reading book every Monday to Thursday and a poem on Fridays. They will continue to work through the Letterland and Smartphonics programmes each day to build their letter sound knowledge that supports their reading, writing and spelling development. The Year 1 students will begin the 'reading wall' in week 2 while the Year 2 continue to progress through the spelling rocket system. Writing stories continues each day with a focus this term on the structure of a beginning, middle and end to stories along with students editing their work to ensure that they are including capital letters and fullstops in the correct places and transferring the words that they have been learning on their spelling rockets into their every day work. Students in their first two years at school need to learn to hold their pencil correctly and to form all letters accurately so this is a continual focus in daily handwriting lessons. 

Inquiry 

This term we are placing a big emphasis on Science. Our unit entitled 'Switch onto Science' with all students in our Junior classes working on experiments involving electricity and sound while Rooms 1, 2 and 3 will also do experiments involving magnets. The big idea for these inquiries is that energy exists in many forms. It can be observed, changed and put to a variety of uses in our daily lives. The children will be learning to share their ideas about electricity, describe some safety rules when using electricity and make and discuss an electrical circuit. They will also explore how sound travels and explore vibration through musical instruments. Rooms 1 to 3 will also learn about magnetic forces, explore different ways that magnets are used and describe some properties of magnets. We are also looking forward to week 3 where we will be having a school wide focus on Science. Each day during that week, the students will be taking part in a variety of fun experiments. 
Rooms 2 and 3 are also taking part in a health unit entitled 'What's for Lunch?' It starts next week and will cover a different food each week. They will learn about where the food comes from, how it gets from the farm to us, and how different people and cultures enjoy it. They will also learn about the properties of the food being studied and how it relates to our health through a science based experiment. The purpose of this inquiry is to encourage the children to eat more vegetables. 

Physical Education

Along with daily fitness, the children will be doing gymnastics activities as part of our Physical Education programme. They will be involved in a range of balance activities using a variety of equipment. Your child needs to wear clothing suitable so that their movement is not restricted for the activities. It would be preferable if the girls did not wear stocking tights (footless ones are fine) on the day that they have gymnastics. Class teachers will let you know which day their scheduled session is. The children will also be involved in 'Fun Ferns Netball' and learn some large ball handling skills during one of the weeks.

The Arts

The focus for Visual Art this term is Painting. The students will be identifying and mixing primary colours to create secondary and tertiary colours and learning about the colour wheel. They will also create different shades and tints and use a paintbrush to demonstrate a range of techniques. Later in the term, rooms 4, 5 and 6 will be taking part in Performing Arts lessons with Mrs Hooke. 'Strike' percussion group will be coming to school as visiting performers later in the term. The children really enjoyed their last visit so we are glad that they were able to come again. 

Enrichment

Each week we will be running an enrichment programme. It will be an opportunity for your child to work with another teacher in our Junior School. They will rotate around the Junior School to experience activities involving other languages, music, art, science and ipads. 

Reporting to Parents

This week parents and caregivers are welcome to make an appointment with their child's teacher to discuss their current progress and their next learning steps. The conferences will take place on Monday May 12th and Tuesday May 13th and be for fifteen minutes each. Please go online to book an appropriate time. Near the end of this term, your child will be bringing home a written report and there will also be a 'Celebration of Learning' evening where you can come along to your child's classroom and have your child share their learning with you. Further details about this will be given at a later date. Children who start school this term will not have a written report at this stage but will have their after 'six weeks at school' conference.

'Hooked on Books' Programme

This valuable programme to support our students' in Literacy will begin next week. Thank you so much to all those adults who have volunteered their time for this. I will be contacting you this week to confirm days and times and to explain what to do. 

Parent and Caregiver Workshops

There will be a series of evenings for parents and caregivers to share ideas of how we teach reading, writing and mathematics and provide some practical ways of how you can support this learning at home. The workshops are a repeat of those that were run last year and are relevant to parents who's child/ren are either just new to school in Year 1 right through to those in Year 2. 
Workshop 1 will be on Wednesday June 4th and the topic will be Reading. The following week on Wednesday June 11th the topic will be writing, spelling and handwriting. The last workshop will be on Wednesday June 25th and will be about Mathematics. All the workshops will start at 7 p.m. and take approximately one hour (this depends upon how many questions you have) and will be in room 3. If you have any questions about the workshops, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

Other items

* Please have a look at the classroom blogs to get a snapshot of what is happening in your child's classroom and around the school. Feel free to write a comment too. 

* Last term, some preschool children from East Harbour Kindergarten visited room 3 and these visits will continue again this term. The usual preschool visits will also occur as usual on Thursday mornings from 8.40 a.m. to 11 a.m. Please notify the school office if you have a preschool child starting school this year and I will contact you regarding their school visits.

* Each child needs to have slippers at school during this term and next. Please name your child's slippers as children often have the same style and size and this avoids any confusion in the corridors. 

* There will be Vision and Hearing testing for any New Entrant child who missed their B4 school check or need to be retested. 

* There will a 'Starting School at Five' Information Evening for parents of preschoolers in room 3 at 7 p.m. on Wednesday June 18th.

If you have any comments or questions about your child's learning or our Junior School please do not hesitate to contact us. 

Yours in partnership 
Maureen Buckley