Term 4

Well here we are, half way through term 4! Where has the year gone?! I continue to be proud and amazed by the wonderful children in Room 13. I feel truly blessed to have been their teacher this year.

As you would be aware, we have had a very busy start to semester 2 with lots of visitors to our classroom to view our Literacy Block. We have been lucky enough to not only have visiting teachers from within our school but many other schools also.

I am very excited to also share that I have been selected as a finalist in the WA Education Awards—Beginning Teacher of the Year (I am currently in my last year to be eligible for this award). A huge thank you must go to ‘my’ lovely students for making me look so good to the judges. Fingers crossed we get to celebrate on the 30th of November when the winner is announced at the Award breakfast.

It is only 5 short weeks until the end of the year!

Mrs Kirsty Campbell

Class Teacher

 Reminders

Our Calendar

Thursday

Art

(even weeks)

Early Close each Tuesday 2:30pm

Wednesday:

Sport

Music

Thursday

Library

Friday

Italian

 Homework Reminders

Spelling words are sent home each Monday. It is important children practice these words prior to the spelling test each Friday.

Home readers

Please ensure your child returns their home reader on their nominated day as other     classes require these books also

Apples - Friday

Oranges - Thursday

Watermelons  - Tuesday

Bananas  - Monday

Your children know their groups

Literacy Update

We have had a huge focus on building our vocabulary and understanding of language through sentence building. I am sure you have heard many new words and possibly some technical terms you never knew existed. I can not explain to you how proud I am of all the children have achieved. They continue to impress me with their willingness to learn and experiment with knowledge and I am not the only one! Our principal Ms Roberts, visits our class often just to see how much more the children know from week to week. She is always as impressed as I am. I hope you have noticed the growth in your children and feel every bit as proud as me.

Some of the words you may have heard recently are:

· Onomatopoeia

· Extra terrestrial

· Enchanting

· Mesmerising

· Inquisitive

And many, many more. Just ask them.

LITERACY BLOCK

A vital part of literacy learning is our Literacy Blocks that run each day in class.

To begin our literacy block we start with a ’Warm Up’. The Warm Up is a fast paced revision of  sight words, word meanings, phonics and reading strategies. This can consist of flash cards and/or Power Point. Having these warm ups caters for all different learning abilities and is a great way to develop instant recall.

If ever you would like to come in and observe a Literacy block please let me know.

Maths Update

 

As you know, we have been completing our Mathematics program via PR1ME this year. This Mathematics program is very comprehensive and teaching children various strategies to solve problems. This term we are working on coloumn addition and subtraction with regrouping (borrowing and carrying on for us old schoolers). The children have been working very hard to develop their knowledge and understanding in this area of Mathematics. One of the strategies we have been using is called 'self talk'. 'Self talk' requires children to speak out loud when solving a problem. This method not only enables me to hear their thinking and understanding, but enables them to hear the correct strategy over and over, thereby ensuring it reaches their long term memory. Ask your children to give you a demonstration, they really are very good!

Science

Have you been asked some hard hitting questions relating to food and the ways in which they can change...why some changes are reversible and others are not?

We have had a great time experimenting with the changes we can make to food, but the most exciting day was ‘spaghetti day’.

Firstly, we looked at uncooked spaghetti, we felt it, smelt it and tasted it (much to everyone's disgust). We then put some spaghetti in boiling water and the same amount of spaghetti in cold water. We set the timer for 10 minutes, then waited. What did we find? The boiling water cooked the spaghetti and the cold water did nothing but make our spaghetti wet, in fact, it took over an hour for the cold water to break down the spaghetti and make it soft enough to bend without breaking.

What did we do with all the cooked spaghetti? We ate it! It was delicious!

Then we made spaghetti towers. What a great testament to team work. So much fun, so much strategy!

Term 3 - Week 5 - 10

ENGLISH

Since visiting Haileybury Primary in Melbourne at the beginning of this term, I have implemented many new strategies to engage and support children in developing a solid foundation in literacy. As a result, we have had many visitors to our classroom this term to come and observe our amazing Literacy Block. Both the children and I have had so much fun and learned so very much this term. I am so proud of their growth, their excitement and willingness to give each task their very best effort but above all, their focus and commitment.

Ethan with his Literacy Award from Ms. Roberts for showing outstanding

 knowledge

One of the aspects I observed at Haileybury was sentence building. Whilst, I have always implemented sentence building in my Literacy Block, I didn't do it like they did! I loved the concept and knew it was something I wanted to implement as soon as I got back into the classroom. We have worked very hard this term to develop our sentence building skills and the associated grammatical knowledge. How many times have you heard the noun, verb, adjective, adverb, simile or connective chants?

Below are some wonderful examples

We look forward to further developing our English skills in Term 4.

MATHS

Maths is all about PR1ME! I have never seen children get so excited about Maths than when I say it's PR1ME time. We have a range of foci each week. Each concept is introduced by posing a problem to the children relating to the learning objectives. This not only enables me to see what children already know about each concept but, how they problem solve, how they self talk and communicate their thoughts to others. It is quite enlightening. Below you will find photos of children during one of our problem solving sessions. We were about to learn about measuring and the importance of using uniform units to measure. For example, we were not able to get an accurate measurement if we used a range of objects such writing pencils. We found out that each group got very different results due to the fact that each pencil was a different size. Once we began to use uniform units such as unifix cubes, our measurements became much more accurate.

SCIENCE

This term saw us participate in our annual Science Tabloid afternoon (that was rescheduled to the morning due to bad weather). Children in years 1 and 2 came together to experience a range of experiments. Children were separated into groups and got to rotate between four experiments, some of which included: sherbert making, lava lamps, egg drop, coloured milk, and rainbow markers. It was a fun filled morning full of Science talk and excitement. 

Mrs Campbell ran the Lava Lamp experiment. She took one plastic bottle and filled it almost to the top with vegetable oil, then filled the rest with water. The water sunk to the bottom of the bottle even though we put it on top of the oil! Then we got to drop some food colouring in. The food colouring made little balls and sunk through the oil. When the balls hit the bottom they coloured the water but not the oil. Then Mrs Campbell dropped in some aspirin tablets and the coloured water made coloured bubbles that floated up into the oil. Mrs Campbell put a light underneath. It was AMAZING!!!

ENTERPRISE LEARNING - Student Fete

To celebrate our school turning 100 years old this year our school had a Student Fete. Room 13 decided to have a fishing game with prizes for each winner however, after a 'technical glitch', we decided to make our stall a Lucky Dip. We set about decorating paper bags to place our prizes into. We ended up decorating and filling 100 girl bags AND 100 boy bags! What a huge effort. We were so worried we would have lots of prizes left over after the fete, but hoped we wouldn't. Due to some generous donations, we did not have to apply to the 'bank' (Ms. Roberts) for a loan. In order to ensure our stall ran as a real business would, we had to form committees such as advertising, decorating, clean and pack away and marketing. We also had to develop a business plan to present. The skills we developed as a result, were invaluable.

There was a lot of work involved but, we sold EVERY SINGLE ONE of our lucky dip bags and made a whopping $205.00 to spend on resources for our classroom. Stay tuned to find out what we purchase. 

The photos below were taken by the talented Leeanne (Taj's mum). Thank you for sharing :)

FACTION CARNIVAL  

Congratulations to BLUE for taking out the title!

I am very proud of the training and effort everyone in Room 13 put into the Faction Carnival preparation and day. Well done!

What a fun filled, busy term it has been. Have a safe and relaxing holiday.
See in Term 4

Mrs C

Term 3

Hello and welcome to term 3! TERM 3!! Where is the year going?

The start to this term has been a very busy one and I have a feeling it will continue for the entire term.

Happy Birthday Wattle Grove Primary School 1915~2015

Already this term we have seen Wattle Grove Primary School turn 100! We began studying the history of our school last term and will continue to do so this term. We celebrated turning 100 by having a special assembly at which we saw Mrs Beed cut the 'birthday' cake. How lucky we are to be able to participate in such a milestone event.

 Semester Two Student Councillors


Of course the beginning of a new semester also means the appointment of new Student Councillors. We had many applicants and decided the fairest way to choose our new room 13 representatives would be to draw the names from a 'hat'. After much nail biting suspense, I am proud to announce our new councillors are...

Audrey 

Nad

I am sure our new councillors will represent  room 13 to the same high standard our semester 1 councillors did.

Our semester 1 councillor Natalia handing over her role to Audrey

The pinning of the badge

Our semester 1 councillor Ansh handing over his role to Nad

 

The pinning of the badge

Lap-a-thon

On Friday, after lunch, the whole of Wattle Grove Primary School participated in Lap-a-thon to raise money for more iPads. We had to run around the school oval lots of times. It was great fun.

Firstly, Mrs Campbell told us all the information we needed to know about running and getting our cards stamped to record our laps. Then we had to put our hats on and get our water bottles. We lined up outside and walked to the oval. When we got there we needed to look for the table that had a Room 13 sign on it.

Secondly, we did some stretching so we could run faster. Then we listened to a man talk about which direction we needed to run in. After that, he said "GO!" We ran so many laps. It was hot and tiring!

Thirdly, the running was over and we got to have a rest. Then Mrs Campbell said, "You need to line up now please." We walked back to class. Then a lady from the canteen brought us some icy poles to cool us down, they were DELICIOUS! 

Finally, we went back into class and Mrs Campbell told us all how many laps we ran. We were so tired. It was the best day ever!

Children of Room 13 (Shared writing task).



Homework

It is very important that children remember to return their homework folder each Friday as the books need to be returned to the library in order to be available to other classes. New spelling lists and home readers are given each Monday, please ensure you read with your child each night. Practice ensures fluency which in turn supports comprehension.