Week 7 Term 4
While it is only 15 days of school left for the gorgeous students of the 2K team, we are still busy as bees!!!!
Homework - Home readers from OLC will continue until the end of this week and then I will begin to collect up the books to determine what is missing starting next week. I hope that the students will remain reading their own books and local library books every night and encourage them to write in the titles in their RED reading log until the end of term. The Think Mentals books have been completed and will be sent home soon. Please let me know if you would like your child to continue with maths homework for the remainder of the year and I can supply a supplementary number Mathletics booklet. Spelling will continue for the remainder of the year with an new list each Monday - please continue using the look, cover, write and check books each night.
Plastic bottles for recycled art
We have begun sketching and planning for our final art project for the year which will be a fish model made from a used plastic bottle (similar to the image above). The children have chosen a fish to create and will be busy hunting your home and recycling bin for a suitable plastic bottle. If they could bring in their (cleaned) bottle sometime this week by Friday's art lesson it would be appreciated. I will have a few spares ready for any forgetful kids. Anyone who would like to help out over the next few Friday afternoons from 2.00 is more than welcome - just let me know (via email please).
LEARNING
English - We have continued our grammar focus reviewing parts of speech including nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. We are always on the hunt for interesting vocabulary in books and our own writing. Our reading groups are beginning to look at different types of comprehension questions literal - right there and inferential - look at the clues and think about it. Anyone who would like to help out with reading groups for the next weeks is welcome to - Monday and Tuesday mornings from 10.00 to 10.30.
We are experiencing such success and personal growth in our Talk 4 Write program that is used in our class this year. We are so proud of our paragraphed hybrid animal information reports that are on display in our class. We have started our second narrative unit and looking at the structure of traditional tales. We have put our creative hats on and changed all of the elements of Jack and the Beanstalk to create some amazing innovated texts. Keep an eye out for them displayed on our walls and windows soon!
Please be aware that the next PLD spelling rotation began last week - your child's level was assessed using their previous, current and following stage to determine their personal spelling stage. This current cycle will continue to the end of this term and into next year. Your child will continue to bring home a list of words each Monday.
Mathematics We finished our unit on maps, coordinates, positions and directions learning concept unit with a fun game of Battleships on Friday. Some treasure maps in art and design are in the making too that integrates our mathematics learning about maps, coordinates, measurement and direction/position! We will also begin revising money concepts later this week in correlation with multiplication, division and skip counting review. Please note that we will be specifically targeting the rote learning of the 2x, 5x 10x, and 11x tables for the remainder of the year in mental mathematics.
Religion - We are completing our Loving our Differences unit where we are learning about prayer, how Jesus prayed and how we are a part of God's family, different, unique but together as one. We will begin our final unit of Advent for the last part of the year.
Science We are loving learning about forces in our world. Push and pull are two forces which can move an object, stop an object, change it's shape or direction. We have learnt about friction and two surfaces that rub together that can slow a force. We have been learning about the pull force of gravity. We learnt that we wouldn't hurt ourselves when we fall over if we didn't have gravity but it is so important for us to be able to do so many things and how so many things work in our everyday life.
We really liked the information fact we learnt about how the size of a planet relates to how much gravity it has and how space has zero gravity. We wanted to know a little more about being in space. We loved spending a little time on Friday watching some cool clips of real astronauts in space explaining to us how they did things in space when there is no gravity like washing their hair, brushing their teeth and sleeping.
Thank you for your continued support and assistance,
Penny and Kristy.
