English
In English, students continue to engage in daily novel study with our text “Yirra and her Deadly Dog Demon.” With her Mum on a warpath, it’s a race against time for Yirra to find a dog trainer for her naughty dog Demon. This book gives students a contemporary view of urban Indigenous life in Sydney. It has encouraged rich discussions as we unpack the content. Our daily reviews have focused on introducing new vocabulary, sentence construction, grammar and morphology. Weekly explicit handwriting lessons also take place, with a focus on pre cursive writing experiences. During writing time, students have used a variety of picture stimuli to expand the kernel sentences and substituted more engaging verbs, to enhance the quality of their sentences. 

Xavier - I really like our new novel and using the new vocabulary words to write interesting sentences. 

Winter - I enjoy our handwriting lessons each week, as we are learning how to write in cursive. My other favourite part is reading mastery when we read new stories each week and have to answer questions. 

Lucy - I like when Mrs Hampson gives us time to read our books silently and when she reads to us. 

Bernadette - I love our new novel because it is about a girl called Yirra and her dog Demon. She is having trouble getting him to listen to her. I also enjoy spelling mastery, because I like learning to spell new words with Mrs Hampson. 

Maths
Our Connecting Maths Concepts focus on big ideas in Mathematics, which teaches explicit strategies that enable students to master challenging concepts. Our students continue to develop their problem-solving capabilities and their ability to think and communicate mathematically. During weekly daily review students are practising their skills with telling the time, speed times tables facts, measurement and volume and capacity.  

Milton - I really like doing our times tables each week and I am getting faster with the answers. Most nights at home I use a timetables app that Mrs Hampson showed us and it is really cool. 

Elsie - Our CMC lessons are really good because we get to work with number families and get quicker at knowing our timetables. 

Patrick - On Fridays we get to do maths daily review where we get to answer different types of questions and my favourite questions are timetables ones. 

Alonso - My favourite parts of our maths lessons are when we do our number families and when I keep improving with my timetables. 

Religion
As we continue to engage actively in this term's unit ‘The Local Faith Community,’ students this week had a special visit to the Church to meet with Father George and find out about the day in the life of a Priest. Father George also took the time to explain how we are part of our Sacred Heart Parish Community. 

Alonso - Father George told us that before he was a Priest he used to play lots of golf and was a really good basketball player. How cool is that!

Bernadette - I loved learning that Father George has a really busy daily routine and he goes to bed really early because he gets so tired. 

Hugo - Father George taught us about his day to day life and I liked when he explained the different symbols in the Church. 

Winter - Father George taught us that our Church is 137 years old and I liked looking at the different things that can be found in our Church. 

Koby - When we went to the Church the other day I learnt that Father George has 6 brothers and 1 sister and he enjoys eating fish for dinner. 

Creative Arts: Music
This term we are learning to play music using body percussion and other sound sources to explore and demonstrate the concepts of tone, pitch and dynamics. Students had lots of fun working together to create their very own thunderstorm, using only parts of their body. We also looked closely at the Sound of Music and had a go at writing our own music notes to perform a group solfege. This was lots of fun! 

Koby - It was so fun when we played the apple pie game and it was so cool when we made a thunderstorm with our body. 

Charlie - I liked doing the thunderstorm dance, because I like moving around. 

Elsie - In Music, I liked creating a storm because we got to use the different parts of our body to make music as the instruments. 

Patrick - It was really fun when we played the game apple pie, because I got to change my voice so the class couldn’t recognise it was me. 

Visual Arts
Students have demonstrated their understanding and skills through a variety of mediums this term. They have discussed their plans with peers and how these affect their selection of materials, tools and techniques they have used for each art piece. Below is a small selection of different art we have completed this term.

Lucy - My favourite art this term was when we drew the Opera House and made it all colourful. 

Tane - I enjoyed creating our Sally Morgan artworks, because we got to use different shapes and bright colours. 

Ethan - I like colouring in. It is fun. 

Milton - I liked sketching our cassowaries because they were challenging and very detailed. I think mine turned out really good. 

PE
In PE lessons with Mr Hill, we are preparing for our athletics carnival coming up at the end of this term. We have practised our distance and sprinting skills and we have begun our field events of long jump, discus and shot put. We continue to participate in cooperative games, to encourage sportsmanship and contribute as a member of a team. Friday hockey skills sessions with Cherly is definitely a weekly highlight for us all!  

Noah - The best thing about PE is that we get to learn new games and learn how to look after our body. 

Arthur - I have enjoyed doing high jump this term with Mr Hill, because it has taught me to jump higher and it is really fun. 

Xavier - In PE, my favourite game is Capture the Flag and when Mr Hill teaches us new techniques to help with our running. 

Evander - PE with Mr Hill  is fun and I have lots of fun learning how to play new games with my friends. I have also learnt how to run faster this term. 

Tane - I really like playing Capture the Flag, because it is really fun exercise and you can work as a team with your friends. 

Bernadette - I like playing Bop Tag, because it is fun to celebrate with your team members when we win and we get to learn to share and communicate with each other. 

Science: Excursion to the Eurobodalla Botanic Gardens
Students thoroughly enjoyed our day out at the Botanic Gardens this week. We participated in a variety of activities, including regeneration activities, a bush walk and plant identification. As you can see from the photos and our recounts, we had the best day and were sad when it was time to hop on the bus and travel back to school.

Lucy - I really liked learning about plants and how to use a magnifying glass to see if it was a boy or a girl. You have to look at how many styles a plant has. 

Noah - From our excursion today, I learnt that the Kangaroo Paw plant looks like a kangaroo foot and I also learnt about different plants on our nature walk. 

Tane - I really liked going on our walk in the bush to find different plants and I enjoyed listening to the birds sing. 

Hugo- I enjoyed going on the bush walk and my favourite plant I saw was the grass tree. I also learnt about photosynthesis and what botanists do for their job. 

Koby- This excursion was very fun, because I got to learn about flowers and their purpose in life. When we went on our walk I learnt that different plants have different features and different jobs in life.