Dear Nativity Community
As you walk around our school students are busy engaging in many exciting learning experiences.
Our students are engaging with Writing, continuing with the work that staff are doing with The Writing Revolution. Students are transferring the knowledge they learn from ‘The Writing Revolution’ to all curriculum areas. Some of our students have shared their thoughts about writing:
• When we are writing we start with a ‘kernel’ idea and then expand the kernel by explaining when, where, why and who to give more detail to our sentence and make our writing more interesting. We have also used this with the class novel we are reading ‘The Last bear’, we wrote about the book and what we thought would occur.. Using the words because, but and so we were able to extend our sentences. – Tilly – Year 6
• We have been looking at sentences and sentence fragments and have had to decide whether we have a sentence or not. If it is not a sentence, we have had to use our knowledge to make the fragment into a sentence. It has been good to think about the use of because, but or so as a way of writing interesting sentences. – Cristian – Year 4
• We write sentences using High 5 sentences, which helps us to think of using capital letters, punctuation, subject, predicates and whether our writing makes sense. Amelia T- Year 3
• Writing is fun because we get to write about fun things. We are learning to use punctuation marks. Emmerson -Year 1
• I like making books. We are starting to write our own book. My book is about all the things I can do. Leo – Reception
This week we had Narelle Rice join us and work with our staff in the area of Mathematics with a particular focus on Bond Blocks. Our Reception to Year 4 classes uses Bond Blocks each week to deepen their knowledge of numbers and develop an understanding of the bonds of 10 which our number system is based on. We continue to support our students in Mathematics with small intervention groups working on number bonds. Our 2023 data showed that the intervention supported our students in developing their number knowledge.
A reminder that next week, our Year 3 and 5 students will participate in NAPLAN. Assessments will begin at 9am Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. If students are absent, we will run catch up sessions the following week.
School attendance is important to support students socially and academically. It is wonderful to see so many of our students ready to learn every day.
Did you know..
• Students with high attendance score higher on tests
• Good attendance habits help students learn the skills and develop the grit needed to show up every day for university and work.
• Missing just 2 days of school per month adds up to 10% of the school year
As we are near the half way point of the term, I leave you with this thought about learning…“If you learn something new every day, you can teach something new every day.’’ – Martha Stewart
Kind regards
Melinda James