Junior School Term 1 Week 7

Week 8 –   
Monday 20 March – Harmony Week  
Monday 20 March – NAPLAN Year 3 Conventions of Language  
Tuesday 21 March – NAPLAN Year 3 Numeracy   
Tuesday 21 March – Lunchtime Concert 
Friday 24 March – Casual Dress Day, Colour theme of ORANGE for Harmony Week (Gold Coin donation not required)  

Week 9-   
Monday 27 March – Prep AFL Coaching Incursion (Please refer to EdSmart notification)  Thursday 30 March – Year 2 Excursion, Geelong (Please refer to EdSmart notification)
Friday 31 March – Assembly, 3G Class Item 
Friday 31 March – Prep Discovery Learning Excursion, Prep B, G, and R  

Project Care  

On 6th February 2023, an earthquake struck southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria. As blessed as we are in our country, we feel it is our mission to give to different communities and the news of a nation in need really resonated with all of us.  

Our Christian College community always comes together to support people and charities raising money to provide relief for the individuals and families affected so we have been busy creating handmade items to raise money. We managed to raise a grand total of $600.95, which is incredibly generous of our Junior School Community.

We are so grateful for our community in the way they have given to those in need – Thank you everyone so much for your generosity and visiting our stall! 

Pieper, Maya, Remi, Ebony, Hannah and Elodie 
The Project Care Team 

Building our Muscles! 

Did you know that you need a strong core and gross motor skills to be able to have effective fine motor skills? In Prep we do lots of things to build our core and gross motor skills so that we can draw and write with more accuracy and precision.  

Gross motor skills help with coordination, big movements, muscle endurance, balance and strength in the core. This then leads into our fine motor skills such as grasping, pinching, object manipulation, drawing and writing.  

You will see the Prep children lying on their tummies while they are writing, this helps the upper body strength and core muscles. The Prep children also do PMP, (Perceptual Motor Program) in their Physical Education classes, again developing their motor skills.  

MoPA 

On Wednesday 15th March the Prep children headed off to MoPA for their first excursion of the year. It was very exciting to be at school on a Wednesday and extra exciting to be off on an excursion! The Museum of Play and Art has been set up to allow children to really explore with all of their senses. There are opportunities for them to collaborate, be creative and develop their communication skills.  

At the start of our school year this is such a fabulous chance for the cohort to spend more time together. We work hard to develop relationships across the year level and allow for children to learn and play together.  

We were able to break up into smaller groups and participate in different learning opportunities. The children got to dress up and put on a performance, design and test a car, create a dam, climb, listen to a story and the favourite for many, paint a car!  

Year 1: A Community of Writers 

During this term, the children have been working hard building and demonstrating their language skills. They have been provided with opportunities to consolidate and extend their learning as they have completed a range of activities encompassing the different areas of Literacy. 

As part of our Reading and Writing program, the children read the picture book ‘Nanna’s Button Tin’ which explores the sharing of family memories between a young child and her grandmother, as they search for a ‘button’ to mend a teddy bear. During our class discussions, the children were encouraged to share their special memories in order to make their own connections with the text.

I am Proud of… I am Working on… 

The Year 4’s have made a positive start to the year and have been engaging in their learning through goal setting. We have been linking our goals to our ‘essential learning’, the Australian curriculum and what skills we want to grow. This has been an encouraging process where students have been able to take ownership of their learning and display their goals in various ways. Students then seek ways to develop their skills and participate in learning activities that help them achieve their goal. This is a great way for students and teachers to target certain abilities, while encompassing all learning outcomes.  

In 4G we have also begun looking for certain elements that we are proud of in our tasks and explaining why we have highlighted these areas of our learning. This visible thinking skill helps us identify the essence of ideas from reading, watching, or listening in non-verbal ways by using a colour, symbol, or image to represent the ideas. This routine also facilitates the discussion of a text or event as students share their colours, symbols, and images. Check out some of the goal setting we have begun to do in 4G! 

‘Unplugged’ Activities in Digital Learning

Did you know that not all learning taking place during Digital Technologies classes involves using an actual computer? We call these activities ‘unplugged’, and they are designed to help support students with their understanding of general computing concepts or development of specific skill sets.

Unplugged activities are ‘hands-on’ activities that assist with re-enforcing the subject content that the class is working through and assist students with demonstrating their knowledge acquisition through multi-model means of participation and engagement. 

Year 1 students this term, have been learning about Online Safety this term, combining both computer based and unplugged activities into our weekly sessions. We have discussed safely using the internet, when not to go online and what rules we should follow to keep us and our families safe while exploring the difference between our public and personal information, and what is safe and unsafe to share. 

Middle School House Swimming Carnival

Last Friday, March 10, Year 4 students attended the Middle School House Swimming Carnival at Kardinia Aquatic Centre. Students had opportunities to swim in freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly events, participate in the novelty events and go on the waterslide. It was pleasing to watch the Junior School students support their peers and students from Middle School and contribute to the carnival atmosphere.  

Penman house were the overall winners, closely followed by Burrows, Flynn and Taylor. Congratulations goes to all our students who participated contributing valuable house points. At Year 4, medals were awarded to the first three places for both boys and girls who accumulated the most points in the swimming events. 

Year 4s get Into the Groove in the Music Classroom 

In the Music classroom Year 4 students have been collaborating in small groups to create rhythmic compositions. These songs are performed using a mixture of traditional percussion instruments, body percussion and everyday objects such as chairs, boxes, bins etc. Students have been exploring different elements that can be used to enhance their music such as dynamics, texture and timbre and are using these elements to help make their songs interesting and evolving.  

Many of these rhythmic songs have been composed based on a contextual idea or theme where the students are acting and performing their song in a specific setting. Some of these include a classroom setting where a teacher tries to maintain order as their class continues to misbehave by tapping the tables, an office setting where workers start to have fun playing music while on their coffee break and a football team who are drumming and chanting on the bus on the way to their match. 

It is wonderful to see the students using their creativity and passion to create truly unique pieces of music.  

Spotlight on Clubs – Computer Club! 

Computer Club at Junior School is held every Thursday during lunchtime, in the Digital Technologies Room. All students are welcome to attend.  

The schedule for students to attend is on a rotating fortnightly basis, with Prep and Year 3 students attending together (odd weeks) and Year 1 and Year 2 students attending together (even weeks), where students have the opportunity to learn from and with, other students who share similar areas of computer interest, across the campus. 

Year 4 students have the option of attending each week, bringing their own device and setting up in the special ‘Yr4 only’ room next door to Digital Technologies.