Year 4 Sacramental Programme

A reminder that the first parent meeting to prepare for Reconciliation will be on Thursday
at 7pm .

Week 2 Term 2

Swimming groups were sorted quickly last week and the new emphasis programme began.  This year as well as teaching the basic swimming skills there is water safety teaching which is part of the programme. Please talk to your child about what they have learned each day.  As they are all in different groups the 'water safety' component may be a little different.
Bus costs can be sent to the office in a named envelope. $10 per child please.
Lunches on Thursdays. Please no lunch orders.  I will deliver sausages to the pool as I swap with Ms Bennett at 12:45. It is difficult to sort through all the pie warmers so no pie warmers please. We were very hungry on Thursday after our lesson, so maybe some extra food could be packed.

Uniform: No kilts Tuesday and Thursday girls. A reminder that sports uniform does not include wearing your favourite sweat shirt, which was the case for one or two people last week. Netball girls - you may wear your sports uniform on Wednesdays, too, with your netball shoes. A reminder that netball practice is at 1pm on Wednesday lunch times. We are encouraging the girls to eat quickly and I will make sure that they are not delayed in the classroom, will try to have them eating by 12:45. Thank you Mrs Donaldson and Mrs Breen for giving up your time to coach these girls - we had really excited people after the first practice last week. All girls have been given contact numbers for their coaches and need to remember their responsibility when BELONGING to a team. If you can't make practice or the game on a Saturday, please ring the coach as soon as you can. Are there a couple of people able to assist these wonderful coaches on a Saturday morning as team managers? Please contact Kate or Vanessa.

Science: Last term Mrs Flannery released teachers and taught Digital Technology in the classroom. This term we are lucky to have Mr Hogue back with us, and his passion is Science, especially hands on science learning. The first session will be Wednesday morning. This will be a perfect opportunity for us to practise our self management skills, so that we can all learn without interruptions.

Discovery: Despite the weather turning pretty wintery last week (theme = Autumn, weather = winter), we enjoyed our first Wednesday afternoon Discovery session with Room 7. It would be fantastic if we could have some parents assist with this.  The commitment does not have to be for the term, we would be happy to have a roster. If we have parent support we will be able to offer a wider range of activities.  This week it would be fabulous to have another pair of hands as we need to tie ribbon - a skill that will be a challenge for some.

Religious Education: Our class will be leading Monday morning prayer in the church in Week 5, 29th May, and leading the Wednesday Parish Mass Week 6, 7th June (after Queens Birthday weekend). Pop these dates on your calendar as we would love you to join us at these celebrations.

This week I will not be in the classroom on Wednesday or Thursday mornings.

Homework

Reading: Be sure that you take a book home every night from your browse box. If you are enjoying reading a chapter book of your own or from the town library, don't forget to record this reading in your log. I hope it was just a 'getting back into school week' last week, as there was not much reading recorded in logs.  I do keep track of this each week.  As you have 'sunshine on line' paid for by the PTA, using books from here is great to put in your reading log. It's a bit like riding a bike - the more you practise the better you get, so if there is no practice it is quite a challenge to get improvement. Please make this a priority each night this term.

Spelling: We continue to work on the 'long a spelling pattern'. Last week we learned what the spelling patterns were, then on Friday we learned how to use our knowledge of the different spelling patterns to sample words, then as good readers look carefully at the words we have written and find the one that looks right. This is the skill that I am expecting to see transferred into writing books this term, as well as using our sound lines to record the sounds of a word in order, when we are trying to write words that are not words that we know and can write. We will be practising this as part of the classroom programme. Establishing this skill is my Spelling Goal for term 2. If this sounds confusing I am happy to talk to you about this - it's definitely easier to show how this works. I have edited this paragraph several times to make it as clear as possible to understand. There is spelling to be done every night. 

Swimming: Organise togs each Tuesday & Thursday (and take them home again each day). There are still some at school since last Thursday.

Have a great week - keep working on those skills you need to be great learners. Listening to teaching and instructions, and self managing our actions. The listening one is especially for some people in the swimming lessons. Staying above the water to listen is very important!

Autumn Writing

This week we have been writing using our 5 senses.  We were lucky to get out to experience Autumn and the  wonderful leaves when it was lovely on Tuesday.  Here are some photos of looking and listening before we got to and played.  Clearly not in any particular order.

 Total concentration as we took notes of what we saw and heard.  We all enjoyed being out in God's wonderful creation. What a celebration Autumn is.

Discovery - Rooms 3 & 7

Today was the first afternoon of Discovery with the theme "Autumn". A few pictures of the environmental art that we did - under the verandahs as the rain came just as we had collected our treasures. Following this the children chose to either do leaf rubbings or God's eyes for the last part of the session.  Lots of fun. As it was a choice there was even one person who chose to continue to write about Autumn.

Just a few of the amazing creations and designs. I love the "fire" that the boys made, a follow on from the "fire leaves" that they found yesterday.  Writing photos will be posted separately. Great learning fun in the Autumn.

Studyladder

Studyladder has some good activities to develop understanding of Location and Transformation. Today we read the story "Going on a Bear Hunt" and then we plotted the long grass, oozy mud etc onto a grid.  The children will finish tomorrow by drawing pathways to get to the bear cave.  They will describe the path taken using the points of the compass.  They worked well on this activity.  Some of the children are still not entirely sure about left and right, so we've been making a bit of a game of this.  We also have a marching chant that hopefully helps with this.  At home, just check that your child is confident and consistent in this knowledge, thanks.  As I've told them, to follow directions you need to know which is which!

Understanding Long 'a'

This term we are looking at the spelling patterns for long vowels. Over the next 2 weeks our vowel is 'a'.  Depending on the level your child is on they will look at words like play, make (we say 'a' split 'e'), famous, eight, rain.  This spelling pattern will be written in the 'to learn' column of the spelling sheet. Be sure that each night when practising their spelling, they say and listen to the sounds and record only 1 sound line for the long 'a' that can be heard.

This is how the spelling tooling looks.

ai	ay	a-e “a split e”	a	eigh
r  ai n	p l ay	m a ke	f a m ou s	eigh t

Keep checking that each letter is written correctly, back to front 'a's are incorrect in a word. Lots of us have "getting our letters correct" as a goal for this term. To achieve this we need to look and check on ourselves.

Uniform On Swimming Days

I omitted to add that on Tuesdays and Thursdays school sports uniforms may be worn. No kilts at the pool please - they are hard to manage and look worse for wear after being tucked up in a bag. School sports uniform consists of: green track pants with sports tee-shirt and school jersey,  white shirt and school jersey (girls) or grey shirt and school jersey (boys)..