Middle School - Term 3 Week 1

Middle School Newsletter: Term 2 Week 10

CONNECT WITH GRADE 3 and 4

Welcome back! We hope that each of you have had a fun and relaxing school holidays and that you are ready for a productive Term 3!

Learning and Teaching

We Are Learning To....

READING: understand how words work. By using our personal experiences and background knowledge, we are able to work out context clues from a given text.

WRITING: reflect on our learning from the whole semester. Looking back to the beginning of the year, we are remembering what we have learnt and setting goals for the rest of 2016

V.C.O.P. (Vocabulary Connectives Openers Punctuation): continue to develop our knowledge of the V.C.O.P. process by linking it to our unit on explanations. The students will investigate relevant technical vocabulary, connectives and interesting openings.

MATHS: reinforce our understanding of the different maths topics that we have covered this term. Topics include: multiplication, fractions and decimals, addition and subtraction.

UNIT OF STUDY (Biological Science - 'Beneath Our Feet'): Last week students began investigating Earth and Space science in our new unit, 'Beneath Our Feet.' They will begin to understand how the Earth's surface changes over time as a result of natural processes and human activity. This week they will have a hands on look at rocks and their features, as well as how they have changed over time. 

SPELLING: use SMART spelling strategies including breaking words into sounds and syllables, identifying the 'tricky' parts of the words and writing the words and sentences from a dictation passage.  Emphasis will also be placed on understanding the meaning of the words with students encouraged to include the words in their writing and oral language.

eLEARNING: use the iPads and Netbooks to support and extend learning through Mathletics and Reading Eggs and for research and publishing purposes.

 Term 2 Calendar Dates

Monday 20th June: Semester 1 Reports Go Home

Wednesday 22nd June: Student Led Conferences

Friday 24th June: Final Day of Term 2 (2:30 Dismissal)

Current notices

Homework: 
Homework in the Middle School is sent home on a Friday and due back the following Thursday. The homework consists of reading (minimum of 4 nights), Mathletics activities and SMART spelling-look, say, sound, spell, write, check.
We would appreciate if parents could record and sign in the student diary when students complete their homework tasks.

Reading Eggs and Mathletics:
All students have individual passwords to access both of these programs.  We encourage students to explore activities to revise and extend their learning.  These programs are online tools which students use to enhance their learning. 
Students are given set Mathletics tasks to be completed for homework.  This week the focus is on Numeration and Place Value.

Making News

Achievement Awards from Weeks 6 & 7
3S
Lucia- for using her growth mindset when it came to a challenging explanation task. 
 Kate- for consistently helping her peers in the classroom and doing the right thing. 

3G
Lucy- showing excellent ICT skills helping Mrs Grisdale to learn how to use and iPad
Georgios- using the science inquiry skills of questioning, predicting, investigating and concluding during our science unit.


4H 

Conor- AUSSIE OF THE MONTH (May)

Evie- using her synthesising skills to transport Violet Beauregarde into another one of Roald Dahl's books.

4W

Victoria- her ability to use her mathematical knowledge to work through difficult problems in the Maths Olympiad.

 SCIENCE OPEN AFTERNOON
June 17th... 1:50-3:30!!!

Some of the excellent work from our Science Open Afternoon in the Middle School!

Middle School - Term 2 Week 8

Middle School Newsletter: Term 2 Week 8

CONNECT WITH GRADE 3 and 4

Learning and Teaching

We Are Learning To....

READING: Synthesise after reading. Synthesising involves merging new information with existing knowledge to create an original idea, see a new perspective, or form a new line of thinking to achieve insight.

WRITING: Produce an explanation text in poster form that includes the correct features. Students will be using the knowledge they learnt last week about explanations and create an engaging format that will interest the reader.

V.C.O.P. (Vocabulary Connectives Openers Punctuation): continue to develop our knowledge of the V.C.O.P. process by linking it to our unit on explanations. The students will investigate relevant technical vocabulary, connectives and interesting openings.

MATHS: apply our knowledge of addition and subtraction to solve problems. Students will develop their understanding of a range of addition and subtraction strategies through a number of hands-on maths games. They will then apply these understandings to solve real life maths problems. This week there will be a focus on subtraction.

UNIT OF STUDY (Biological Science - 'Beneath Our Feet'): Last week students began investigating Earth and Space science in our new unit, 'Beneath Our Feet.' They will begin to understand how the Earth's surface changes over time as a result of natural processes and human activity. This week they will have a hands on look at rocks and their features, as well as how they have changed over time. 

SPELLING: use SMART spelling strategies including breaking words into sounds and syllables, identifying the 'tricky' parts of the words and writing the words and sentences from a dictation passage.  Emphasis will also be placed on understanding the meaning of the words with students encouraged to include the words in their writing and oral language.

eLEARNING: use the iPads and Netbooks to support and extend learning through Mathletics and Reading Eggs and for research and publishing purposes.

 Term 2 Calendar Dates

Wednesday 8th June: Maths Olympiad
Monday 13th June: Queen's Birthday Public Holiday
Tuesday 14th June: Regional Cross Country
Friday 17th June: Whole School Science Celebration Open Afternoon 1:50-3:30

Current notices

Homework: 
Homework in the Middle School is sent home on a Friday and due back the following Thursday. The homework consists of reading (minimum of 4 nights), Mathletics activities and SMART spelling-look, say, sound, spell, write, check.
We would appreciate if parents could record and sign in the student diary when students complete their homework tasks.

Reading Eggs and Mathletics:
All students have individual passwords to access both of these programs.  We encourage students to explore activities to revise and extend their learning.  These programs are online tools which students use to enhance their learning. 
Students are given set Mathletics tasks to be completed for homework.  This week the focus is on Numeration and Place Value.

Making News

Achievement Awards from Weeks 6 & 7
3S
Layla- for contributing excellent ideas to our discussion in our inquiry lessons and during the CERES excursion last week. 
Jake - for Using his growth mindset when tackling difficult tasks. 

3G
Adam- for consistently completing homework to a high standard.
Josh- using WOW words to discuss his ideas.

4H 
Hannah- for her efforts towards estimating, measuring and ordering the volumes of different containers
Drew- PE Award
Tyler- Performing Arts Award

4W
Baylin- for his ability to accurately estimate and measure the capacity of a range of containers in maths lessons.

_____________________________

 Celebrating our Learning
Learning about Ants and Citizen Science.

At Mentone Park the Grade 3 and 4s have been learning about ants in Science.  Ivan, our scientist from CSIRO, has taught us about invertebrates and vertebrates.  Invertebrates have no backbone and vertebrates do.  Which of these creatures would be invertebrates?  Jellyfish, snake, sea stars, bears, humans, moths, ants.  The answer is at the end of our article.

Next Monday we are going to participate in a Citizen Science activity. We are going to put down different types of food to investigate how many ants come to eat it.  Some of the food will be olive oil, glutamine, sugar, salt and shortbread biscuits. We will be doing this in different locations (variables) to see if the location makes a difference.  Once the food has been left for an hour we will then go outside and photograph the ants and count how many ants are there.  No ants will be killed for the process.  We will be writing our results on a data sheet and sending this information to scientists in America!!!!  They will use the results to learn more about ants.

We look forward to hearing more about the results from all around the world.  It will be lots of fun.

Did you know?

there are honey ants who store nectar in their abdomens and the workers are called repletes

ants' habitat can be at a picnic and they can take a sandwich and other food to their home

a bull ant is a member of the ant family  (it's not a type of cow!)

there are many ants in the world.

Bees:

worker bees get honey from nectar

the worker bees get honey and put it onto their leg on their honey sac.

 Answers to our quiz: Invertebrates-jellyfish, sea star, moth, ant.  Do you know any more invertebrates?  Let Mrs Grisdale know and you can get house points!!

From our Super Scientists:
Georgios, Oscar, Kade, Daniel, Joshua, Adam and Sonny.


STOP PRESS: You are invited to a special Science Open Afternoon and Assembly on June 17th.  See you there.