BATTLE IT OUT

Here are a couple of games to play. Have a go at recalling the facts of nouns and adjectives in one game or alternatively, work through the verbs and adverbs game. Good luck!

MERIT CERTIFICATES

Congratulations to Pavitra, Brooklyn and Samuel for the wonderful effort that they have towards their learning at present. Keep up the excellent work. Well done.

HARMONY DAY - UPDATE

Having lived in Vanuatu, I still cannot comprehend the damage and the destruction caused. The images, stories and videos emerging from the nation are heart breaking and I know that the road to recovery is going to be a very long journey. Crop gardens, water supplies, shelters, schools and roads have been wiped out and these are essential for the impoverished villages to survive. Coming together for Harmony Day on Thursday and raising over $550 as a school was a wonderful gesture of good will. I know how far the money raised will go. Thank you to everyone who came dressed up and made a donation to such a great cause. It was wonderful to see a splash of colour across our school.   

PARENT INTERVIEWS

This year, as part of our Reporting Policy, Parent Interview Day will be held on Tuesday 31st March, 2015. Interview Day will enable all class teachers to report orally to parents through a formal interview or three-way conference. Discussion of School English and Maths Standards and student progress will be carried out during this time.

Please indicate on the return slip, (1) your preferred time of interview and (2) your second  preferred time on that day when you will be available to attend an interview with me.

Each interview is limited to 10 minutes duration and every endeavour will be made to allocate an interview time of your preferred time slot.

PLEASE RETURN the slip by Friday, 20^th March 2015  and you will be notified of your exact interview time by Monday, 23^rd March.

LITERACY BLOCK

We begin every day with a Literacy Block. The children in Room 22 get all fired up with some quick and rapid English concepts before the teaching begins. Below are some action shots of the class recalling a number of concepts in our 'Warm Up.' On this particular day, we learned about prefixes and suffixes. Well done, Room 22.

HARMONY DAY
Wattle Grove Primary will celebrate Harmony Day this Thursday (19th March). It would be wonderful if all children come dressed ready for our 'Parade of Nations.' We encourage children to make a gold coin donation on the day as all proceeds raised will be going towards the Vanuatu Disaster Appeal in the wake of Cyclone Pam. 

Behind the News (BtN)
Friday afternoon is BtN time. Room 10 and Room 22 come together to explore, discuss and learn about some of the current major news stories of the week. The children have been learning about renewable energy such as wave and solar, knighthoods, drought, the Freedom Ride and nuclear industry just to name a few. The stories are usually presented in a fun, interesting or simplistic manner that makes it easier for the children to understand.

VCOP and BIG WRITING

Writing is a whole school focus at Wattle Grove Primary. You may have heard your child come home and talk about VCOP and Big Writing. Essentially, the two combined form a very powerful writing program. The gains that a child can make in writing when using the VCOP method can be rather outstanding. It would be wonderful for this program to also be encouraged at home. Finding opportunities to discuss VCOP will have a great impact on the writing skills of your child.  Here is a quick rundown of VCOP and a few ideas to do at home:

V-Vocabulary (Wow words!): • Talk about and write down interesting (WOW) words in the stories you are reading at home. • Try using the words you have found in a sentence. • Have a mini-quiz: ‘How many words can you think of instead of ‘said’, ‘went’, ‘nice’ or ‘good’. Put each one in a sentence. • Give your child a Wow word to put into a sentence. How many different sentences can they make?

For example, alternatives to went could be: shuffled, toddled, crept, meandered, plodded, trudged, wandered, moving unsteadily, lumbered, doddered, waddled, limped, wobbled, lurched, quickly stomped, marched, strolled, traipsed, strutted, hiked, roamed, paced, stepped, pounded, prowled sneaked, tiptoed, crept or pattered. Imagine how these words could enrich a piece of writing and promote creativity.

C – Connectives are used to join sentences together. The simplest connective to use is ‘and’. E.g. ‘Bill went to the shops and bought an ice-cream.’ Other more complex connectives include – Then, after, so, while, because, although. • Try to search for connectives in the stories you read at home. Use them in a different sentence. • Try rearranging sentences with the connectives at the start. • Give your child a connective and ask them to use it in a sentence.

O- An opener is the first word used in a sentence. When children start on their writing journey most sentences initially begin with ‘I’. To develop this try: • Searching for openers in the stories you read at home and use them to start your own sentences. • Give your child an opener and ask them to complete the sentence. Some good openers are:  Next, Although, I discovered, Eventually, Finally.    • Search for powerful openers. These end in ‘ly’ and ‘ing’ e.g. Surprisingly, Steadily, Glancing.

P – Punctuation • Look at different types of punctuation in your reading at home. • Ask your child to give examples of when they would use a question mark or exclamation mark. • Punctuation Kung-Fu (make the shapes of each punctuation sign in the air.) • Use different types of punctuation in different sentences.

Big Writing is the time of the week where students are able to showcase their VCOP and writing skills. 

WELCOME

Hello and welcome to our first blog post.

The students in Room 22 have made a great start to the year. It is wonderful to see new friendships forming as well as old ones blossoming.  A big welcome to our new students, Samuel, Pavitra, Aena and Aaryan as well as their families.

Thank you to all those parents who were able to attend the Parent Information Evening.  It was great to see so many of you.  Currently, we have 26 students in Room 22. Homework tasks have now been set for the term and consists of home reading, spelling words (20 per week), a spelling activity and the homework tasks (purple booklet). Talk Homework is on a Wednesday and this is a valuable opportunity to help your child prepare for Big Writing on Thursday. I can already see progress being made by many of the children who are actively participating in ‘Talk Homework.’

Congratulations to Eva and Tyriq who were elected by the class to be the Student Councillors for the first semester. This role comes with great responsibilities and is a real privilege. I’m sure you’ll do a wonderful job at representing Room 22 during the whole school council meetings.

MATHEMATICS FOCUS

Spice up your place value, addition and subtraction skills with these games. 

Add or subtract your way across Hexafield in this mission 2100 game:

Alternatively, test your number skills with these Bamzooki Challenges: