Week 6 Has Arrived!

Good morning parents!

I hope you are all staying nice and warm in this very strange weather...I have no idea what is going on with it! One minute it's warm and sunny and the next I'm reaching for the trackies and ugg boots! 

I hope you all enjoyed the day off yesterday?! We had a great PL day yesterday looking in more detail at the Judging Standards created by the School Curriculum Authority.

These are the documents that we use in conjunction with our professional judgement, your child's See Saw journal and work completed in class to determine grading for our reports. 

We then finished the day throwing some rocks at the Dunsborough Country Club...under Neil's watchful gaze, I proved to be not a very good lawn bowler and a person who has no concept of medium pace...who knew?? 

We also farewelled Miss Cain on Thursday, the students were very sad to see her go and she was so sad to leave them...she had a warm and positive impact on the students in her time in 4DEL and we wish her all the very best for her final prac! 

Fingers crossed she may come back to OLC, but we shall see!

Congratulations - Please believe me when I say that it is VERY hard to choose a winner for our Star Citizen Awards, but I would like to congratulate Sienna Bidesi on receiving our Star Citizen Award for our value of Excellence...you thoroughly deserved this award for all your hard work!

A few reminders for the coming week...

IPI Reading Testing - I will be out of class on Monday conducting reading assessments on the students to check on their progress. Mrs Tarma Neal will be covering 4DEL for the day.

I have noticed great improvements in fluency and accuracy during our reading sessions and better, more detailed responses in their comprehension work. 

These assessments will help me to see their improvement in the retell and deeper level comprehension. 

These two skills are most important and ones that can be worked on to improve.

As your child is reading out loud to you, ask them questions that require them to recall details that aren't easily found in the text. 

These might start with 'why do you think that...?' or 'how do you know that...?'. These kinds of questions help your child to focus on recalling details as well as the mechanics of reading and further improve the important comprehension skills!

Parent Meetings - I am currently working on finalising my comments and report grades ready for the end of semester. If your child will be receiving a D grade overall in either Maths or English, I will make contact with you.

Absentee Notes - I sent home a new round of these last week...can I please reiterate the importance of letting school know if your child will be absent either via email or through the online form. 

IF your child brought one of these home, please fill in the reason, sign and date them for your child to bring back on Monday!

We will be completing some final assessments in the next couple of weeks so hopefully the colds, nits and tummy bugs stay away! 

Please do keep your child at home if they are unwell...making sure they have started nit treatment, don't have a temperature or bright, green snot and are symptom free of vomiting or diarrohea for 24 hours before returning to school.

Many aspects of our learning are on your child's One Note so if they are feeling too sick for school but are okay, please feel free to get them working.

 Our maths and spelling are always available and able to be followed as well as our reading group activities...obviously, if your child is too sick to work that is absolutely fine too!

Our Learning...

You will see that we have uploaded some excellent work to your child's See Saw journal this week with more to come...the students have been working super hard to show their learning which has been so great to see!

As I mentioned last week, the students have finalised their procedures on their own topic, I will have those marked and uploaded to See Saw for you to check out soon! 

Perhaps you can give your child's procedure a try and see if you are able to follow them?

Please feel free to email me any pictures of you doing so, there are some super fun ones...I know we have an aerial, three point shot and a through the legs jump one that I would love to see in action! 

I have also stolen a couple of recipes to try out...particularly the Mexican Salad...I'll let you know how it goes!

We will be moving in to a narrative review unit of writing focusing on the story Magpie Learned a Lesson written by Sally Morgan & Ezekiel Kwaymullina.

This will give the students the opportunity to review the structure and language features needed to make their writing really interesting and enjoyable for their reader!

In maths this week, we will begin looking at equations and how to balance them....this is a pre-pre introduction to everyone's favourite...Algebra!

Our health learning this week will be looking at the muscular and skeletal systems and how they work together to keep our bodies moving!

In religion, we will begin our new unit of learning starting off with looking at seasons. 

We will have a focus on the 6 seasons observed by the Wadandi people of the area and students will have a chance to see how these connect to the liturgical seasons observed in the church calendar.

In art for the last couple of weeks, we have been learning about American artist Dean Russo...he is a passionate animal activist working on the streets of New York to change people's perception of pitbull dogs!

The students have learnt about the techniques used in his work and have then applied them to create their onw piece using our 4DEL totem...the coolbardie! I expect those to be finished on Monday and I will upload them to See Saw through the week to check out!

Homework...

I appreciate that this is everyone's least favourite topic and the last couple of weeks we have had a significant change to our routine, but I received only 6 pieces of homework on Thursday morning. 

This new timeline had been discussed with students so they all knew about the change of date.

I have multiple students, consistently not bringing their books in.

I have had a number of emails from parents saying their child isn't bringing their books home so just to make sure you all know our routine...it goes like this.

Friday morning - homework is brought in to be checked off. 

This includes - reading log filled in, questions answered and signed by a parent, times tables are neatly completed and also marked by a parent. 

The students then collect a new reading log, glue it in to their books and then take this to either their drawer or directly out to their bag. Huge snaps to those students/parents that are making their own up if one is missing...not sad about that at all!

Students are reminded on Monday afternoon after we pack and stack to make sure they are taking home their laptop, water bottles AND homework books. This has been the procedure all year.

I hope this helps you to feel in the loop so that you know how to respond when you're child says they forgot it or whatever other reason they may offer.

We have two more weeks of homework so let's finish on a high!

We don't have any major events on this week and no full moons, blood moons, super moons, Halloween, catch ups or carnivals so looking forward to a settled and relaxed week of learning! 

We only have a few more weeks left before I need to hand them over to their new teacher which is super sad!

Have a great week!

Mrs Delane