Check out our photos section to see photos from our fabulous Assembly Item!
Welcome to Term Four in Room 23!
I hope you had a wonderful break with lots of rest and fun! We have a very exciting and busy short term ahead!
General Notices
- Hats are compulsory in Term 4. Each child must wear their St Thomas's School hat to school each day. They can be left on the shelf above the cloak bay during inside time.
- Each child needs to bring a named water bottle to school each day, filled before the bell goes and refilled as necessary during Morning Tea and/or Lunchtime.
- Our Library day will still be every Monday. Each child will select 2 books to either take home or keep at school for independent reading and then return them both the following Monday.
- Homework is glued into homework books on a Monday and returned to school on Friday. Please take time to read the Weekly Notices section each week.
Room 23's Assembly Item
On Friday of week 2 (Friday 4th November) at 12pm sharp Room 23 will be presenting their assembly item in the school hall! The assembly will be followed by a shared lunch until 1pm in Room 23. As we only have 9 school days to practise, we will be doing an item based on our last topic, New Zealand Native Birds, presenting 2 plays. Each student has a role in one of the two plays such as a reader, character or bird. Please see detailed notices regarding costumes and the shared lunch. We will be making bird masks and headbands (for characters and readers) in class time.
Action Reaction
We are learning that behind every reaction, there is an action! Our integrated unit this term will be science based looking at chemical and phycial changes, states of matter, acids and bases, changes of state, testing acids and bases, chemical reactions, experimenting and dissolving. Students will learn to follow the scientific process. At the end of the unit we will look at the suns UV radiation. We will be learning about the effects they have on us, why we need to protect ourselves and ways to protect ourselves.
Health and PE
During PE lessons on Tuesdays and Fridays, we will be learning about Athletics Skills so we are prepared for Athletics Day on Thursday 24th November! (More details about the Athletics Day to come closer to the date)
We will be learning techniques for high jump, fun relays, long jump, sprints and shot put.
Current Events
We will be continuing our Current Events program this term. Our focus will be on making regular eye contact with our audience, sharing in our own words and asking quality questions as a member of the audience.
Reading
Miss Junge will be testing each child and then re grouping the students together with others reading at their current guided reading level.
During our reading program, children will sometimes be given texts from their guided reading group lesson to take home and read independently, or they will choose a reader from their group book box. The readers in the book box are half a level below the group level to encourage independent reading. The best thing a parent could do would be listen to their child read any material they want (not necessarily a reader) and ask questions to promote discussion of their understanding of the text.
Writing
Instructions
We will be revisiting instructions, integrating with our topic lessons. Students will begin by reading, following and writing instructions based on everyday life, then begin to write instructions based on experiments and activities during our topic lessons.
Poetry
We will be reading and discussing a variety of poem structures, then using these to write our own poems about a range of topics. Poem structures we will be focusing on include acrostic, diamante, cinquain, couplet, triplet, quantrain, autobiographical, alphabet, colour, lies, sense and many more! We will be learning to follow the poems structural and language features.
Maths
Fractions
Students will be learning to identify fractions and find fractions of a whole and of a group. We will learn about fractions using realistic contexts such as cutting a pizza into halves, quarters, thirds, fifths, sixths etc depending on how many people there are and splitting groups of lollies into 4 equal groups to find a quarter for each person.
Geometry: Shape and Direction
We will be revisiting 2D and 3D shapes, learning to recognise a range of 2D and 3D shapes and describe their sides/edges, corners and faces. We will also be learning to identify nets of a range of 3D shapes.
While learning about direction, students will learn about left, right, clockwise and anticlockwide turns. They will also learn about compass points, North, South, East and West and how these are used on a map. Students will learn to find specific places on maps by following grid references and to find the grid references of specfic places on the map.
Time
Students will be learning to read and record the time on an analogue clock in hours and minutes. We will begin with reading and recording hours, then half hours, then quarter past and quarter to, then five minute intervals and then individual minutes.
Visual Arts
Room 23 will begin our art program this term by making bird masks for our assembly item. Students will use the template given to colour their mask the relevant colours of the bird they will be playing on our assembly item, then put their mask together.
This term we will be learning about print making. We will be using the environment around us as contexts for a range of print styles. Students will be using a variety of skills and materials to plan, design and develop their print to create their final products.
Have a wonderful term!!!
