Week 1 Term 3

Hi everyone and welcome back to Term 3.  I hope you have all had a chance to spend some quality time with your kids and that they are ready for another busy term of learning!

Here we go.....

*Go4it starts this week.  We will spend half an hour with a sports specialist every Tuesday until October.  Please send shorts for the girls.

*Healthy Eating competition - we are all going to take part in a competition to show what we know about healthy options for lunch boxes.  Room 13 will be designing some cool healthy lunch boxes so watch this space.

*Concept: This term our Concept is cycles and we are going to be looking at the moon, sun, seasons etc.  This is a fun topic and we have lots of great experiments and learning planned.

*Reading - hopefully you all did some reading over the holidays, I certainly did.  Please make sure you fill in your child's reading log and send it back to school.  I'd love a 100% return this time.  If you have misplaced it, let me know and I can get you a new one.

*Writing - this term we are looking at Report writing.  This is when the kids find out some factual information and record it in their own words.  Reporting is great fun and lends itself to group investigations and researching which is one of Room 13's reading goals this term.  Look out for some amazing report writing on our walls.  We will also be writing Recounts, Poetry, Narratives and Letters this term.

*Maths - This term we will begin by looking at position and rotation.  Following that we will focus on addition and subtraction then Multiplication and Division.  All our maths is based on word problems and some will be sent home for homework this term so that you can see exactly where your child is working.  The stages are on the wall in the maths area and they highlight what knowledge and strategy is needed for Stage 4 (after 2 years) and 5(after 3 years).  

*ALim Maths - the school is starting a new project this term called ALim.  It is a Maths acceleration program for children who need a little more input in maths.  In Year 2 we will be running this program 4 days a week from 8:45-9:00am.  There are 4 children involved from Room 13 and they will be the "Maths Club Kids".  I will send a letter home this week to the parents of those kids involved. The rest of the class will be involved in Developmental Play while the Alim group is working with me.  School still starts at 8:45 and the children need to be at school at 8:30 so they can organise themselves for the day.

*Student Led Conferences: In week 2 we have student led conferences booked.  This week we will be finding out exactly where we are in our learning and using some clever language to explain what we need to do to move on to the next stage/level.  The SLC's are a chance for your child to show off what they can do but also consolidate what they know and where they need to go next.  I look forward to seeing you all at the SLC's. 

*Portfolio's and Reports go home on Friday.  Please take time over the weekend to look through the portfolio and write a comment on the last page about what you enjoyed, what impressed you and what you would like to see happen next for your child at school.  The children will be using these on the night of SLC's so they need to come back after the weekend.

*Reports: Everyone will receive a report on Friday.  It is important to note that in Years 1-3, reports are written every six months - the annual report is called "Anniversary" and will be given after 1 year, 2 years and 3 years.  The progress report is called "Interim" and will be given after 6 months, 18 months, 30 months.  We changed the format of our reports in Term 2 so those Term 1 reports will be on the old template.  It is important to note that these are National Standards Reports and the data on them refers to either the anniversary or interim date, therefore some of the data may be somewhat outdated.  Now that we have a solid system in place, the children should receive their reports at the time I wrote them.  All Room 13 children will receive another report before the end of the year depending on when they started school.  PHEW!

*Updates will appear on the Blog during the week so please check it every couple of days.

Have a great week
Annie