Jolly Grammar- We have looked at the different ways to make er and oi sounds. We have used dictionaries to find out how the spell words and get the meanings of words. We have practiced proofreading sentences too.

Literacy Rotations – The focus is on predicting in guided reading. Try this at home before sharing a book…..

PRC – Most of the class have completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge. If unsure if your child has completed it come in and check.

Sight words – New sight words for spelling will be in diaries next week. Those children with sight word folders, need to hand them up next week to be testing please.

Writing – Ms Hedger did some poetry with us in week 1. We loved writing our line poems. This term we are starting to write exposition/persuasive texts. We have talked about point of view.

Maths – We finished our topic on addition. The children are excited to start our topic on measurement. We tuned in, with the question “Can we measure everything?” Lots of interesting responses…… We also asked what can we measure, why do we measure and how do we measure???? Most of the responses were about length. We have discussed the different attributes in measurement – length, mass, area, capacity and volume. Some children have been so keen and found out some amazing things already by researching at home!  Measuring our toys was fun……We worked out that we could measure them using two attributes- mass and length.

Health – We will be investigating healthy eating this term. Thanks to those families who have returned consent/surveys. Some children have been online and completed their initial survey. They did an awesome job navigating the online survey.

Digital Technologies – We have looked at the difference between hardware and software. Last week we got to have a look in the IT technician’s room and see our school server! This week we found out about data representation and created our own glyph…..

Disco – Wow, those that went to the disco had a fabulous time!!

Photo envelopes came home on Wednesday. Please return them on photo day, Tuesday 14^th August.

Thanks for all the lovely messages, cards, flowers and even chocolates I have received from the lovely families in room 12 this week. We ae so lucky o have such a supportive community at CLG.

Cushion covers – A lovely parent took a bag of cushion covers home for the holidays to wash. We’d love them returned please.

Daily sharing this term will be: Monday – yellow, Tuesday – blue, Wednesday -green Thursday – orange, Friday – red. Other weeks will be playful learning. Please help your child prepare and be organised for sharing on their rostered day.

Week 1 – holiday happenings- 2 minute oral presentation without props or photos.

Week 4 – favourite book

Week 8 – favourite sport (Friday group to share Monday week 9)

Swimming was a fun, exciting and tiring week for us all. Thanks to parent helpers, especially SM’s dad for braving the boy’s change room daily. Much appreciated.

Jolly Grammar – This week we looked at the k sound – k and ck. We also looked at irregular past tense verbs.

Maths – We looked at problems using a variety of strategies involving addition.

Writing – We had free choice when writing a procedure this week.

SRC – Thanks to OW and JL for being such organized and dedicated SRC for the first half of the year.

Sharing – Over the last two weeks we have seen a huge development in the student’s confidence in eye contact, volume and pace of speaking and respectful listening. Many children who were quiet shy and nervous about presenting can give a confident presentation now. Thanks to those families who are helping to support this at home. Sharing groups will change again for next term –

Mon – yellow. Tues – blue, Wed – green, Thurs – orange and Fri – red. A list of sharing topics will be sent home early next term.

Thanks to the students and families in room 12 for another great term. We are so lucky to have supportive parents who volunteer at all times to help in class or at home with any little thing that needs attending too. Also a huge thanks for my birthday wishes!! A big thanks for my cupcakes to  HB’s family. It was the worst kept secret at CLG this year!

Keep safe in the holidays and enjoy time with your families. See you ready for term 3 on Tuesday 24^th July.

Jolly Grammar – We have looked at the different ways to make long i (i_e, ie, y and igh) and long u (u_e, ue, u, and ew) sounds. We have been using adverbs to describe our verbs and changing verbs to the past tense. During week 9 we won’t be doing our usual JG program.

Maths – We have started our topic on addition. We have revised some helpful strategies such as rainbow facts, counting on, chunking, number splitting, friendly numbers and turnarounds. See if your child can explain why these strategies are useful when adding numbers together.

Literacy Rotations – We have been finding verbs in our readers, inferring independently and sorting nouns, verbs and adjectives. Oxford Owl is proving to be very popular both at home and school. Great those families who are recording Oxford Owl reading in their child’s diary as a reading record.

Digital Technologies is our new inquiry topic, now that Geography has come to a close.

Book boxes need fresh books brought in from home please. Due to swimming next week, we’ll miss our library borrowing lesson. Students can borrow before school or use the digital library. Info on how to log onto that was posted earlier in the year.

Swimming is on next week! Bathers on under uniforms each day please. An extra snack is a good idea too, as swimming makes us hungry. The sign in sheet for parent attendance will be out each day in the classroom.

Thanks to IG and RW’s mums for cutting up activities for us and sharpening pencils. Much appreciated! Also thanks for supporting nude food Wednesdays. Lots of families are continuing it on throughout the week.

Casual day is on the last day of term to support the RSPCA. A gold coin donation please if you choose to wear white and blue – the colours of the RSPCA.

Friday weeks 8 and 9 I won’t be in room 12. We are lucky to have Karen Hedger working with us. Thanks Karen!

Jolly Grammar – We looked at the long a sound – ai, a_e and ay and long e sound – ee and ea. We also revised alphabetical order and what makes a sentence.

Maths – We have finished off our topic on telling time. We have been learning o’clock, half past, quarter to and past in both analogue and digital times. Some of us have been exploring the 5 minute markers too.The students looked at two clocks that they made and reflected on how their clocks show growth in their learning.

Literacy Rotations

• During Guided Reading we have been working on inferential questions. These are trickier questions where we need to look for clues in the text to help us infer what isn’t directly stated in the text. Many children find this difficult, so maybe practice this a bit when reading with your child at home. Here is an example…..
• When using Oxford Owl, the students have been reading to themselves, not using the read aloud function. Your child can still interact with the activities during their book reading this way.

Sharing last week about our connection to a special place, was so interesting. We learnt lots about the families in room 12. Our next sharing topic is free choice in week 9.

Swimming notes came home yesterday. Please note we are going in week 9 (25th June-29^th June) Return medical and consent forms asap. If your child is asthmatic, Ventolin must be provided and in date.

Science – Excitement today……. as the butterfly emerged from the chrysalis. Thanks so much to JH’s family for giving us this amazing experience.

 

Jolly Grammar – Our sound focus has been air and ch as k. We have looked at possessive adjectives and homophones. We made some great posters for there and their.

Literacy Rotations – We do this daily and are becoming more independent at this whilst the teacher does guided reading with one group. We are trying to infer how characters might be feeling in the narratives that we read in GR sessions.

Maths – We have finished off our work on seasons, months and calendars. Now we are working on telling the time. In year two we need to be able to read, o’clock, half past, quarter to and quarter past times on both analogue and digital clocks. Please use bed time, dinner time etc for some moments to read the clocks at home. We are also learning to count the minutes using our skip counting by 5s.

Geography – We are making our own atlases and thinking about our connection to places around the world.

Science – JH has bought in a chrysalis for us to observe over the next few weeks. We have written an information report about butterflies.

Sharing in week 5 is an oral presentation about your family’s connection to a special place. It needs to go for about three minutes. Your child has written a reminder in their diary. We will have a peer assessment task involving two stars and a wish. 🙂

Book Fair – The Book Fair is open for parents to go shopping 8am Monday until 6pm Tuesday. No library borrowing whilst this is happening. Use Oxford Owl or our digital library.

Thanks to the amazing team of parents, who come in and volunteer to do jobs for us. So much cutting out of time bingo games, sharpening of pencils and putting artwork into our WOW books. Appreciated by us all  🙂

Welcome to a new boy, Noah, who will be starting in our class on Monday. The children are keen to make him feel welcome! He has had many offers of buddy for the day already.

Lost watch – Thanks to those students and parents who went looking for my watch….. Just letting you know that it was found in the staff room.

Report writing – I have two days set aside, for report writing, on Friday 1st June and the following Wednesday 6th June. We are lucky to have Karen Hedger in room 12 for both days.

Welcome back to room 12. Well our first two weeks back have been packed with new learning!

Thanks to IG and RW’s mum for sharpening up our pencils and sorting out our baskets.

Jolly Grammar –  We are looking at some quite tricky sounds this term. We have started with wa making as wo sound and ou as u. In grammar we had fun using adjectives to make our writing more interesting. Also we have been looking at how words are written when they are plurals. Words ending with sh, ch, s and x have es when a plural.

Writing – Information Reports are the writing genre we are learning about at the moment. We are learning the structure of report writing and having a go at writing our own.

Literacy Groups-

• Last term the class were taught explicit skills and tasks to be involved in whilst I worked with my guided reading The children are able to do this quite independently now. Bianca, Renae and I feel we are ready to have mixed groups this term.
• We will be giving children logins for Oxford Owl. Details will come home children, once we have shown them how to use it.
• A few of our very independent, fluent readers will start working on Literacy Pro

In our term overview we said that we’d focus on description writing at the end of term. This has changed and our focus will now be procedure writing.

Maths – We had been learning about the season, what months are part of each season, how many days in each month and how to read a calendar. Our sharing this week has fitted nicely into this learning too!

Geography inquiry into Place – We love working with our librarian, Simone. She has certainly got us excited about places that we are connected to. We has spent time exploring the world using atlases, globes and Google Earth. Next week we are going to choose a place to investigate that we have been wondering about.

Health –We had a Nutrition Talk today from two students from Flinders Uni today. We learnt about the 5 food groups and sometimes food.

Our Living Museum has some interesting artefacts. Come in and have a look if you have time. Week 5 sharing your child may like to talk about their artefact or about the place that is special to your family.

Class goal jar – This goal, about giving eye contact when someone speaks to the whole class, has taken a very long time to achieve. Our reward is some free time on the ipads.

Junior Singers did a superb job singing at both assemblies today.

Disco Thursday night 17^th May. $5 tickets purchased at the door. 5-6:15pm, Sports theme. Food, chips and glow sticks available for purchase. See our previous post.

Happy Mother’s Day to our lovely mums!!

Jolly Grammar – We have looked at the f sound using ph. We also looked at how and when to use a comma.

Spelling – We have all written a list of Oxford sight words in our diaries that we need to learn for our spelling test next week.

Writing – Our narrative writing is coming along. We have developed our setting, main character and problem/complication. Next week we will write about the resolution and create an ending for our Narrative. Then we would like to publish them into little books to share. We also wrote a recount about our excursion.

Maths – We have done lots of skip counting by 2,5 and 10. Could you skip counting by2s, starting at an odd number? The skip counting, by 3s, has been a bit challenging and we need to keep trying this at home. So when the children set the table they could count by threes….. make it fun. This week we have been working with money. We have transferred our skip counting knowledge, to making amounts with coins.

Our Excursion was fabulous!! See photos on the blog.

Week 9 –

• Sharing next week is to do with money. Your child has a note in their diary about this.
• Easter Christian options Wednesday morning.
• Parent teacher interviews. If you haven’t made an appointment, the online booking is now closed. Please come and see me to make a time.
• Good Friday

Tuesday week 9, I have the morning to do some reading tests. Dawn Drewer will be in the classroom. Weeks 10 and 11 I have long service leave. Karen Hedger will be taking the class. I know that Karen will be looking for help for Enterprise day on Wednesday week 11.

We need parent helpers to sharpen our coloured pencils please.

Enjoy the weekend 🙂

Jolly Grammar – We have learned about silent k and wh words. We explored using speech marks and question marks too. We had a go at answering questions about our buddies.

In writing we have written a couple of procedures. One was about planting our seeds. Now we are beginning to look at writing our own Narratives. We have started by developing a setting (the place) for our Narrative.

A new list of sight words should have been written in the diary. Spend time getting your child to learn these at home ready for their next partner spelling test. Last week the class enjoyed giving a friend a spelling test and helping to mark it. They did a great job considering it was the first time we had done partner spelling tests.

Guided reading has focussed on:

• Non-fiction texts looking at the contents page and gaining information from photos.
• Narrative reading comprehension cards where the students answer questions about the text.

Maths – We have looked at place value. This is the value of a digit in a numeral depending on it’s place. E.g. In 352, the 5 has a value of 50. We looked at hundreds, tens and ones. During week 6 we have done some challenging maths challenges.

Science – The planting of our alfalfa seeds was a huge success! We have also shared a SA Water book about Captain Plop and saving water. Next week we are looking forward to a lesson from LJ’s mum, from SA Water, to fit in with our Inquiry into How living things grow and change.

Design and Technology – We had a go at attaching a cylinder to a piece of cardboard using the fringing technique. Our partner challenge was to make a cube out of toothpicks and plasticine with a partner from room 11! This was quite tricky.

Health – Through our program, What’s the Buzz, We met a young boy called Archie. He’s very similar to your children and has similar experiences too. We will find out a bit more about Archie each week. Our first session began with reaffirming our class rules of being kind, friendly, doing your best, listening and asking for help. We then focussed on greetings and farewells. We practised using friendly facial expressions, smiling, giving eye contact and using friendly body language. The children also practiced responding in friendly ways as well as using friendly farewells. We discussed the positives of meeting and making new friends and discovering differences. The children were able to role play these positive behaviours in a safe environment. The children all participated really well and enjoyed meeting Archie. We would like to encourage you to have conversations with your children and practice these skills at home as this reinforces the positive messages we are trying to teach.

Buddies – We have met with our buddies and made a poster about our favourite things.

SRC have had their first meeting for the year. Our class reps then shared what was discussed with us in our class meeting. We were asked for ideas on how to improve CLG PS.

Sharing this week has been AWESOME!! What a range of topics. The effort that has gone into the presentations has been incredible…. Thanks to those families who helped their child prepare and to feel confident to present to the whole class. As a class we gave feedback to each speaker in the form of:

• 2 stars – things they did well
• 1 wish – something you could do better next time.

All of the feedback was given in a kind and respectful way. Great job guys! You can find many of the presentations pinned up in the corridor. Our next sharing will be in week 9, about money.

At the whole school assembly today, awards were given out to children displaying the school values “Care, Respect and Safety”. AP was presented with room 12’s certificate. Congratulations on being a great role model for others in our room AP!!

Our Monarto Excursion is happening Wednesday March 21^st, week 8. Please return consents and payment asap. Thanks to the four parent helpers for volunteering. Much appreciated.

Interviews coming up in week 9…… More details to follow.

Jolly Grammar – We have been learning about words with the silent b and w. Our focus in grammar has been alphabetical order and sentence structure. When writing, we have been careful about checking for a capital, full stop and one idea. We are going to start editing our own writing too.

Guided reading groups are up and running. I work with a small group each day on a reading strategy whilst the rest of the class do independent or partner reading. The class are managing this time so productively. 🙂

Maths – Our focus continues to be number. We have been becoming familiar with numbers on the 1-100 grid and using the language of – greater than , less, more, before after, in between, odd, even. We have been skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s. On Thursday we played bingo with 3 digit numbers.

Problematised situations have challenged us with our mathematical thinking. Eg 64 people are coming to a meeting at CLG and need a slice of cake for recess. Each cake is sliced into16 slices. HM cakes does the canteen need to bake?

Sharing during week 3 was interesting. We learnt lots about each other. Thanks to those families who support their child with their presentation. Start preparation for week 6 sharing to do with our Science topic –Watch it grow.

Computer room – In year 2 we have our own username and password. Ms Rowe came and talked to us about safety with IT and keeping our passwords private.

Science – We have all thought of an inquiry question about living things and displayed them on our wonder wall. Come in and have a look. We have started investigating the life cycle of plants.

Design and Technology – Last week we covered a box with coloured paper and turned it into a model. We made a plan, created our modelled and then evaluated it. They looked awesome. We worked with a partner, from room 11, this week to build a chair out of newspaper for a small teddy to sit on. This was a tricky challenge. Please keep collecting toilet rolls and long, thin boxes like toothpaste or Nespresso pod boxes.

Assembly – We have spent a lot of time this week organizing our assembly. The children performing the short skit have done it all independently. We are certainly trying to demonstrate the Expert Learner quality of Independent in room 12. I hear many children are making and packing their own lunches!!

Parent jobs  

• Thanks to our awesome group of parents who are coming in to do reading in the mornings! It will be back to normal next week. Sorry for the interruptions this week due to assembly practices.
• Thanks to HV mum for covering drawing books. We have WOW books to cover now too, if anyone can help out one morning or afternoon next week.

Enjoy the weekend.