When reflecting on this term and how quickly it has gone, how much wonderful learning has taken place and how ready we all are for a break, it has only just occurred to me that this was our first full term this year.!

In Term 1, most of the children were beginning At Home Learning in Week 8 or 9. We remained this way until Week 6 of Term 2, giving us 5 weeks of school in face-to-face mode.

After 10 weeks of hard work this term, , we are all tired, and rightly so. It is now time to take the next couple of weeks of school holidays to unwind, relax, reconnect and regenerate, ready for our final term for 2020.

Term 4 – School-wide focus

Our School Improvement Plan (SIP) for this and the next two years has a focus on improving the writing skills of our students. We started at the beginning of this year, narrowing the focus to look at spelling.  We have adapted our programs, embedded explicit teaching of spelling rules and the application of these into our daily routines, used a variety of strategies to assist the students learn and apply these rules, as well as having fun along the way.

From next term, our focus shifts to explicitly teaching how to write super sentences, structure texts for a variety of audiences and self and partner edit. While most of us take it for granted, these are skills that our students will need and use for the rest of their lives, so it is important to take things slowly. We look forward to sharing some of this amazing work with you through our newsletters next term!

More play in the day!

Understanding the vital importance of play in a young person’s life, we have decided to trial a change to our lunch and recess times to allow for this to occur at BOTH breaks in the day.

Lunch in Term 4 will be from 11:15am to 11:55am. At the beginning of this time, the students will have time to eat their lunch, then spend the rest of the break running, creating, gardening and playing as they always do. It is a bit shorter than it has been, but this will allow the following break to function in exactly the same way.

Recess will be from 1:25pm to 2:05pm. At the beginning of this break, the children will have something to eat and then be able to go back out on the playground, on the equipment and use all creative play spaces again.

We feel that this will greatly benefit our students, socially and academically. We will seek your valuable feedback at some point in Term 4 to assist with our planning for 2021 and beyond.

Year 6 End of Year celebrations

Unfortunately, due to COVID, we are unable to hold our usual end of year functions and celebrations. Ms McGann spoke with Year 6 recently, and while they are disappointed, are happy to help OLV reimagine these events so that a new version of them can occur. Again, whilst it is unfortunate, it has been wonderful to see them engage with the change and be actively involved in the solution, one in which we can still have families be a part of this important and special time for our Year 6 students and their families.

Crossing the Road

Whilst on bus duty last week, I had a flashback to a video game I played occasionally as a child – Frogger. Those old enough will understand this reference and will be able to relate it to attempting to cross Sandgate Road of an afternoon.

Sandgate Road is a very busy road, with the majority of the traffic disregarding the 40km/h speed limit around schools.

Please, please, PLEASE don’t cross through the traffic. The lights are the safest way to cross any road, but particularly such a busy road. Please collect your child/ren from the school side of Sandgate Road and use the lights to walk back to your car, if it is parked across the road.

Lovell Parade has also become a much busier street in the afternoons and last week a child ran across the road in front of an oncoming car. Luckily, nothing happened, but we can not allow this to happen. Please collect your child/ren from the school side of Lovell Parade and walk them across the road when it is safe to do so.

Term 3 Fees are now due and payable.  Thank you to all families who are up to date with their fees.  We understand a lot of families usually come into the office to pay school fees but, during covid, you can pay via BPAY, Direct Debit or call the office and pay via eftpos.  

We are still accepting Kindergarten enrolments.  If you are looking to enrol your child or you know a friend or neighbour, please have them contact Leanne in the office and ask for an enrolment pack.

School Photo day is Term 4 Week 2, Thursday 22nd October 2020.  Photo envelopes will be going home Monday, the first day back of Term 4. Please remember to check your child's bag.

Unfortunately due to Covid there will be no family photos this year.  If you need any clarificaiton on this please contact Penny McGann.  

Theme : Curious Creatures and Wild Minds

Sadly, due to COVID restrictions we are not able to have our annual Book Fair this year, however we are still intending to celebrate Book Week with a variety of fun activities.

On Friday 23^rd October, to tie in with this year’s theme, Curious Creatures and Wild Minds, one of our planned activities is a “parade around the school” of “curious creatures” and “wild minds” We are asking the children to come dressed  with wild hair or to dress up as a curious creature e.g. bunyip, monsters, unicorns.

Due to the present restrictions parents and visitors will not be able to attend, however lots of photos will be taken!! We are looking forward to seeing some cute, cuddly, creative and curious creatures and wild minds.

YEAR 1

This week in Religion Year 1 have been learning about our local Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. We learnt that our Bishop's name is Bishop Bill Wright and that he is the pastoral leader of our Diocese. We've looked on a map at the region that is covered by the Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. It extends from Lake Macquarie to Taree, and as far inland as Merriwa and Murrurundi.  

In English we have completed a 'hot task' Narrative Writing assessment to finish off our unit of work on Fractured Fairy Tales. Mrs Noble was very impressed with the descriptive language, experimentation with speech marks and interesting plot ideas that the Yr 1 children produced! At the beginning of the term we completed a 'cold' story writing task...a story we wrote before we learnt lots of new language, new grammar and punctuation, and how to develop a storyline. It is clear to see the progression of Narrative Writing development from the start of the term up to now. Well done, Yr 1! 

In Geography we have also completed assessments based on the work we have done in Library lessons with Mrs Spencer, and the work we have done in class. We wrote about our knowledge of the Kakadu National Park, the flora and fauna that exists there, and how the weather impacts upon life in that part of Australia. We were also assessed on our knowledge of the seasons and how our local weather affects our daily activities.  

 In maths we have been learning about 3-Dimensional space. We learnt about all of the different prisms and pyramids as well as the sphere. We investigated the different properties of each of these objects including faces, surfaces, vertices and the apex of a pyramid. This week we have been learning all about volume and capacity. We have been learning about how we can measure the volume of a container by filling it will cubes. We worked with a partner to predict which container would have the larger volume and worked together to find out how many cubes were used to fill each container and therefore finding the volumes of both containers and checking to see if our predictions were correct.  

In Science we have been looking at the differences in the sky between daytime and night time. We looked at the sun and the moon and talked about how sometimes we can see the moon in the evening when the sun is still out. We talked about star patterns that can be seen at night time and some of the planets we can see at night time too! 

We wish all the Yr 1 children and their families a relaxing and rejuvenating holiday! We look forward to seeing you all back at school in Term 4.  

YEAR 2

This term in English Year 2 have looked at procedures. The children have written procedures and followed procedures all term. There last task was to watch YouTube clips as a group and write up the procedure so then the rest of the class had to follow the procedure. The different groups had to write a procedure on  how to make a plane, how to tie your shoelaces, how to tie your tie, how to cook pancakes. We had so much fun following each groups procedures. It was good for each group to evaluate their own procedure writing. I have added a few photos of our end results.

Over the last few weeks Year 2 have been introduced to Teams as part of their Science unit. I am so proud of how quickly Year 2 have been able to learn the skills to manoeuvre around this platform. Year 2 have completed their homework on this platform which will continue next term.

We hope you all have a lovely relaxing holiday.

YEAR 3

In Religion, as we continued to learn about the history of the Catholic Church in Australia, we read about some of the significant people of the early church. Fathers Therry and Connolly were the first priests to be officially appointed to the colony in 1820. In 1835, John Bede Polding was appointed the first Bishop of the colony. Between the years of 1838 and 1846, Caroline Chisholm worked in the colony helping young immigrant women find work. In 1866, Mother Mary MacKillop and Father Tenison Woods together started the ‘Stable School’ in 1866 and founded the Sisters of St Joseph (the Josephites).

In English, we have been reading the book ‘Fire’ by Jackie French. The book is written in rhyming form with many examples of figurative language. We have learnt about personification, similes and metaphors. We have written a narrative titled ‘The Bushfire’ and written an acrostic poem about a ‘BUSHFIRE’.

In Maths, we have completed work on 2D shapes and 3D objects. We have discovered that 2D shapes have angles and that these angles can be a right-angle, smaller than a right angle and wider than a right angle. Rectangles and squares both have four right-angles; trapeziums, parallelograms and rhombuses have two angles smaller than a right-angle and two angles wider than a right-angle. All these shapes are quadrilaterals.

In Geography, we have been comparing the yearly average temperatures of Darwin and Hobart. We created graphs for each of these cities’ highs and lows monthly temperatures. Interestingly, Darwin’s average monthly temperatures change very little over twelve months. Darwin has two seasons – a wet season and a dry season. This is very different to Hobart’s average monthly temperature, which has a definite four seasons in the year.

We have loved the games we’ve played in Sport this term. Some of our favourites have been Peg Invasion, Slide Tag and Corner Ball.

We have had a very busy term and we are looking forward to the holidays very much. We hope that everyone has a restful, safe and healthy holiday.

In Religion, we have learnt a lot about the history of the Catholic Church in Australia. We discovered who some of the significant people in the early church were. We learnt more about Mary McKillop and her many good works. We have been looking at Aboriginal Spirituality this week.

In English, we really enjoyed watching the movie of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. It was great to see how the book was interpreted and to note the many differences between both forms. The scenery and the settings in the movie were amazing and we all were entranced by the presentation. Our Narrative writing is developing well and we are now taking time to edit each section of our stories to make them more interesting and to use rich vocabulary.

Our focus in Maths last week was 3D Objects and 2D shapes. We had fun drawing a variety of objects on Isometric Dot paper, even though it was very challenging. We were very creative using tiles to make tessellations using 2D shapes and then we attempted to draw them. This week we have worked on Chance.

In Geography, we have learnt an incredible amount about the environments of our world. It has been a wonderful opportunity to discover so much about our planet this term.

In Science, we studied how fossils can tell palaeontologists so much about the history of our planet. We had fun learning about how fossils are made and looking at a variety of fossil types on the internet. We discovered many interesting facts. This week we have been looking at the effects of human impact on the planet. It made us think about our responsibilities of stewardship.

We have enjoyed our Visual Arts this term and have developed some great skills in drawing. We have our works on display in our classroom and they are quite impressive!

We cannot believe Term 3 is coming to an end. We are all in disbelief that we only have one more term in Year 4. However, everyone is ready for a holiday and hopefully we can enjoy some beautiful Spring weather. We wish everyone a lovely break. Stay safe and enjoy!

In English we have written letters from the point of view of the main character, August, to another character who was supposed to be his best friend, but betrayed him. The pain and hurt that has been conveyed through their writing is so real and so raw, it feels like it could really have been August writing the letters! We will include some examples next term when we have finalised our drafts and they are ready to publish!

In Science students have built their final shelter design that they would need to keep them safe if they were stranded on a tropical island. It was fantastic to see science teams choosing their materials based on the results of the experiments throughout the term that tested the properties of various materials. As a homework task this week or through the holidays, students will individually explain why they chose specific materials for various parts to their shelter. They will also comment on their reasoning behind the structure of the shelter such as height and shape. 

In Music students have been continuing to practise playing to the song “I’m yours.” It is wonderful to see the number of students who have already got their island strum and are able to apply this throughout songs. In the holidays, students are encouraged to keep playing along to this song, progressing with their strumming, as well as introducing themselves to a wider range of cords through the recommended YouTube links and chordify site. 

 Ms McGann is looking forward to Mr V coming back so she can spend more time in class with this wonderful group of kids!