Practical Life and Other Matters

Hello everyone!

We had a lovely morning in Halliday Park this morning for the Rememberance Day commemoration ceremony. Our students were accompanied by the Year 3 students from Cycle Three and conducted themselves beautifully, setting a great example for how to commemorate the fallen with dignity and courtesy.

I will be absent tomorrow on a professional development course, so students will be going to their split classes (just for the day... I promise I'll be back after that though!).

We have a number of students who have asked to complete their PSS (Practical Life, Social or Specialist) goal this week. Morgan is going to cook these cupcakes with us on Thursday, and Jasper has a recipe up his sleeve for Friday! We were priveliged to have Jibril and Caleb teach us how to play Euro Handball last week, and will be learning the finer points of volleyball from Zakariya and Luke on Friday afternoon this week.

A few quick reminders - the usual stuff - black school shoes only, hats need to be named, please bring a drink bottle to school, please make sure your child is accompanied to the office for a late pass and then to the classroom if they arrive after 8:45am, and please make sure you have signed off their homework before it is handed in on Monday mornings.

Also please note: the proposed free dress day has been postponed - it had been tabled for this Thursday but will now be held later in the term.

See you around the school!
-Ang

Week 3 Already!

Goodness, it's hard to believe we're heading into Week Three already!

Reminders for this week:
Monday - our Thinking Skills Display for 2014 will go up, providing everything gets finished! Also - BOOK FAIR! We will be purchasing on Monday at around 12:30pm. Also, book club orders are due.
Tuesday - no library, as the book fair will still be going.
Wednesday - Cashflow session #2!
Friday - health lessons begin for Year 5 students.

Many thanks to Alina who has been running Cashflow in our room last term and this term! We will be continuing with this over the next few weeks so that all students can have a turn playing before the end of the year. Feedback has been really positive, and the students are seeing links between this and their online financial literacy unit.

Book recommendation! - I have recently been re-reading 'The Secret of Childhood'. I would wholeheartedly recommend reading this to anyone looking to get a snapshot of Montessori's first few years in the classroom in San Lorenzo, and at her conceptualisation of the Spirtual Embryo, and the role of the adult in fostering its growth. While I have not been able to find an e-book of this particular tome, the translation and publication from Ballantyne Books (available through Amazon) is flawless and makes for engaging reading. It provides a succinct reminder as to the value added to life by a Montessori education - both for the child, and the adults who come in contact with them.

And with that, see you tomorrow!
-Ang

End Week 2!

Hi everyone!

I've had a request for the homework this term to be uploaded, so you can now find it here. Big thanks to Marianne for making it! Please note that students who did not submit their homework this week should make sure they have at least eight tasks finished for next week. The expectation is that the grid be finished by the end of the term, but that having been said, leaving all 52 or so tasks until the last week is obviously not going to be feasible, so please help your child by setting up a routine that will allow them to do a little at a time. We have talked a lot in class about not leaving it until Sunday night to complete it, and about conferencing with me and doing a little extra in advance if you know you are going to have a particularly busy week during the term.

Please initial and date the corresponding box or activity after your child completes a task.

Looking forward to seeing some creative responses on Monday!

-Ang

Gotta go back - back to school again!

Hello, 46A and followers! Hope you have had a great two week break.

Plunging into Term 4, we have a new specialist timetable:
Monday - Indonesian 8:45-9:45
Tuesday - Senior Lab 8:45-9:45 and Library 9:45-10:45
Wednesday - PE 8:45-9:45
Thursday - Art 12:15-1:15
Friday - Y5 Sport 8:45-9:45, Music 9:45-10:45 and Y4 Sport 11:15-12:15.

Homework will be distributed tomorrow, to be completed in the homework scrapbook used in Term 1 (or in a new book if the old one was finished). It is a new initiative we are trying - Open-Ended Tasks. The expectation is that all tasks on the grid will be done by the end of term - many are not difficult or do not require much time to do, so I am hoping our class will embrace the challenge. Who knows, some people might finish it and ask for more - if that is the case I will happily oblige! As always, if you are not at school for an extended period of time, the volume of work is open to negotiation - however, as 4-6A knows, 'I had a busy weekend' doesn't cut it as an excuse as the homework is set week-by-week, not weekend-by-weekend! Please encourage your child to do a little extra on days where they are not busy if there are some days where they know they will be time-poor.

Lots of exciting events coming up across the school this term - Book Fair in Week 2 and 3, Staff Development Day on Friday of Week 4, Melbourne Cup Day in Week 5, Community Evening, Transition, Bonsai Club - the list goes on! The usual classroom initiatives will continue - CAFE reading, THRASS spelling (boy do I have some fun in store for that one!), a graphing extravaganza, some new science experiments, our turn to make something for the media centre, all sorts of stuff.

REMINDERS - REALLY IMPORTANT - Daylight savings began today (hooray! love this time of year!) so make sure you rock up for the 8:45 bell tomorrow... not at 9:45! Also, being as it is that it is Term 4 - NO HAT, NO PLAY! Make sure you have a sunsmart school hat to wear, and that it is CLEARLY named with your name and class in case you get separated!

See you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow!
-Ang.

Free Rice Mitcham Style!

Another post - Wendy's class have asked us to play Free Rice to contribute to their social justice campaign. To play and contribute - it is lots of fun! - click on the banner below.

Feeling Great In Week Eight!

What an exciting week coming up!

Monday - we have the full dress rehearsal for Alice The Musical! Year Four will be watching and applauding our Year Five students as they make their stage debut as Reverend Duckworth, a courtier and a troupe of dancers. Break a leg, Year Five!

Tuesday - the opening night for Alice! Reminder that some students will need to arrive early for hair and make-up - if you haven't returned your blue form, please do so as quickly as possible! I do not have any spares so you will need to hit up the office if you need a new one.

Wednesday - District Athletics Carnival. Good luck to those who are representing our school! I am sure you will give it your biggest and best shot in every event you have been selected for.

Thursday - closing night for Alice! Again remember you may be required to arrive early to get fixed up with hair and make-up.

Quick reminder - your child should be logging on to Literacy Planet several times a week. The tasks for the term were allocated in Week One, so they have known what the expectation is since then. The expectation, to state it again, is that they would be finished by the end of Term 3. If they have lost their password, it is their responsibility to ask me for a reprint or to write it in their diary.

We are all looking forward to the timetable (sort of) going back to normal this week ahead of planning week next week and then - lo and behold! - the last week of term! Hard to believe it is so close to the holidays again already.

Hope you all made it outside to enjoy the beautiful weather over the weekend!
-Ang

CAFE Reading - The Downlow!

You may have seen the Superhero CAFE Menu on the bulletin board over our library corner in the classroom. I thought you might like a bit of a quick run-down on how we use the menu in the classroom and what we're doing with it at the moment.

A system of accountability in reading instruction, CAFE was created in tandem with the Daily Five by 'The Two Sisters' - Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. CAFE stands for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding Vocabulary, and there are strategies under each menu heading to work on these aspects of reading. 46A is currently split into five groups, and they meet with me at least once a week to read aloud and work on the booklet for the novel they are studying. Each group has a focus strategy that they are working on - currently, some are working on inference, some are working on sight word recognition, some are working on taking note of punctuation and others are working on 'backing up and re-reading' when something hasn't made sense the first time they read.

There are times that groups combine or we work together on a strategy, especially if it is practised or explicitly taught using a particularly unusual activity that lots of students want to participate in (for example, our 'fishing expedition' last week!). All practise of the strategies is good practise!

What exactly do we read? This round, all students are reading books from Australian and New Zealand authors from either 3-4 or 5-6 level of the Premier's Reading Challenge. Our current literary fare includes Puppy Place: Pugsley (Ellen Miles), Our Australian Girl: Meet Nellie (Penny Matthews), Weir Do (Anh Do), Mission Fox: Snake Escape (Justin D'ath) and Andy Roid: The Superhuman Secret (Felice Arena). I have had feedback that some students have liked them so much they have finished reading them in their own time and can now read aloud with greater enjoyment the second time around!

Here is a video of the creators of CAFE talking about its benefits. They talk a lot about assessment - in my mind, this dovetails quite well with the Montessori concept of 'observation', as they are mostly talking about embedded tasks to check mastery, without having to implement 'test conditions'.

They have also put out a book which supports the system - I have it on my kindle so I'm really sorry I can't lend it out but if you are interested you can preview it here.

Hope this sheds some light on the process!

Bye for now,
Ang.