Goondi SS Term 1 Week 6

From Leadership

Dear Parents and Carers,

As we visit classrooms, it is exciting to see students engaging in learning and being productive. It is fantastic to see the dedicated staff at Goondi State School ensuring all students learning and achieving every day. Every day really does count!

Our students really do demonstrate the Goondi Way and strive to “Fly like Lyssi”.

Our three Pillars for behaviour are:

We Are Safe

We Are Respectful

We Are Learners

Our PBL focus skill this week is Expectations on Parade.

At Goondi State School lessons commence at 8:45am. Ideally, students should arrive at school by 8:30am so students have an opportunity to organise themselves and be prepared for learning. Students who arrive after the 8:45am bell need to obtain a Late Slip from Administration.

This term, an important focus for our Year 3 and 5 teachers and students is on NAPLAN preparation. NAPLAN testing will occur in Weeks 8 and 9 of this term. Over the next two weeks in the lead up to the tests, teachers will be concentrating on consolidating core skills and providing opportunities for students to sit practice tests. This ensures that all students are comfortable with the format and expectations of the NAPLAN assessments.

Year 3 students complete a paper assessment for Writing with all other NAPLAN assessments are conducted on-line.

The features that can be seen include question types, on screen tools, timers and interactive navigation. The demonstration tests cover a sample of possible questions.

Our P&C AGM and meeting was held on Monday 19 February. A sincere congratulations to our incoming 2024 executive committee. We look forward to working with you all this year.

President – Leanne Pierantozzi

Vice President – Nicole Willmett

Secretary – Alyce Haack

Vice Secretary – Simone Titterton

Treasurer – Kylie Barba

Vice Treasurer – Karen Mather

We extend our thanks and gratitude to our outgoing committee and thank them for all of the work they achieved during their time in office. They have worked tirelessly to raise funds and to add value to our school and the lives of the students at Goondi State School.

President – Peter Greven

Vice President – Michael Blair

Secretary – Rebecca Sapuppo

Treasurer – Louise Blair

I would like to extend a warm welcome to the new committee of the Goondi State School P and C Association…..Nicole, Alyce, Kylie, Karen & Simone. Here’s to an amazing year of achieving great things. We have some bold ideas we will be bringing to the table, and will need the support of our school community Thank you very much to the past committee and committees for setting things up and making it an easy transition.

We are sending out expression of interest forms today & appreciate you volunteering any spare time to the P&C.
We hope to see some new & friendly faces at the meetings and on the days we require additional help.

Many thanks

Leanne Pierantozzi
P&C President 

BREAKFAST CLUB

We are lucky to be able to provide a healthy breakfast to students every day. Items can include fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, cereal, toast, yoghurt and more. Please ensure your child comes to school with a water bottle and healthy and nutritious lunch and can remain fuelled for the school day. Our break times are 11:00am and 1:15pm. 

A reminder that the school bell rings at 3:00pm. All students being collected should wait at the Parent Pick Up gate. Please be mindful when walking across the staff carpark entrance and park in the designated bays outside our school.

Kind regards,

Khadeeja Mohammed and Katherine Long

School Calendar

Fri 1st Mar - Clean up Australia Day

Wed 6th Mar - Bruce & Denise Morcombe Visit

Thur 7th Mar - School Photos

Wed 13th Mar - NAPLAN starts

Mon 18th Mar - P&C Meeting 5:30pm

Fri 22nd Mar - Inter-House Cross Country

Mon 25th Mar - Yr 6 Orientation morning at ISC

Tues 26th Mar - Parent/Teacher Interviews

Tues 26th-Thur 28th Mar - HOTSHOTS

Fri 29th Mar - GOOD FRIDAY Public Holiday

Mon 15th Apr - TERM 2 RESUMES

P&C

Feast of the Senses - Colouring In Comp

Curriculum News

Fluency Matters

Read like you speak.

Fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with expression.

Fluent reading requires background knowledge of the material being read, rapid retrieval of the relevant vocabulary and knowledge of conventions of language. All these processes must be integrated and highly automatic so the reader can focus on the meaning of the text.

Fluency is one of the essential building blocks of reading because fluency development is directly related to comprehension. The link is so close that fluency and comprehension can be seen as interdependent. Fluency can only occur if the reader comprehends the material as it is read in order to pause and phrase groups of words appropriately. Similarly, if reading is hesitant and disjointed, meaning is lost. The two elements support each other.

Why are reading fluency and reading comprehension so highly correlated?

We have a limited amount of mental energy. If you want to multitask or to become proficient at a complex task such as reading, you first need to master the component tasks so you can do them automatically. For example, a reader who must focus his or her attention on decoding words may not have enough mental energy left over to think about the meaning of the text. However, a fluent reader who can automatically decode the words can give full attention to comprehending the text. To become proficient readers, our children need to become automatic with text so they can pay attention to the meaning.

To develop fluency, students must first acquire speed and accuracy in reading single words – automatic word identification. To become fluent, students must then be able to apply prosodic (expressive) features such as rhythm, intonation and phrasing to their reading.

It is not enough for a student to be an accurate decoder. It is prosody (expression) which best predicts children’s reading comprehension skills. Efficient prosody enhances readers’ interest and motivation to read. Prosody makes oral reading “come alive”.

What can I do at home?

Modelling of Fluency: One of the best ways we can help build fluent reading in our children is to read aloud engaging and motivating stories so the children experience the excitement and pleasure that fluent reading provides. Adding sound effects, individual voices for different characters, dramatic pauses and emphasis on particular words, such as rhyming words, will enhance children’s engagement.

Encourage repeated readings of home readers and books which can be read confidently to develop reading rate, accuracy and prosody.

The achievement of oral reading fluency reinforces the relationship between “learning to read” and “reading to learn”.

Prep Capers

The last two weeks in prep we have been using our knowledge of letter sounds to start reading. Students are working hard to use each letter sound and blend them together to read the words in the book. There is a lot of excitement from our budding readers as they decode words and can answer questions about the texts they are reading.

In writing we have explored different stories and written about who the characters are with an I am statement, something the character likes and some students are starting to write another I am sentence using a describing word. They are working hard to  take the shapes they have practiced from Casey Caterpillar to make letters and form these letters correctly. 

In maths students have continued to explore numbers to ten and how to represent and write the numbers. The students have also compared sizes of items and ordered them from smallest to biggest, describing the position of items, compared more and less and sorting objects into groups. 

Regards 

The Prep team

Year 1 Capers

Well we are at the half way mark this term and time really is flying in Year 1.

In English, we have really been impressed with the huge efforts put into weekly writing tasks.  The students are  enjoying writing imaginative recounts and are striving to make their writing interesting by using a range adjectives to make their writing pop.  In Grammar, we have been learning all bout nouns and learning the difference between putting s or es to make words plural. 

In Maths, we have been consolidating 3D and 2D shapes and have been looking at their unique features.  We have been building our knowledge of numbers to 50 through the use of MAB’s and have also been practicing identifying our Australian coins. Ask your child to tell you the names and order of the coins you have around the house.

In Science this week the students looked at nocturnal and diurnal animals.

In History, we have been discussing things from the past and had a look at schools in the past and we spoke about the human life cycle.

Steven, Leigh and Fiona

Year 2 Capers

Hi from Year 2!

Hard to believe that it is Week 6 already. Very soon we will be thinking about our end of term assessments, which is always an exciting time. Term 1 is a non-reporting term, so there is no report card issued, but the assessment will still provide great data for helping shape the delivery of our teaching. We will also be able to discuss results with you in week 10, when we have our parent-teacher interviews.

At this time, our exciting learning continues in all of our subject areas.  In English, we have been looking at different ways to adapt a Fairy Tale.  This week we are changing the ending to Little Red Riding Hood to something interesting and unexpected. 

In Science and Technology, we continue to investigate materials and joining techniques so we can construct a house, for the Three Little Pigs, that is wind and waterproof. 

In HaSS, we have been investigating our place in the world and looking at different scale.  At the global level, we have identified the continents and oceans of our world and marked the Equator and other latitudinal lines on a map of our Earth.

A reminder that homework is due on Fridays.  This work is important to reinforce our learning in class.  Library is currently held fortnightly on odd weeks.  2B is on Thursday and 2A is on Friday.

Kathy Pike, Tayla Vandal and Jeanette Spataro.

Year 3 Capers

It’s Week 6 and we have assessment just around the corner, which means every day is important as we consolidate our learning. This week in writing we are investigating how to write the resolution and ending paragraphs of a narrative. Next week is our last week before the NAPLAN writing test, so we will revisit the exposition genre. An information leaflet was sent home last week regarding NAPLAN. Should you want more information or have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your class teacher. This week we have a practice test on computers scheduled, which allows students to become familiar with what the testing will look like.

The concept we are exploring this week in numeracy is chance and data. We have an experiment with spinners and a dice to investigate before constructing bar graphs. After this topic we will look at shapes, make comparisons between pyramids and prisms and find the line of symmetry in two-dimensional shapes. We are studying the ten- and three-time tables, solving word problems and recording fact families using multiplication and division.

This week should be our final week on Scratch. We have our assessment booklet to complete, finalise our guessing game and then a chance to play other class members’ games and evaluate their work. Once we have finished Technology we will start our Hass unit, which will carry through to the end of semester.

Until next time, Ashley, Robyn, Janelle and Amanda.

Year 4 Capers

We have reached half way into the term!

Students have participated in the Sports Spectacular day last Tuesday. This was a fantastic day and good way for students to try out new things and step a bit out of their comfort zone. Last week, flyers from the different sports were sent home. Students were even lucky enough to receive a free Happy Meals voucher that was kindly donated by McDonald’s Innisfail.

Students are continuing to read the novel Matilda and are engaging in rich comprehension questions relating the chapters that we read. In the last two weeks for genre writing, there has been a big focus around the structure of a narrative. In the last week, students have been working on constructing a series of events for their narrative. They are starting to make steady progress in this area.

For Maths, we have continued to look at fraction, adding fractions, and finding fractions on a number line. In Measurement and Geometry, students have learnt about measuring lengths using personal referent as well as formal tools such as rulers. We have also looked at mass, how many grams makes 1kg.

In Science, students are continuing to monitor the biodegradability experiment each day, by recording the temperature and their observations on the materials in the dirty.

HASS, students have been learning about the relationship between the Yolgnu people of Arnhem Land and the Macassan Traders of Makasar in Indonesia. In the up coming weeks, students will begin to learn about early European explorers who helped map the Australian coastline.

This week, students are beginning to build their bridges for Technology. Can we please ask that parents and carers continue to collect recyclable materials, such as tin cans, soft drink tins and other containers? If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact Miss Reitano or Mrs Sulter.

Kind regards,

Miss Jade Reitano and Mrs Jenna Sulter

Year 5 Capers

Week 6! We are officially half way through Term 1.

There has been lots of communication in regards to NAPLAN, please ensure you are discussing this within your families to ensure everyone is aware what is happening. This will also calm students down so that they are prepared and ready to have a go. Remember a test is to show all the things they can do, not what they can not.

In English, we have been honing in on adding detail to our writing and making it interesting for our reader.

In Mathematics, we are continuing to work through all three strands of the Australian Curriculum: number and algebra, statistics and probability and measurement and geometry.

In HASS, we are focusing on the difference between needs and wants.

In Science, we are busy designing and creating pizza ovens with the tasks of melting marshmallows by harnessing the power of the sun.

Thanks,

Kayla Hutchins and Rebecca Nolan

Year 6 Capers

We’re more than half-way through Term 1 already, and students are continuing to work hard at developing and consolidating their learning in all subjects for their upcoming end-of-term tests.

In English, we have been working hard on mastering the structure of a historical recount, and also how to “Show, Don’t Tell” with our writing. (For example, instead of saying their character was “scared” before a battle, students might instead write about shaking hands and wobbly knees as their character stood waiting in the trenches.) Students are working hard to write a new piece of writing each week, following along with the Scarecrow Army novel we are reading, and use grammar, punctuation and writing lessons, as well as feedback on their writing to improve each time. This week we will focus on using what we’ve learned so far to carefully edit our writing to be able to independently identify the areas they need to improve, in order to “bump up” their writing to the next level.

In Maths, we’re continuing to explore new areas, as well as reviewing and consolidating topics already covered, in preparation for end-of-term assessment. The Term 1 Maths assessment is so valuable for teachers to be able to get a specific view of both student and whole class strengths and weaknesses, so we can forward-plan for the rest of the year.

In HASS we are exploring “Enterprise”, with students coming up with some great ideas to solve problems in our world! Ask your child what their “solution” was to the problem they identified – there were some really creative ideas presented! In Science, we’re learning how to estimate wind speed, using a tool that sailors used before instruments were available to measure it. And in Health, we’re continuing to consider what influences us.

In the upcoming weeks we will pass on information about the Innisfail State College transition program, which, in Term 1, includes a tour of the school for parents.

Thank you all for your support as we’re making our way through the last year of primary school. Remember that every day really does count – we cover so much work each day that gets built on in subsequent lessons - so every student should come to school whenever possible. Please do not hesitate to drop in or contact us if you have any questions.

Melanie Worth, Nathan Worth, Anita Knight and Matilda Wolff.

L.O.T.E News

Saluti (Greetings)

It is a pleasure to be at Goondi State School teaching students Italian in Years 5 and 6.  Students learning Italian listen to, speak, read and say Italian to gain understanding.

In our Italian lessons we will continue learning Italian songs.  Songs help to enhance pronunciation and increase fluency.  Ask the students to sing the songs to you.  Year 5 students are learning to answer “Che classe fai?” - “What grade are you in?” and “Dove vai a scuola?” - “Where do you go to school?” Year 6 students are listening to and learning how to complete conversations between two people using known and new vocabulary. 

Exercise books will be collected regularly and feedback provided.  Encourage your child to speak Italian with you and discuss what they are learning!

Arrivederci (Goodbye)

Signora Lazzarini

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