Wendy’s Group Week 5 Term 2
Hi everyone.
A highlight this week was the Lane Cove Children’s Voices for Reconciliation event at The Canopy on Thursday. Currambena has been a contributor to this event for almost all of its 28 year history and this year was no exception with Preschool and Meg’s groups singing The Rainbow Snake and our group singing two songs, There Was a Man and Black Boy. Congratulations to Mabel who spoke to the gathering introducing the songs and also congratulations to the guitarists who accompanied the younger singers as well as our group.
Another highlight was the Year 6/7 night on Friday night. It was lovely to see all of our most recent alumni and hear about their first, almost six months of high school. They all sound as if they have settled in really well, found new friends and are navigating the demands of multiple teachers, assignments and tests with skill. Advice to our current Year 6 cohort included be nice to everyone from the start through to get to work on homework and assignments as soon as you get them!
This week has also seen us say farewell to our student teacher, Miso, who has been a wonderful help in our room over the past three weeks. As we usually do, we shared some food on Friday afternoon, presented Miso with a card from all of us and several of the children made brief speeches thanking her for her help and saying we’ll miss her. We wish her all the very best with her continuing studies and hope to see her back at Currambena some time in the future!
Story writing enthusiasm continues and many of the group are now typing up their stories into a Google doc and sharing it with me for proofreading and editing help. Some are intending to enter the Dymocks Writing Competition which we heard about at the Writers’ Festival. Entries are due by 1st June. This week in class we looked at creating similes to enhance descriptions, using word play in character names and enhancing a reader’s understanding of a character by telling about things they do. It’s fabulous to see some of these techniques appearing in the children’s stories!
In Maths, we explored improper fractions, adding and subtracting them and placing them on number lines. The concepts are developing well for everyone. We also practised times tables as usual and are working on completing Unit 9 in textbooks.
Last term, when we were focussing on writing informative texts, we learned about Australian reefs and certain species of fish, including the blue groper, which featured in the book “Blueback” by Tim Winton which we read as a group. We did a detour into persuasive writing when we heard that the ban on line fishing for blue groper might be lifted and jointly constructed a persuasive letter to the NSW Government in protest. We had read in the news that the ban had been extended and last week we received an email reply from Mr Bryan van der Walt, the Director of Fisheries Management thanking us for our interest and explaining the decision making process. Gratifying to have our concerns acknowledged!
We also received a thank you certificate from the Down Syndrome NSW for our donation of money raised selling ice blocks last term. I’ve made a copy for everyone to keep in their portfolios.
Hope to see some of you at the Mini Concert on Tuesday!
Have a good week!
Love,
Wendy