Term 4, Week 9

 Dear Parents

It is hard to believe that there is only one week of school left for 2023! Thank you for a wonderful year with your beautiful children. I have seen them grow in their learning, self-help skills and confidence. Please read the below important notes.

Transition Afternoon – Today. The whole school will be participating in a transition this afternoon where they will be given a chance to meet their teachers for 2024...they won't know which teacher they will have but this will be a great chance for them to eyeball their possible new teacher and build some excitement!

Library Books. Please do a final check for any missing or late library books and send them in with your child as soon as possible.

Cleaning - Wednesday 6th of December

Please send your child to school in their sports uniform. We will be cleaning desks and chairs in the morning. Please sunscreen your child before they come to school.

Colour Run - Friday 8th December

The children will need to wear their faction shirt to school and will get changed into their white shirt and shorts after lunch. We ask that you send in an extra t-shirt or a towel for your child to change into or wrap around themselves after the colour run.

A few parents have asked about how to help consolidate writing skills for NAPLAN next year. Below is the structure we have followed in class. NAPLAN writing will be either narrative or persuasive text.

Narrative:

See the below Story Mountain planner. Encourage your child to write descriptive words before a noun e.g. big savage dog, large dark hole, small crooked tree. To help them remember to write in sentences, encourage your child to repeat a writing pattern by thinking about 5 questions for each part of the ‘story mountain’.

·         where do the characters go?

·         what do the characters do?

·         how do the characters feel?

·         what do the characters say?

Writing is in the past tense. Use a familiar text e.g. fairy tale, they know well as a mentor text to support their writing. A mentor text can give them a structure to follow. Following a mentor text can reduce stress as they will have a bank of words they can spell correctly.

Persuasive text:

See below Persuasive Text planner. Encourage your child to come up with 3 reasons for their argument then plan their evidence for each reason. The reason needs to be only one word.

When they write the first paragraph, the three reasons go into the first paragraph (see below mentor text). Each paragraph has one of the reasons and the evidence they have brainstormed.

Finish with the conclusion where they state the 3 reasons again and then write a ‘call to action’, asking the reader to do something. Start each sentence in a similar way to the mentor text.  Using the same strong language is very important.

Comprehension text:

Below is a good text to help your child continue to work on how to answer questions using different styles of text. The book is a ‘slow release’ model which means it guides through how to find the answers. Then with the next text, your child will use their knowledge to answer similar style questions. This book can be purchased as an eBook and is a teaching resource, so you can print off pages later if you have younger children. Find the one for your child’s age group.

 

I hope the above is helpful. Thank you for your continued support throughout the year and I wish you all a restful and safe holiday break.

Kind regards

Maree Noonan