Dear Parents and Guardians,
Welcome to Term Four 2023. We hope you all have had a relaxing break from school. We look forward to spending our final term with our Year Six students, as they prepare to graduate and transition into High School for next year.
We are planning to host a school assembly on Friday, October 20, at 2:30pm. We would like to invite parents and guardians to come and support the Challenge students in presenting their learning for the term.
Student wellbeing will be an important focus for this term, as it will be our Investigations topic. Student wellbeing impacts their learning at school and to ensure that students are able to concentrate and learn well at school, it is important to provide them with enough food for their day. Please ensure to provide students with enough healthy food for both lunch and recess, a water bottle and a fruit snack for the day. We appreciate and thank you in advance for your support.
Below is an outline of the curriculum that we will be covering this term.
Investigation
Our Investigation concept for this term will be about student wellbeing. Students will understand the influences people and places have on personal identities. They will examine the influence of emotional responses on other people’s behaviour, relationships, and wellbeing. They will be supported to research, present and explain how specific strategies can enhance their own and other’s health and wellbeing at home, at school and in the community.
English
During the term in Reading, students will continue their work in reading groups. Their main focus will be immersing themselves in diverse both fictional and non-fiction text types to enhance their comprehension and decoding skills, while also exploring the distinctive writing styles of various authors. By gaining insights into the craft of writing narrative texts, the students will apply their learnings to improve their own writing narrative pieces.
For Writing this term, we will be focusing on creating narrative texts that incorporate student research on wellbeing issues, related to our Investigations topic. We will continue using the Bump It Up Wall to improve students’ writing craft. The students will use the visible ‘I can’ statements to identify specific areas to make changes to their writing.
Numeracy
For Numeracy this term, the students will be developing their understanding on the following topics:
- Financial mathematics: Solving and representing money values in different ways, using a variety of written and mental strategies. They will create simple financial plans and explore and calculatepercentage discounts.
- Statistics and data: Creating and interpreting graphs by using the financial data they had collectedthrough creating financial plans.
Measuring and calculating angles: Estimate, construct and compare angles as well as begin to
identify unknown angles on straight lines.
Auslan
Students will continue to communicate through Auslan authentically in Term 4. They will be communicating their thoughts while playing games, to show their understanding or confusion. They will be learning to identify ways to describe their family members in Auslan. They will be learning to sign a short story, by signing the character’s actions.
Religion
For Term 4, the students will be continuing to learn about Saints of the Church as part of their research project about Saints for our school sports teams. Through their research project, they will be learning about how the Saints are role models of the school values. They will be reflecting on their previous learning about the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit and creating connections with the Saints they have chosen to research. Students will also investigate Human Dignity by unpacking scripture and the Church’s teachings.
Optional Home Learning Activities
We have provided simple home learning activities that children can do at home during the term. Please note that they are not mandatory and are offered as optional home learning activities.
Please see the table below to access the optional home learning activities:
| Reading |
|
| Writing |
|
| Mathematics | General Mathematics
Angles
Financial Maths
Interpreting statistics and graphs
|
Contact Details
If you would like to contact us via email, our email addresses* are:
Thomas Punzalan – thomas.punzalan@slweirviews.catholic.edu.au
Jessica Minniti- jessica.minniti@slweirviews.catholic.edu.au
*Please note that we will endeavour to respond to emails within 24-48 hours within the working week. We are not able to respond to emails after school hours.
Kind regards,
Jessica Minniti and Thomas Punzalan
Challenge Learning Community Teachers