RIDE2SCHOOL DAY

What a fabulous day we had today for our Ride2School Day. It was wonderful to see so many students and families ‘actively travelling’ this morning.  Even Mr. Hewet actively travelled by kayaking to school!

Everyone enjoyed a tasty healthy breakfast sponsored by Michelle Galileos and Kingston Council.

Was wonderful also to have Mark from Bicycle Victoria to join our ambassadors-Kade, Gracie and Harrison to give our stickers and join the fun.

WHOLE SCHOOL PHOTO DAY
 

This year’s individual, class, family and whole school photos were taken on Tuesday morning. Fantastic to see all students in uniform! We will inform families when the packs arrive at school.

CURRICULUM DAYS

At our March School Council meeting the following dates were approved for 2022. 

Term 2 - Monday 30th May
Staff professional development - school review preparation 

Term 3 - Friday 5th August
Bronwyn Ryrie Jones | Educational Consultant | Australia

Responsive Teaching in Action - Home | Responsive Teaching in Action

Term 3 - Monday 31st October

Staff professional development - Responsive Teaching in Action follow up 'action research' 

Term 4 - Monday 19th & Tuesday 20th December

Teacher planning- for the 2023 school year

PREP-2 SWIMMING PROGRAM
 

Next week our Junior School begins their swimming program at Toby Haenen Swim Centre Chelsea Heights. A huge thank you to Miss McDonald for her terrific work in organising this program. Thanks also to the many parent helpers who have offered assistance with this program. A reminder from Toby Haenan’s is that all visitors/helpers must have a vaccination certificate.

 DOGS IN THE SCHOOLGROUNDS

Please note, dogs are not permitted in our schoolgrounds or Fowler street oval.  Our Dogs in Schoolgrounds policy outlines the following points-

• Dogs are not permitted within the school grounds at any time unless prior approval is given by the Principal. The exception to this policy is for dogs which assist people with disabilities.
• Dogs must be on a lead held by the owner or person in charge at all times whilst in a public place such as outside the school fence.  Dog owners in breach of this may be fined by the council.  They must not be tied up/tethered to the fence.

 COVID-19 UPDATE

We have only two weeks of Term 1 left! It has really flown by.

As a community you have been extremely supportive of your children, the teachers and the wider school community. Our recent challenges have of course been the ongoing disruptions for some families and staff who are isolating as close contacts or with a positive test result. The office has appreciated your communication with us keeping us informed of positive COVID cases and updating us with your children’s wellbeing. Thank you so much.

NAPLAN – SCHOOL READINESS TESTS  

Our Year 3 and Year 5 students will be undertaking their practice online NAPLAN tests over the next few weeks. Thanks to David Hewet and Tanya Whiteside for their coordination.

Year 5 students will be completing their writing component online for the first time in history of NAPLAN. ​
The actual NAPLAN tests for 2022 will be undertaken in Term 2 between 10–20 May, with most of the testing occurring on the 10, 11th and 12th of May.

What’s Been Happening?    

What an amazing start to year. It has been incredible to see the preppies forming their growth mindsets and picking up all the new concepts we are delivering to them.

In mathematics we have been having a lot of fun in the classroom focussing forming our numbers to 10, counting and collecting items, and subitising. The students participated in a range of mathematics treasure hunts that involved finding specific amounts of items and presenting them at the end.

In Phonics we have been focussing on learning our letter names and sounds. Furthermore, we have been learning about rhyming, syllables and segmenting words. In reading and writing we have been working on the differences between a fragment and a sentence and learning how to expand our sentences with rich vocabulary.

In inquiry we have been focussing on building awareness of our school values, respect for our peers. We have also been focussing on recognising our personal strengths and how we can build up and promote our peers’ strengths

What’s coming up?    

Swimming begins on the 28^th of March. Please ensure everything is labelled so we can return it if it gets lost.

The last day of term is the 8^th of April. We will be finishing at 2.30pm this day.

The Prep Team
Miss I, Mr Pepi and Miss Gallo

What a great term we have all had, finishing with swimming in the last two weeks and the Easter bonnet parade. (Don’t forget to send in a hat for the students to decorate).

The students are loving being at school 100% of the time and so are the teachers.

Kindness day was a huge success! There were many discussions about kindness and bullying, and the strategies that we can use to help ourselves and others.

The students have enjoyed having all their specialists back Music, PE, Art and Korean. They look forward to these sessions with much excitement.

Over the last two weeks we have participated in AFL clinics and are hoping we have some budding stars coming through for the future.

AFL Clinic

Music

Kindness Day

Term 1 in the middle school has had a strong focus on the Chelsea Primary School 4R’s of Respect, Responsibility, Relationships and Resilience.  This focus ties in perfectly with Harmony Day which was celebrated on the 21^st March.  Students looked amazing in their orange and blue clothing choices which represented Harmony Day and Bullying No-Way Day, with some students even arriving in clothing of cultural significance.

Along with a solid well-being focus, Term 1 has also been rich in literacy and numeracy learning.  Literacy lessons have continued to focus around weekly or bi-weekly mentor texts, with texts chosen for their rich literacy content and wonderful stories of courage, bravery and kindness.  Students have also tackled several writing pieces, including a persuasive text which tied in with Student Voice Representative speeches, and narrative texts as we further explore the structure of narrative texts.

Numeracy has centrally focused around the fundamentals of place value, with an emphasis on addition and subtraction strategies in recent weeks to help students move forward with more complex problems.  Perimeter is to be explored shortly; a perfect way of using addition and subtraction to solve real-world mathematic problems.

Thus far in Term 1, middle school students have been spoiled with plenty of sporting exposure.  For four weeks, students participated in clinics run by the Chelsea Basketball Club, in which they honed their skills through drills and mini games.  In addition, students have been lucky enough to build their AFL skills in an AFL clinic!  During the 2-week workshop, students loved learning and putting into practise hand-balling and ball-handling skills in several games.

With only a few weeks left of Term 1, we will continue to maintain a well-being focus to ensure students see out this term feeling great about their accomplishments.  Well done everyone, you have put in a massive effort for the first 8 weeks of the term, with only a couple to go until you can have a well-deserved break.

     

It has been a jam packed two weeks in the senior building as students are powering through term 1 with excitement and determination. Anticipation and fulfilment has filled the senior atmosphere as we allocate leadership roles and formally award our leaders with their badges. A new face in the form of a placement teacher has brought a fresh vibe for everyone. Students have been looking forward to harmony day and have fully immersed themselves in understand why it is so important to accept and include all people and cultures. It was amazing to see parents back at assemblies and see the whole school community together again. We as a Chelsea community have also been collecting yummy chocolates for our Easter Bonnet day raffle, it has been great to see so many donations and we look forward to handing these out to ticket winners.

Sport

In the last two weeks we have versed St Josephs and Edithvale in interschool sport. Our students have shown amazing sportsmanship and have showcased some wonderful skill during these games. Our cricket team hit 6’S all day long against St Josephs and won the day, the following week they faced a challenge against Edithvale and lost by only 7 runs. It has been a joy to see our senior students actively participate in healthy competition against local schools. On Thursday afternoon’s students have been engaging in special rugby clinics, which has been a welcoming change from the usual cricket and footy games they have been playing together.

In the classrooms

The grade 5’s have been preparing for the fast approaching NAPLAN testing week by expanding their narrative writing abilities. We have spent time planning and structuring our narratives and finding ways to deepen plots and character development to enhance reader experience. We looked at making kernel (simple) sentences more robust by adding the five WH words. Across both year levels students have been learning about how to apply punctuation to create meaningful and articulated sentences. In numeracy our students have been focusing on fractions, what equivalent fractions look like and how they are equal. Simplifying fractions as well as adding and subtracting fractions with both like and unlike denominators. In our inquiry we have switched from working on school wide values to democracy in Australia. The unit is specific to how democracy works in Australia and help students understand the process of voting. Students also learnt the different roles and authorities the government and other governing bodies have.

Over the last two weeks teachers and students have been working hard and enjoying the time we spend together each and every day.


     

Foundation

Our Foundation students have enjoyed two major units of work this term.  The first was a “Collage”, we have named “Oh, The Places We Go”.  Inspired by the Dr. Seuss book, the Hot Air Balloons are a metaphor for them commencing their life long journey of learning.  Fine motor skills were practised with the gluing of small coloured squares and the use of scissors.  The Hot Air Balloons look sensational as mobiles that are currently adorning our art room.

Our second unit of work was “Textiles” and students ‘dressed’ their model cut outs from various scrap materials of cloth, leather, buttons and beads.  Again, fine motor skills were put to the test in this body of work and the students have done a beautiful job.

Years 1/2  

The students have made fabulous mobiles of colourful fish.  Our focus on this unit was symmetry and they have done an amazing job in copying both sides of their fish to achieve symmetry.  They are also currently hanging in the art room and will be sent home at the end of term. 

Indigenous Art was the second unit we tackled in this first term and our learning was more about learning and understanding the symbols used in Aboriginal Art.  Students did some painstakingly intricate colouring in and there are many different pieces to exhibit once they are complete. 

Years 3/4

The 3/4s commenced the year with some art inspired by Monet.  The ‘Field of Flowers’ was the basis of our work as well as finding out all about Claude Monet.  Our first attempt was a fair reflection of their very novice art teacher and although the students did their best, the results were not what we envisaged.  We are going to repeat this project using different methods and hopefully that will be their teacher’s first and last fail. 

Our second task was much more successful and was a ‘Collage’ of a Newspaper Streetscape.  Some terrific installations have been completed and will be displayed around the school as soon as we can get them up.

Years 5/6

5/6’s learnt about famous Australian artist, Pro Hart.  We learnt about his life in Broken Hill and looked at the diverse and varied portfolio of his work.  Our unit was inspired by his “Dragonfly” body of work and of course we had a few looks at the ‘Oh! Mr. Hart’ carpet commercial.   Some of the student’s work were amazing and they can be very proud of their results. 

Secondly, the seniors are currently building “Bathing Boxes”.  This ‘Construction” unit, covered the history of bathing boxes in Australia as well as designing their own version of one.  They have used lots of Maths in this art project to plan, measure and cut their icy poles sticks to bring their designs to life.  Not yet finished, but looking the goods.



Year 3/4s Newspaper Streetscape Collages
     

Foundations Hot Air Balloons inspired by Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, The Places You Go”.

Foundation’s Textiles

1/2s  Fish Mobiles

5/6’s Pro Hart inspired “Dragonflys’