A busy week ahead!

Good evening parents,

Just a few notes about the up coming week  (because it's going to be a busy one) so we don't miss out on anything.

Book Week

Wednesday is book week dress up day at OLC. We would love to see your child come dressed up as their favourite book character. I understand that this can also be quite a tricky task coming up with what to wear, so I have a few easy costumes which can be made over a weekend (or for people like me, the night before!). Have a look at the ideas below.

The Great Book Swap is also on the same day, if you haven't already, could you please bring in a pre-loved book to include in the swap and then an amount (between $1 and $5) to buy some other children's pre-loved books to continue their love of reading!

School Photos

School Photos will be in Week 8 (Thursday 9th of September) so if you could bring back your photo envelopes, that would be very much appreciated.

Shoe boxes

Thank you to all those people that have brought in their donation for the Operation Christmas child shoe boxes. Keep bringing in those donations and the $2.50 for postage. The children are getting very excited about writing their letters to the children involved in the program and it will be a good opportunity for them to see another way other children live around the world.

If you have any questions or queries, please email me.

Have a lovely weekend!

Miss Prowse

Fun with Doubles!

Last week, the Year One children began to learn about doubles. We learnt that doubles are the same number added together to make a new number. To begin our learning we played a fun doubles game which involved us using our bodies to answer questions.

We had two champions of each team at either end of the game board. When Miss Prowse called out the doubles fact, the two champions had to jump to the correct answer...without touching the lines. Some of the boys were fantastic jumpers and really loved getting the correct answer to get to the square.

Some of the children loved helping out on the sidelines and were so engaged in the game.

We found out that all of the doubles facts were even numbers and they were also multiples of 2.

After our game, we went inside and played slides and ladders double facts. We got really good at remembering our doubles in a fun way.

All of the children had a blast learning about doubles!

Have a great night

Miss Prowse

A fun new way to learn Maths at home and at school - Mathletics

Dear Parents,

Year One is now using Mathletics!

Mathletics is the next generation in learning as it helps students enjoy maths and achieve great results. 
About Mathletics: Mathletics is a web-based learning program which integrates home and school learning via the internet. Mathletics is based on the Australian Curriculum from the Early Years to Year 12 and is currently used in over 3000 schools!

There are thousands of students in schools across Australia, New Zealand,  UK, Singapore and the USA are accessing the site every day! 

Your child has 24 hour access to Mathletics by using a unique user name and password. These passwords have been taped to the inside of their reading file. 


We recommend that you spend time looking at the program with your child so that you can gain the greatest understanding of how Mathletics will benefit your child. 

Benefits of Mathletics 
• Students love Mathletics!
 • Students are engaged and motivated to learn. 
• Mathletics is adaptive which means that it responds to the individual student’s strengths and weaknesses. 
• Students instantly know if they are on the right track and can work through the curriculum at their own pace. 
• Animated support guides students through concepts at their own pace which is like having a personal maths tutor 24 hours a day! 
• Live Mathletics fosters a stimulating and exciting online learning community. 
• Results flow seamlessly between home and school so you can stay informed of your child’s progress. 


I have assigned the children some tasks and they may complete up to four tasks over the week. Once they have finished this task, they are allowed to go onto Mathletics Live where they can compete against other children around the world! 

We have had a go in our class and the children are very excited about it. 

An app can be downloaded for the ipad for free called Mathletics.

Here is the link below for your children to start learning!

http://www.mathletics.com.au/

If you have any questions, please just email me :)

Have a lovely day!

Miss Prowse 

Star Citizen for Respect

Congratulations to this terms Star Citizen For Respect.... Cooper De Chiera.

Cooper is always respectful to bob his classmates and teachers when ever he comes into contact with them. We are so proud to have you in Orange Room Cooper! Well done!

Miss Prowse

How the birds got their colours - A Dreaming story

Last week the children explored the Dreamtime story How the Birds got their colours as told by Mary Albert.  We participated in various shared reading activities and spoke about the importance of story telling in Indigenous culture. We learnt that in the Indigenious culture, they pass stories down from generation to generation to help them develop understandings of the importance of the animals and the land.

We got familiar with the story and made connections between the text and ourselves. We thought about times we might have seen birds of different colours and of times that people have helped us, just like the parrot in the story. We used the comprehension strategy of summarising to find out the important parts of the story and completed a story wheel. We had a lot of fun drawing the pictures to match the story!

Below are some pictures of the children constructing our story wheel and the final product!

We did some evaluating between a claymation version of the story and compared it to the story book version. We discussed what some of our reasoning was when choosing our favourite and a lot of the children chose the story book version as they enjoyed the voices and expression the class used when reading.

Below is the video of how the birds got their colours that you can share with your children, I'm sure they will love telling you about it!

Keep an eye out for information about learning journeys in week 9.

Thank you
Miss Prowse

Friends of 10 fun in Maths!

As a part of our Math dedicated time, The Year One children often participate in quick mental math games or practise singing our 2, 5 or 10 time tables. We have practised really hard on our friends of 10 facts and I think almost everyone in our class can recall the facts without being prompted!

Below is a song that we often sing to remember our friends of 10 facts in class.

This relates to the Mathematics Curriculum outcome of:

Represent and solve simple addition and subtraction problems using a range of strategies including counting on, partitioning and rearranging parts (ACMNA015)

Last week, we played the friends of 10 card game and had a lot of fun finding the friends in our stack of cards. If you want to play at home, you can use a simple deck of cards and you need a partner. Take out all of the 10's, jacks, queens, kings and jokers and play the ace's as the number one.

Share out the cards so each player gets 5 cards each and the remaining cards go into a pile between the two players. Make as many friends of 10 pairs as you can and then you can take turns in asking the other player if they have your matching card (eg. if you have a 2 ask your opponent if they have an 8). Keep playing until all the cards are gone and then declare the winner!

Here are some photos of our amazing class practising their friends of 10 facts.

Have a lovely night

Miss Prowse

Week 4 Merit Award Winners

Congratulations to this weeks Merit Awarrd winners Remy North and Lachlan Hayhow! They have worked so hard this week and have been absolute super stars!!

Keep an eye out on the blog for a friends of 10 game that you can play with your child at home! One that they absolutely love! 

Have a great weekend 

Miss Prowse 

Shoe Boxes - Operation Christmas Child

Good evening Parents,

Over the next couple of weeks, the Year One and Year Two children are going to participate in an initiative called 'Operation Christmas Child' which aims to pack a shoebox to give to a child who has never received a gift before. This ties into our school value of Compassion as we are helping less fortunate children in need.

Please see below an example shoe box:

Your child will be grouped with three other children to contribute and pack the shoebox. We are asking you to encourage your child to do something extra at home to earn the money that is needed to buy the item to put into the shoebox.

Your child will bring home a note which shows you what kind of items can be sent away in the shoebox. We are asking for all donations to be brought to school by Friday 11th September (end of week 8) please. It is very exciting for the children to share in this initiative which has been a part of the O.L.C. Community for the last 12 years.

Thank you for your support.

Miss Prowse

Assumption Mass tomorrow and a BIG thank you!

Good evening parents,

Just a quick note to let you know that the whole school will be attending Assumption mass is the hall tomorrow from 9.00am. If the children could be at school by 8.50am so we can get settled and ready to move into our prayer space, that would be very much appreciated.

On another note, I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who wrote the beautiful letters of recognition for my teaching this past year. I have absolutely loved (and still love) teaching all of your beautiful children and I feel so privileged and spoilt to have such a supportive group of parents that will do whatever it takes to support their child's education and well being. OLC has now become a special place in my heart and love seeing the children blossom just as much as you do! I can't say it enough but thank you, thank you, thank you! I am so appreciative!

Have a lovely night

Miss Prowse

The OLC great book swap

Good evening parents,

I just wanted to write a quick note about the OLC great book swap for Book Week 2015.

This year for the first time, we will be participating in a Great Book Swap on the same day as out book week dress up day. Over the next few weeks students are asked to bring in between one and three favourite books that they have loved but are ready to swap for a different book.  We ask that books be in good condition and suitable for students the SAME AGE as your child.  A box has been placed in our classroom to collect contributions which will need to be in by Friday August 31.

On our Book Week Dress up day, these books will be set up for the students to peruse and swap for a gold coin donation. This year we are raising money for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation to help promote literacy in remote Australian communities.  It's a win-win situation! Our students get a new book or two for a gold coin and our school raises money for those children less fortunate than we are. 

Please keep an eye out for Book Week dress up information and some fun and easy ideas for dress ups! 

Hope you have a great day off tomorrow! 

Miss Prowse 

Our fantastic possum magic day!

On Thursday the 7th of August, the Year One children had a wonderful experience of being a part of a Possum Magic day. For the last two weeks, the children have been immersed in this wonderful story of love, travel, Australian culture and of course magic!

The Year One children became investigators of the story exploring the way the book was written by the author Mem Fox, to the vocabulary that was used to describe what was happening to the characters. We used a variety of comprehension strategies to pull apart the text to really understand what it was about. We loved completing story maps (summarising), having whole class shared reading experiences with the book (using our prior knowledge), writing about a character from our point of view (making connections) and of course loved reading the book for pure enjoyment. The expression and voices the children began to use while reading, was definitely a highlight of the unit!

The children and I decided that because we had worked so hard, we wanted to celebrate by having a Possum Magic day, where the children would come dressed at little possums and we would eat all of the delicious food that was featured in the book. The children came to school so excited and bursting at the seams, they loved wearing their possum masks and some of them even came with tails!

We started the day with some fantastic activities! We did some magic paintings with Mrs. Hughes. The children loved using special drawing tools to draw some pictures and some people wrote some secret messages!

After looking at the vocabulary in the book, we found some of these words in a word search which Mrs. Hayhow helped us with. Some of the children were so clever that they were able to find words that were going backwards!

Mrs. Keast had her great cooking skills out again and the children each made a cupcake lamington using delicious chocolate icing, coconut and some special Possum Magic stars. There were a few sneaky fingers that made their way into the chocolate icing bowl, but the children loved making them!

You couldn't finish a day without pavlova and the children got to decorate their own pavlova using play dough. The girls were very delicate making beautiful strawberries and kiwi fruit to go on the top of their pavlova. The boys loved designing transformer Lego Chima to rule the top of their pavlova, a little different but certainly enjoyable!

After all of our wonderful activities it was time to eat the delicious feast!  In the story, Grandma Poss and Hush travel around Australia and visit a lot of places and eat lots of delicious food, trying to find out how to make Hush visible again.

They had...

Anzac biscuits in Adeliade
Mornay and Minties in Melbourne
Steak and Salad in Sydney
Pumpkin scones in Brisbane
Vegemite sandwiches in Darwin
Pavlova in Perth
and finally... lamingtons in Hobart.

The wonderful parents in our class did not disappoint! We certainly got spoilt with all the fantastic Australian food! We started with savoury food like all good possums do and then finished with the much sort after sweets! The children absolutely loved the whole day and I know for a fact a few possums even went to bed early that night!

Thank you so much for all the parents that went to the trouble of making tails, putting on noses and whiskers, finding the costumes and of course making the delicious food! A special mention to Mrs. Hayhow, Mrs. Kerr and Mrs. Hughes for all your help on the day!

We had an absolute ball!

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Prowse