What a wonderful year it’s been in Nursery! The learners have shown interest, enthusiasm and curiosity in learning and it has been a pleasure to observe high levels of involvement in many aspects of Nursery life.

The learners have grown in confidence and have really shown how they can take risks. Recently, we introduced a free flow environment where the learners can access both the indoor and outdoor environment. They have demonstrated how they can independently choose where they would like to learn which has provided them with greater ownership of their learning.

Over time, the learners have developed such a supportive Nursery community. The learners have built positive relationships with their peers and teachers and have shown how they can be empathetic to the needs of others. We welcomed new learners to the class and have thoroughly enjoyed watching the Nursery community grow.

We are so proud of the Nursery learners and have been amazed at their thirst and energy for learning. It really has been an incredible journey!

The learners in Kindergarten have been encouraged and supported through hands-on activities to take risks and solve problems. We have been thrilled to see the learners take a risk and try something new. It's been wonderful to see how the learners have collaborated on tasks this week.

We have continued to explore the properties of water in class. Our Unit of Inquiry is 'Exploring water can help us experience our world'. The learners have been looking at how different everyday solutions behave when put in both hot water and cold water, they took turns to stir salt and sugar into a glass of hot water and glass of cold water. They worked together to talk about and find out what happened in each glass. As a link between the Arts and Science, we created beautiful butterflies, using water to blend the colours on the wings of the butterflies, the learners talked bout the effect the water had on the coloured coffee filter paper. We explored how to break and melt ice in the outdoor playground, the learners found that by putting the ice in the sun it melted faster. The learners were also amazed to figure out that that they could create giant bubbles just by mixing soap with water.

It has been a great week of exploration, collaboration, and discovery in Kindergarten.

Over the last couple of weeks we have delved in deeper to our Unit of Inquiry: 'Celebrations are a form of Expression' as we have explored Children's Day as well as other celebrations chosen by the learners.

This week the learners in school and at home have started to plan a party. We have written guest lists and invitations during Language Arts and discussed the features of a party in groups. We will continue inquiring into these next week. As mentioned during last week's assembly, we have been overwhelmed by the positivity and maturity that the Year 1 learners have shown both at home and at school.

Ms Bhavana has found her Off-Campus Learning groups a delight and their enthusiasm has not gone unnoticed! At school, the remaining staff have been blown away by the learners as they have adapted to new measures in place. We are grateful to be able to still continue our programme during this challenging time. Thank you as always for your support.

Our recent Unit of Inquiry was: People use stories to express themselves. A couple of weeks ago, the Year 2 learners spent an entertaining morning with the Evolve Theatre Group as part of a drama lesson collaboration.

Each Year 2 class wrote a shared story in the form of a Tinga Tinga Tale that Evolve then turned into a play. The children based the moral of their story on a Learner Profile and we thoroughly enjoyed learning “How Crocodile Became a Communicator”, “How Rhino Became a Risk-Taker”, “How Ostrich Became Open-Minded”, “How Cheetah Became Caring” and “How Porcupine Became Principled”.

This was a wonderful opportunity for the learners to experience a different aspect of theatre as they thought about character development, set design, music and sound effects. It was an informative and inspiring experience after our fantastic unit exploring how ‘People use stories to express themselves’.

Over the academic year, our goal as a Year 3 team has been to make a strong home to school connection and the recent move to Off-Campus Learning has really put this to the forefront.

Despite the challenges that learning from home present, Year 3 learners have really impressed with their resilience and positive attitude towards their learning. Each learner has put their organisational and self-management skills to work, navigating the Off-Campus website and organising their schedule for their Google Meets. Across the entire year, we have been impressed with the maturity, organisation and responsibility shown. Learners are showing curiosity and engagement with their lessons and we have seen some wonderful home-school connections.

During Off-Campus learning so far, Year 3 learners have been maths detectives, learned about the lives of children from around the world, created stores to sell items from, read non-fiction books about schools from around the world and wrote diary entries from different perspectives. Amazing work Year 3!

'Every learner is appropriately supported to take ownership of their own learning progression.' This has been the Year 4 professional learning goal for the teachers and classroom assistants this year.

Over this academic year we have certainly seen a development in self-management skills, confidence in decision making, and blossoming growth mindset which has enabled our Year 4 children to mature as learners. The great progress we have seen in their approaches to their learning has supported their development of basic skills and their understanding of the world around them.

We have continued to see evidence of the great progress Year 4 learners have made over the year during our Off-Campus Learning. In our Google Meets we are so impressed every day by the children's level of communication skills, their insight into topics discussed and their enthusiasm!

Though Seesaw we are excited by the range and the quality of the learning activities shared. Year 4 learners have been busy designing posters that show their understanding of the factors that affect marketing products; creating powerful videos to promote an item; writing persuasive arguments for and against ‘advertising’ are just a few examples of our Unit of Inquiry exploration. In Maths, Year 4 have explored ways to describe position and transformation. They have also worked with negative numbers through our investigation temperature. Keep up your great work Year 4!

Learning online has been an authentic context for learners to display agency. Our 'Agent Awesome' skills provide learners with a platform for success. These include: organisation, self-awareness, problem solving, collaboration, listening, digital technology, creating an enjoyable environment and time management. Daily online lessons and learning tasks encourage the application of these skills. Learners are using models from a range of media, together with success criteria to inquire into their own learning. It has been amazing to listen to discussions about how to solve a volume maths problem or learner to learner feedback about a presentation on how to stay clean in space! Learners are also using their organisational skills to design their own timetable and manage their learning on Showbie and Seesaaw.

We have continued our UOI focused on the Central Ideal of 'Exploration Expands Human Understanding'. This week learners have compared Earth to Mars and deepened their knowledge of the 'Red Planet' and the challenges humans are faced with as we consider colonisation. Learners have been curious thinkers as they have considered and designed innovative systems that would allow humans to live and survive on Mars. Water supply, air supply, food production, energy, shelter, heating and cooling are challenges that our learners as scientists are faced with through their research and inquiry.

TEAM GOAL: To develop confident, independent, resilient learners