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Parent Teacher Discussions
Thank you to all parents and carers who participated in our Parent Teacher discussions this week. This is an additional meeting due to no comments on reports in Term 2. We hope you found this additional meeting informative and highlighted the progress your child has made over the term.
The next formal communication about your child’s learning progress will be Week 9 of Term 4 in the form of end of year reports for Prep-6 students and a Celebration of Learning for Kinder students.
Progressing Towards our School Improvement Plan
We have continued to make great progress towards our goals and targets in our School Improvement Plan.
Writing Priority
- Teachers have been refining their understanding and implementation of Bump Up Walls to extend students’ writing. This included a combined professional learning afternoon with Ridgley Primary on Wednesday 31 August.
- In Week 5, Prep to Grade 6 students participated in POD writing seeds. Teachers then moderated students’ writing samples on a rubric to monitor their progress from previous terms.
- In Week 9 our Grade 3-6s will participate in EWRITE as another means to monitor growth.
Inquiry Priority
- All grades are currently undertaking an inquiry on ‘place’. It is interesting to see the progression as students move from their known/local environment, to state, national and then world level.
Maths
- Our Burnie Counts inquiry is very exciting. This term has seen the launch of the Burnie Counts Facebook page which is a great resource for parents. If you are not already following the page, I encourage you to do so. There is some wonderful information to inform you of the Big Ideas in Number and experiences you can do at home to support your child with their number knowledge.
- All teaching staff have engaged in professional learning on Place Value and Additive Thinking alongside the other Burnie Counts schools.
- Mr Jones our Numeracy Coach has also led a session to up-skill our Teacher Assistants on Trusting the Count.
Other Assessments
- Last month the Preps did their post Marie Clay Letter ID to track progress
- The Grade 1s are in the process of undertaking the DoE Phonics Check
- We have continued with the twice a term Student Wellbeing Check-ins with Grades3-6. This has been a great way to monitor students’ wellbeing across the year and then put actions in place to address need.
- Between 8th September and 22nd September the Grade 4-6s will be participating in the state-wide Student Wellbeing Survey
Somerset’s Little Big Shots
Over the last two weeks, approximately 60 students have participated in SPS Little Big Shots. The students have been very keen to showcase their talents and share some of their outside school interests. This year we have been entertained by: baton twirlers, dancers, singers, gymnasts, and a whip cracker.
Little Big Shots is a wonderful opportunity for our students to enact our values of BELIEVE/COURAGE, DREAM and GROW. I am always amazed at how courageous students are at getting up in front of an audience to perform in addition to demonstrating resilience when things don’t always go to plan.
Our value of RESPECT is displayed by the audience giving appreciations and encouragement, in addition to our student judges’ thoughtful and considerate feedback.
Our finalists will be announced next week and they will perform in a whole school assembly on the last day of term.
Shining Stars
Congratulations to Miller and Mia for making it through to the next stage in the Darwin combined netball and football teams.
Miller and Mia both played in the Devon vs Darwin tournament on 2nd September. From this they were then selected in the squad to compete in the Launceston Exchange on 16th September.
Mia will play in Spreyton for Darwin and compete against the Devon and Launceston teams. She said it was awesome getting selected as there were lots of people in the two original Darwin teams. Mia likes playing Goal Attack or Goal Shooter as she enjoys getting the shots in.
New changes to COVID-19 isolation
Public Health has recently changed the mandatory COVID-19 isolation period from seven days to five days.
This means COVID-19 cases can leave isolation, provided they:
- are no longer displaying symptoms on Day 5 of their isolation period, and
- have had no fever for 24 hours prior to Day 5.
People that leave isolation on or after Day 5 must wear a face mask in all settings for Days 5, 6 and 7 – even if they are not displaying symptoms. People are strongly recommended to wear a face mask indoors on Days 8, 9 and 10.
Students under the age of 12 and all primary school students are not required to wear face masks when leaving isolation.
To read more about this change, please visit the Tasmanian Government Coronavirus website.
For any COVID-19 enquiries, please contact the Tasmanian Public Health Hotline on 1800 671 738, or Department of Education COVID-19 Support Hotline at COVID19support@education.tas.gov.au or on 1800 816 057.
If you need support translating or interpreting this information, contact the Translating and Interpreting Service on 131 450.
On Wednesday 7th September we raised money for guide dogs by dressing up as Superheroes and making a gold coin donation. Some people donated $5 instead of a gold coin. In total we raised $348.
One of the ladies from Guide Dogs Tasmania visited classes to tell us about guide dogs and how helpful they are. Guide dogs cost $50,000 at least to train one.
It was very special day. Teachers and students enjoyed this day because they could help other people by doing something they like.
Reported by Bailey and Mason.
In Science, 1A have been looking at the different materials that objects are made from. We have looked at how materials can change by bending, stretching, twisting and heating and cooling.
In Art we used our knowledge of heat and created beautiful Spring inspired blossom artwork by melting crayon onto our drawings of trees.
Grade 1B have enjoyed a wide range of activities to investigate ‘Place’ in HASS this term. Students discussed places that are special to them, and the memories and traditions attached to those places that makes them special.
We read the story of the Rainbow Serpent to investigate how the land was created from the perspective of some of Australia’s Indigenous People.
We looked at old maps to discuss their features then discovered they were old maps of Somerset. This led to investigating how our local place ‘Somerset’ has changed over time and will continue to change into the future.
In Science, students have been learning about materials and their properties. They have learned to distinguish between natural and man-made materials. Students have learned that material properties influence how they are used. They discussed that to build a bridge like the new Somerset bridge they should use strong, hard, weather resistant materials.
Students have also reflected on and inquired into how the local Tommeginer Aboriginal tribe would have used natural materials to meet their daily needs.
We extended this learning further by exploring maps, keys, compass directions and other direction language in Mathematics. Students then drew maps of their bedrooms and used directional language to discuss their room.
Kinder A
River “We are learning about our bodies. We have learnt about our tummies, necks and heads. We have to keep our bones healthy by eating fruits and veggies”.
Kinder B
Noah “We have been measuring how tall they are with blocks and mine has not grown”.
Archie “We planted the seeds, and we have to water them”
Chloe “My plant is 11 blocks tall”
K/P
Ellie, Liam and Leah “We are practising our names. We do it so we know our names to write them on the back of our pictures”
Indi “We have been learning about 2D shapes, we learnt about wide and little”
Amelia “We have learning about letters b and d, and we have talked about adding more detail to our writing.
Prep
Thea D “We have been learning to make our writing better”
Harvey “We have been doing lots of reading, so we learn to read better”
This term in Digital Technologies we have had a focus on Robotics and using coding to program them.
We, as a school, have been using five different types of robots during the term, along with using block code for programming.
- BeeBots
- Pro Bots
- Lego - WeDO 2
- Spheros
- NXT robots
- EV3 robots
- Tello Drones
So why do we use robotics at Somerset Primary School?
Robotics is one of the newest subjects in today’s schools, and many who grew up without it might question why it is useful to teach to children these skills. After all, building robots may seem like quite a small niche – though actually, the robotic world is growing at an incredible rate, and learning about it will massively benefit today’s children as they come to enter the workforce. Building a robot requires students to utilize totally different skills to those which might be used in a normal classroom setting.
Robotics addresses the 4 areas of STEM
SCIENCE - gears, speed, ratios, push, pull, friction...
TECHNOLOGY - Computational Thinking, Programming.
ENGINEERING - design, modifying, problem solving...
MATHS - angles, degrees, length, distance, graphing.
Robotics and the Digital Technologies Curriculum go together very well because robotics is often about problem solving and breaking large problems into smaller parts, and the Digital Technologies Curriculum focuses on iterative development. So, students can be presented with a large problem to solve with robotics, and then encouraged to use a design science approach to break that problem down into smaller parts, solve each part individually and then iterate through the solutions to come up with the final larger solution to the whole problem.
- Robots Is Great for Teamwork Skills
- Robotics Helps Students Recognize and Hone Diverse Strengths
- Robotics Helps Students Build Their Confidence
- Robotics Encourages Students to Engage with STEM Subjects
- Robotics Facilitates Problem-Based Learning
“Robotics also brings creativity to these sometimes-dry subjects, allowing students to think about them in new ways. By challenging teenagers to come up with solutions to real life problems and think about the technology they would like to see in the real world, robotics can help them understand the value of STEM subjects,” says Bill Willson, a writer at Ukservicesreviews and OXEssays.