Jasmine's birthday

It was Jasmine's birthday.

We all shared in a yummy chocolate cake.

Which we enjoyed on the grass.

Unicycles

On Friday these amazing boys from Oxley Primary School arrived at Wangaratta West Primary School on their unicycles.

 

They rode all 21 km on this rather hot day to raise money for cancer.  How wonderful are they!

They even had time to give us a demonstration of their skills just after they arrived.  Now that is truly amazing!

Many children in our school were so inspired by these outstanding boys.  Well-done to you all.

In the Library.

We certainly are a wonderful bunch.  Read on to see what we are up to now!

Getting Ready for Our Plays.

You will have all received your invitations for our morning of Reader's Theatre and Book Readings on Thursday 11th of December at 9:15am.  

 There is so much excitement as we prepare these plays.

 The purpose is all about reading fluency and expression.

 So you will see books as the children read their parts.

It is also a very low key event, but for family and friends it will be great fun as we show you how far we have come as readers over this year together.

From Farm to Plate- Growing Peas

In our study of "From Farm to Plate" we were looking at how plants grow by planting our own pea seeds.

 We used shredded paper as the stuffing for the middle of our cup.

 This took some skill to get into the cup.

 And it made rather a big a mess.

But as you see we are quite the experts at cleaning up the mess.

We watered our seed each morning.

 Emptying out the excess water so as not to drown our seeds.

 We even made our own greenhouse to grow our cress and bean sprouts. 

 We kept our seeds in a sunny spot by the door.

With all our loving care the seeds grew really fast.

 All our seeds went home this weekend.

 I hope that you have found a corner of the garden to plant them in.

Soon you will be picking and eating your own peas!

Pulling Our Maths Together

We are in the process of pulling all our learning together in Maths during these last few weeks of the year.  Here we are revisiting our work in subtraction.

This group is pictured here working with our lovely student teacher Miss Dean.  They are developing the subtraction skill of counting back.

This group is working with Mr Krake and Katie.  They are using the MAB blocks to build their skills and understandings of subtracting 10 from any three digit number.

These children have been working on mentally subtracting 110 from a three digit number without the need to change 100 into 10s.

 Freddie is working on mentally subtracting 110 from any number, sometimes needing to exchange the 100 into 10s.  

Here he is solving 700 - 110.

As you see we are all working at differing stages, and we are all doing an outstanding job!

Simon Tedeschi

In celebration of our Baby Grand Piano's tenth birthday, Simon Tedeschi was invited to play for us at Wangaratta West.  Simon, who is from Sydney, is one of the finest classical pianist in the world, and we were so lucky to have him come down for us.  

Simon played some classical pieces, as well as some Jazz and Blues which are his real passion in music.

Those lucky people who came to his concert on the Wednesday night would know what a treat it was for us all to have Simon at our school on Thursday.

 Simon was a very entertaining speaker, telling the children about many amusing anecdotes from his childhood.  He amazed us with the fact that he started playing at aged 5, and at 8 he won the open aged eisteddfod competition in Sydney, beating a player who was 21! 

 He told us about the composers, and what the music was written for.  This helped us to appreciate and understand what we were listening to.

Our brilliant senior group played for Simon too.

 He listened carefully to them.

 Then he showed us how he could improvise and play along with them.

Have a listen to this snippet of their performance.

A real highlight for us all was when Simon played a duet with Miss Wills.  We thought that they sounded just great!  It was a wonderful idea you had Miss Will, inviting Simon to our school.  Thanks Miss Wills.

Thanks so much Simon for coming we all had a brilliant time listening to you, and we have all learnt so much.

Small Groups in the Literacy Block.

Your child may well have told you that each day during the literacy block they do 'small groups'.  

You may well still be a little in the dark as to what this really is.  

The children are grouped according to their next step in their learning. 

 Each group is then given an activity which focuses on skill building in the reading and writing process, such as these sound boxes.

 The spelling wheel focuses on letter patterns and how we use them in our spelling.

Ask your child which games they have been playing.

 Blue group is focusing on the missing middle sound in words in this game.

 Ellie is showing her understanding of contractions with this game.

Eli has been reading and answering questions in this 'Yes or No' game.

 Noah and Reece are reading cards, listening carefully to the clues, to play this 'Who am I?' game.

 Amy plays the contraction game.

 Georgia and Jed are playing 'Contractions Bingo'.

Ryan is doing a great job with the 'Spelling Wheel'. 

 Luke and Cale are building their letter sound knowledge with this game of '9 Square'.

 Luke is doing an outstanding job with 'Yes or No'.

 Aida and Jamie are building their bank of known high frequency words in reading and writing with this 'Fifhing Game'.

Jed and Georgia playing 'Who am I?'.

 Cale doing contractions.

 Amy and Freddie playing '9 Square'.

 Morgan, Jamie, Aida and Julian are playing the 'Laces' games.

This helps them to hear the sounds in words.

 Jed and Ella do the 'Who am I?' game.

 Jasmine and Ellie build their skills with '9 Square'.

 Luke is doing a crossword puzzle.

Noah is working on phonemes where he is building his knowledge of letter patterns.

Katie is always here to lend a hand.  Here she is with Green Group doing crossword puzzles.