25-Feb-2022
Dear Families
A positive step forward with the announcement of altered restrictions for many workplaces this week. For our Year 3-6 students and staff it still means however that masks are still required to be worn indoors – except for when students are eating or drinking and teachers are explicitly teaching. As vaccination rates increase, so too does the probability of masks no longer being mandated in classrooms for our Year 3-6 students increase. Our students have been exceptionally understanding of the mask-wearing requirements and we are grateful for their efforts.
CENSUS DAY– This coming Monday- February 28 is an important data in our school calendar. It is the date that helps us know exactly what funding we have received from the Department to run our school in 2022. To help us ensure that our records are up to date, we need to have accurate data around students’ attendance on this day. We ask all families to please assist us by logging any student absences in the COMPASS portal as soon as possible. Thank you in advance for helping us out with this process.
RATs We are still awaiting the delivery of our next shipment Rapid Antigen Tests – which is frustrating for all of us. I am assured that they will be available for us to distribute to families on Monday. On behalf of our school staff I wish to thank and acknowledge our community’s efforts and commitment to use these and help keep us all safe. Your patience and understanding at this time is greatly appreciated.
Breakfast Club is up and running from 8:20 am EVERY morning in the STEM center. There are a number of food options available- cereal, toast, Bakers’ Delight rolls and buns, fruit among them- and it’s a great way for students to start the day. Students are asked to enter via the gates located on Edithvale Rd opposite the school crossing.
STUDENT WELLBEING – Active Kids
Participating in regular physical activity boosts physical and mental health and improves academic performance.
Physical activity throughout the day improves concentration, and our ability to retain information and solve problems.
All classes at school have regular brain and activity breaks to help students to focus on learning tasks within and outside the classroom. While the weather allows us to we will continue to:
Take lessons outdoors
Learning beyond the classroom is a great way of encouraging physical activity, improving engagement and bringing students closer to nature and can also be used in a wide range of learning areas such as on the oval, in shaded areas, or in specifically-built outdoor classrooms.
Conduct active breaks
Interrupting a seated academic lesson to take short active breaks (e.g. 2-10 minutes) throughout the day, particularly after sitting for long periods (i.e. 20 minutes).
The link below outlines identifies a few ways that you can keep children active at home in different ways
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/Pages/Get-Your-Move-On.aspx?Redirect=1
Emergency Lockdown Drill
Yesterday we held the first of three Emergency Management Drills for this year. Students and Staff simulated a whole school LOCKDOWN to ensure that we are well prepared if this eventuality occurs. All went smoothly and our students took the short disruption in their stride.
STUDENT LEARNING – Instructional Model Part #2 – Fluency
Once our daily review is completed, we focus on students’ reading fluency
Fluency is reading expressively with accuracy and at a good pace. It is one of the key components of learning to read.
It is the progression from developing automatic word recognition skills to comprehension.
Early readers spend much of their attention and effort on decoding words, which will inevitably affect their speed and efficiency. As students become more familiar with basic graphemes, and build up a bank of automatically recognisable words, their reading rate increases.
Fluency is dependent upon the ability to decode the text (including phonemic awareness, phonics and vocabulary abilities), and fluent readers work with meaningful units such as phrases and clauses as they read. Readers become more fluent when they can quickly and accurately decode the text with ease. Once reading fluency is developed to an automatic/proficient level, readers can focus much less on decoding and more on the comprehension of text.
Fluent reading acts as a bridge between automatic word reading and comprehension. It is the link between reading words quickly and effortlessly, and understanding and comprehending text.
Fluency is made up of three core components:
- Accuracy (the reading of words correctly)
- Rate (the speed of word identification -usually recorded as words read per minute)
- Prosody (the expression used when reading)
We can measure students’ fluency rate by the number of sounds/words they can read in a given time (1-2 minutes) and observe their growth through repeated readings of class texts over a couple of days or a week. One of the ways we might do this in class is called Fluency pairs:
Fluency pairs is an activity and routine that provides students with deliberate and dedicated reading practise. In the classroom, students are paired, one student is partner ‘A’, and one students is partner ‘B’.
It can work in several ways but generally, students take turns in reading the same text passage 3 times over for a period of around 3-4 minutes each time. This routine takes around 12 minutes in total.
While partner ‘A’ reads, partner ‘B’ tracks and follows the text ready to help partner ‘A’. For example if they get stuck on a word or require help blending the sounds together to read the word.
Once 3-4 minutes has passed, students swap and partner ‘B’ reads the same text and partner ‘A’ tracks and follows along ready to help partner ‘B’. This process is completed 3 times over.
The texts used in this process can vary. At times, they will be texts that contain focus sounds and spellings that the students have been targeting in class and at other times it may include texts that are designed to help students rehearse knowledge and facts that they have been learning in class.
This routine is easily done at home (with an adult) using decodable books or other types of reading books that children enjoy. The same passage (read aloud) is used each time and children mark where they get up to in the passage after 3-4 minutes. The idea is that students get better after reading the same passage several times. We call these repeated readings and the same passage can be used every day for up to 4 days. The adult completes this too and the child tracks and follows.
Key dates
- Tuesday March 1 and 2 – Year 2 Hip Hop Incursion
- Friday March 11 – Student Free Day
- March 16 and 23 – Year 1 Craft power Incursion
- March 18 – Year 6 Interschool Sport
- Thursday March 24 Nationwide NAPLAN practice
- Friday April 1- Edithvale Primary School’s Twilight Market
- Friday April 8 – Final Day of term. Early finish at 2:30 pm
Kind regards
James Whitla