Year 1 News

This week the Year 1’s were very excited to build, explore and create with the big building blocks delivered to Mary MacKillop from MTIA Road Projects Victoria. Year 1 students further developed their teamwork skills by working together to discuss what they could build and by listening to each other's ideas. This activity supported their understanding and current learning in Design and Technology by planning, creating and designing an object through investigation and exploration. Students were able to reflect on their designs and make changes to improve their build further. 

Here is what some of the Year 1’s had to say: 

“I had fun using the blocks to build ramps and tunnels for the balls to travel through” - Ethan C 

“I liked how we got to work in a group and work as a team to build something together” - Mila 

“My group just started building and we didn’t know what it was going to turn out to be and then it turned into something really cool” - George

Year 2 News

In Week 3, Year 2 students were involved in a fundraising activity for the Bishop’s Fund, Trinity Families. They combined with their Year 3 and 4 buddies to play a variety of games and then watched a family friendly movie as a year level. These activities were chosen as the fundraiser coincided with family week and these are activities that families often enjoy together.

“I played Monopoly with my buddies. I liked that we got to play our games from home with them.” Jeremy 2EM

“I liked playing Uno with my buddies because it was fun and entertaining.” Caleb 2EM

“I bought in Chess and I kept on winning and my buddy was really good at Chess.” Jocelyne 2JB

“We bought the games in because we were celebrating Family Week.” Tahlia 2JB

In Week 4, we celebrated our Year 2 level Mass and carried through the theme of family. Thank you to the parents that were able to join us in our first level Mass with Father Ajin.

Tuesday of Week 5 saw students engaged in an activity relating to our Design and Technology unit. Students were provided with a variety of foam building blocks, which they used to design and create a construction for a ball to travel along. The students are to be commended on the team work they showed throughout the session. From the discussions about their design, to the actual construction, students demonstrated great cooperation and problem solving skills.

“We all put our hands on and rolled it together, because we are a team.” Thomas 2EM

“When we did it, the ball wasn’t rolling straight and our design wasn’t working. sSo we put some pool noodles on the side to make the ball roll straight.” Elodie and Oscar 2JB

“We came up with four different ideas and tested them all. We wanted to make it bigger and taller so we kept changing it because we wanted to make sure the ball went through and would roll further.” Natasha and Liam 2EM

Students have been exploring the stages of the Engineering Design Process. During the investigating and generating stages, the class researched an existing paper plane design. They then created the design and tested it. Identifying what made their plane successful was part of this stage. Students then explored different materials that could be used to improve the design of the paper plane. They tested their designs and through trial and error, made improvements. 

Within Literacy, students have been learning about procedural texts and have focussed on making ‘Wombat Stew’. This was a fun and engaging way for students to learn about the purpose and structure of a procedure. They also loved chanting the phrase “Wombat Stew, Wombat Stew, gooey, brewery, yummy chewy, Wombat Stew.”

Our focus in Mathematics has been counting, money, subtraction and length. Students practised using coins to make different monetary amounts up to $1. Some students extended their knowledge and were able to calculate the change required from a transaction. Games are a fun way of learning maths skills. Students enjoyed using the ‘count back’ or ‘count up’ strategy to calculate the difference between two numbers. Some children worked with two digit numbers.