Princes Hill Primary School is participating in National Science Week 2015, 15th – 23^rd August, as a way of further promoting science in our school. Science activities will be scheduled to run in each neighbourhood next week. We want to encourage children to try more science at home and at school.

We also encourage parents who are interested in science or work in a field of science to come along and talk to the children about the work that they do.  Please contact your child’s teachers to book in a time to organise a talk, demonstration or a hands-on activity that the children can participate in.

Thank you for your support.

David Hornsby Parent Information Night

Literacy consultant David Hornsby conducted a parent information night on Tuesday the 28^th of July on how parents can support their children with reading. The focus of the day was on how we can develop thoughtful literacy with our children. 

David spoke about the pivotal role of content knowledge in the making-meaning process that is reading.   Meaning generated by the reader will be influenced by the background knowledge they bring to the text. With this key idea in mind, David emphasised the role parents can play in ‘stirring-up’ their child’s background knowledge around the content of the texts they are reading.  This requires parents talking about the content of the books your children are reading before, during and after reading.  What do you think this text is about?  What do you know about…?  What do you think you will learn about…?  What did you learn about…?  What would you like to learn more about…? Where can we go to find out more about…? 

David also emphasised the importance of teaching phonics, but always within the meaningful context of a whole text. He spoke emphatically about the importance of starting with a whole complete text before dealing with abstract decoding practices such as sounding out words.  ‘Meaning is the way into phonics’. 

David spoke passionately about the centrality of the Literature strand in our national curriculum and the importance of quality literature for building thoughtful, feeling, literate citizens. ‘We hit them in the heart, before we hit them in the head’. 

David’s presentation was appreciated by all the parents and staff who attended for the clarity, poise and humour in which it was delivered.   

 David is away at the moment but is happy for the presentation slides he used on the night to be shared with the community. Once these slides are made available, they will be posted on your child’s neighbourhood blog. 

Tim Aris 

Head of Curriculum

Term 3 Weeks 1 and 2

This video shows some of the learning that has been going on in the 34 neighbourhood over the first two weeks of this term. We have been continuing to develop our museum exhibits as well as writing narrative, reflective and report texts. Multiplication, measurement, area and construction feature in our maths workshops as well as a variety of maths targets which address the individual needs of students, such as the time target that can be seen in this video. Reading scientific report texts to assist in building knowledge within our museum inquiry has been a feature as well as specific guided reading sessions which serve to focus on the strategies that students use when they read. Weekly music sessions with Deb are also featured.

Parent Information Evening - Reading with your child

PARENT INFORMATION EVENING – Reading with your child
When: 28 July, 6:30-7:30pm
Where: PHPS Gymnasium
Presenter: David Hornsby

 David Hornsby was with the Victorian Ministry of Education for 28 years and taught at every year level from Prep to Year 6. During that time, he also lectured at La Trobe University, the University of Melbourne and RMIT University. For 4 years he was an education department curriculum consultant in primary and secondary schools. He was the principal of Ringwood Heights Primary School for 5 years. He is now a full-time education consultant working with teachers and presenting at conferences both nationally and overseas. He has completed many lecture tours of the United States and the United Kingdom, and has also worked with teachers in Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malta, New Zealand, Singapore, Milan, Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. He has written or co-authored many books and two CD-ROM series. Parents from the Community Relations sub-committee of school council will be present in the gym from 6pm to help answer questions around subscribing to the blogs, access to Compass, and general school communications.

PARENT INFORMATION EVENING – Reading with your child

When: 28 July, 6:30-7:30 pm

Where: PHPS Gymnasium

Presenter: David Hornsby

David Hornsby was with the Victorian Ministry of Education for 28 years and taught at every year level from Prep to Year 6. During that time, he also lectured at La Trobe University, the University of Melbourne and RMIT University. For 4 years he was an education department curriculum consultant in primary and secondary schools. He was the principal of Ringwood Heights Primary School for 5 years. He is now a full-time education consultant working with teachers and presenting at conferences both nationally and overseas. He has completed many lecture tours of the United States and the United Kingdom, and has also worked with teachers in Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malta, New Zealand, Singapore, Milan, Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. He has written or co-authored many books and two CD-ROM series.

Parents from the Community Relations sub-committee of school council will be present in the gym from 6 pm to help answer questions around subscribing to the blogs, access to Compass, and general school communications.

Term 2 Week 9 and 10

Inquiry Focus 
Students are well into the process of designing their exhibit spaces. We are asking them to consider the content that should have in the museum exhibits, the visual and spatial design of the exhibit and the kinds of experiences that we would like visitors to have in our museum. Building on the area and scale learning we have been doing in our mathematics workshops, students are exploring designing using scale and with an awareness of the limited space that we have in the neighbourhoods. Through working with a parent expert some students have been exploring scale model creation to produce exhibit designs. While other students are creating draft exhibits within the neighbourhood to test out their ideas and seek feedback from others.

Literacy Focus

Students have been exploring the features of the scientific report genre to assist them in the presentation of factual information about their chosen exhibit topic. Students are in the process of publishing their Haiku poems and the focus on syllabic structure continues. Preparation for student led conferences has also been a feature. 

Numeracy Focus

Angles have been introduced and explored over the last two weeks. Students have explored the language of angles and how they represent a measure of rotation around a fixed point or vertex. Students have been learning how to measure the size of angles with a protractor. Links have been made with our inquiry through the creation of a possible museum entrance. Students have used geometric shapes to form a creative entrance design and they have measured and labeled some of the angles that they could identify in their design. Preparation for student led conferences has also been a feature.

Wellbeing Focus

As we draw to the end of a long term, we are focusing on being aware that we may be feeling tired and possibly a little unwell. Understanding that others may be feeling this way is an important understanding. As we prepare for student led conferences we are also focusing on feeling a sense of pride in the achievements of the first semester as well as thinking about goals that we have for the next two terms.

34 N1 Parent Rep Message

Dear Families of 3/4 LN1,

We are filling the parent rep role for 3/4 LN1. Part of that role is to collate and distribute a parent contact list. We have received some contact details from last year's parent reps but there still some families whose details we do not have. A consent form will be sent home with the children (only to families whose contact details we don't have) and if you wish to be included on the list please complete and return the form to Laura or your child's home group teacher. 

Please note email addresses will not be included in the information distributed to families but as parent reps we shall send out emails to the neighbourhood (bcc) from time to time with messages from the teachers and information about community / social events like the school disco and bazaar. 

We also plan to organise some social events so we can catch up as a group. Please pop Tuesday 28th July in your diary for a parent gathering - 7.30 pm. Venue TBC.

 

Also, it would be great to squeeze in a catch up before end of term. Weather permitting, we thought we would head over to the railway house park next Friday 26th June at 2.30 pm.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions to enhance connections within the learning neighbourhood and our school community, please let us know. 

Many thanks,

Carla Hagan & Ciara Boyle 

Parent reps 3/4 LN1

(carla_hagan@hotmail,com ;  0412 883 808) 

(ciara.boyle@gmail.com ; 0404 883 544)