Holy Trinity Primary, Wantirna South

This morning, the students in 3/4 Blue learnt about Sorry Day and National Reconciliation. The students had a fantastic discussion about the rights of the indigenous and the stolen generation. The students decorated a hand to acknowledge the responsibility they have as our future generations to ensure all Australians are treated equally and with respect. 

This links the curriculum area: Identify how understandings between culturally diverse groups can be encouraged and achieved (VCICCD008)

This was the question the year 3/4 students explored during their prayer unit this semester.

They were invited to deepen their understanding of ‘what prayer is?’ and ‘what it looks like?’ through authentic dialogue and experiencing various types of prayer. Students came up with responses such as ‘prayer is communicating with God’, ‘prayer is tuning into God’, ‘prayer is loving God’ and/or ‘prayer is waiting on God’. Students learnt the skill of locating and reading scripture (Luke 11:1-5) from the Bible and made connections to how it relates to their own lives (The Lord’s Prayer).

As part of this unit of study, the year 3/4 students set up prayer spaces in their classrooms by designing and creating a class prayer cloth. Some classes even took them home to design with their family members as a way of praying and sharing their learning.

Check them out below!

In year 5/6 we have been learning about writing different persuasive pieces. We learnt about persuasive techniques such as exaggeration (hyperbole), rhetorical questions, groups of three and alliteration. We organise our ideas into paragraphs and as we are getting used to using the different techniques we have learnt to compose our persuasive pieces in a smaller time frame. We also did a post assessment and wrote a full persuasive piece. 

Some of the different topics we wrote about included why foods that are high in sugar should be banned. We learnt a variety of different sentence starters such as ‘the fact is ……’, ‘it’s easy to see why’, ‘this will cause….’ , ‘the time has come to …..’, ‘you must know …….’ , ‘did you know …..’ , ‘can’t you see …… ‘ and much MUCH MORE!

Not long after we finished our topic of persuasive texts we learnt about author’s purpose. The three of the author’s purpose are persuade, inform and entertain.

Here are a couple of samples of our persuasive writing …..

Wednesday 24th May is National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS)!  Our book this year is The Speedy Sloth by Rebecca Young and Health McKenzie. Watch the slide show to learn more about NSS and some interesting information about sloths!

Today we celebrated our mothers and the special people in our lives. It was wonderful to have so many join our students for a Prayer Service in the classrooms. 

We understand that not all our Mums were able to join us. Below is the Mother’s Day Prayer Service that families may like to pray together.

Mother’s Day Prayer Service 2023

Our time at Mater Christi was so much fun, all of the girls in year 4 had a blast! We played with mini robots, made slime and even explored the school and answered questions too. 

When we first arrived at Mater Christi we used these mini robots that you had to control with an Ipad. You could change its colour and make it go wherever you wanted. For morning tea they gave us popcorn and juice.The highlight of the day was visiting the really cool science lab where we made slime but before we could make the slime we had to wear a lab coat and safety goggles. After we made the slime, some year 7s gave us this marker and told us to write on the sink then put the slime on top and the writing from the marker vanished on to the slime. 

Towards the end of the day we played monopoly scavenger hunt ‘Mater Christi version’. We had to go around the school and answer lots of questions and the students were able to decide which classrooms to visit. . At the end of the visit we received a goodie bag. 

The year 4 girls had such a fun time we wished we could go there again. 

Asha, Vivienne and Aryana