Mac St News - Friday 21st February 2025
Principals Report
Dear Parents, Carers and Community Members,
School is well and truly back into full swing, and our students are thriving as routines are now being well established within each classroom.
We are 4 weeks into the year with our Foundation friends, and it is excellent to see some students really beginning to understand the routines and rules that we have in place here at Macarthur Street. In Reading this week, we are continuing with letter and sound recognition activities. Students are learning about how to complete work independently at their tables and consolidating the practice of raising their hand for help.
We are also continuing our learning about nursery rhymes and practicing our class engagement norms to respond to literature. In Writing, we are learning about sentences and saying a sentence about a picture prompt. During Maths this week, students are continuing their learning about forward and back, and numbers to 5
Wow! What an exciting week we’ve had in the Grade One classroom!
Students have been busy refining their handwriting skills, focusing on correct letter formation, spacing, and pencil control to make their writing clear and confident. Alongside this, they have taken a deep dive into the wonderful world of Aesop’s Fables, exploring stories, and immersing themselves in timeless tales rich with wisdom and valuable life lessons.
In Maths, we’ve been on a mission to master numbers to ten. The highlight by far was playing the "Race to 10" game, which had everyone counting and having a great time 😊 (See pic!)
Meanwhile, in Knowledge, our “explorers” set sail on an incredible voyage to discover Australia’s first adventurers—Janszoon and Hartog! Students have stepped into the shoes of these famous explorers, uncovering fascinating facts along the way!
What an adventure-filled week it has been! We can’t wait to see what next week brings!
In Grade 2, over the last few weeks students have been learning about a famous explorer Willem Janzoon. He is a Dutch navigator who worked the Dutch East India Company and sailed across seas trading spices and other goods with people from lots of different countries. In 1606, Willem Janzoon and his crew onboard the Duyfken (little dove) sailed south to Papua New Guinea. As they were charting the coastline searching for more spices and resources to trade, they accidently landed on Cape York in Australia.
Willem and his crew thought that they were still in Papua New Guinea, but they were on a different continent! They had no idea they were in the wrong place and recorded a funny looking map of Australia. This made them the first Europeans to steep foot on Australia, it wasn't until years later that people learnt about Australia when Captain Cook arrived.
So far this term, we have been learning about early Australian inland explorers. These men and their crews managed to explore, discover and map-out parts of Australia that had previously only been inhabited and known by indigenous peoples. Given that these events happened several hundreds of years ago, there was no satellite technology or modern devices to help them out; they relied purely on the position of the sun and the stars, compasses and other simple pieces of equipment. Furthermore, they travelled on foot, on horseback or in a rowboat. The purpose was not only to map-out the shape of the Australian continent, but also to see if there was land that could feed them and keep them alive.
Some of the explorers that we have learnt about to this point include: Wentworth, Blaxland and Lawson; John Oxley; Hume & Hovell, Charles Sturt and Sir Thomas Mitchell.
We have had another fabulous week in Grade 5/6. In Maths, we have had a focus on calculating the perimeter of shapes using both a ruler and by counting squares. We have learnt two different formulas for solving these equations. A highlight of our week has been calculating the perimeter of our names. These are hanging in the corridor just outside of our classroom so please feel free to pop in and have a look at the end of the day.
It has been wonderful to see a large number of students still reading at home and bringing their diary every night. It is lovely to know that you at home value reading time as much as we do at school!
This Term in STEM all grades will be learning about the human body. This week Grade 1 and 2 looked at bones and why they are important. We learnt that they are solid and do not bend, that there is more than one bone in our legs, arms and fingers, and that these are connected by joints. Finally, students learnt that bones protect some of our most vital organs such as our brain, lungs and heart.
Students then recreated their own skeletons thinking about where the joints are and how we can tell the difference between our fingers and toes.
This year, our school athletics will be held on Friday 7 March, on our school oval.
Students may come to school dressed in their House colour, or the school shirt, shorts, and runners.
Students must wear their school sun hat on the day as well as sunscreen.
More details will be sent to you as we get closer to the day.
These days require all hands-on deck from staff and volunteers. If any would like to volunteer – please let the office know.
Families welcome to attend the day.
Mac St kids ADORE their library, but never so much as on International Library Lovers’ Day (also known as Valentine’s Day)! Students in Grades 1-6 were invited to write love letters to our library (and reading and books in general) on hearts they had cut out and decorated. Swoon!
Students look forward to borrowing from our ever-growing collection: please ensure they return what they’ve finished reading so they may take home some fresh books!
Students birthday
Happy Birthday to the students who have celebrated their birthday in the last week or will celebrate their birhday in the coming days.
- Gerard
- Divina
- Cruze
- Evelyn
- Konnah
