Term 3, 2025
Hello everyone, what a busy term! We all had our heads down and tails up in this busy, wet Winter and everyone did their very best. Most days our best is pretty good, while on other days our best is less than we want it to be, but that is ok, life is full of challenges. We have also welcomed Buddy, the kelpie puppy to our family. He is in puppy school and learning fast. Here’s what happened this term.
Younger Ones – Wednesday first group and Thursday groups
We have been exploring the variety of ways that we can spell sounds we hear – improving both our phonemic awareness and our grapheme knowledge. The grapho-phonics we have tackled this term are:
ve (have), tch (batch)
er/ir/or/ur/ear (her, bird, worm, fur, heard)
air/are/ere/ear (air, chair, fair, spare, care, where, bear, pear)
/ar/al/a/ (park, palm, bath)
/f/ff/gh/ph/ffe/ (fun, staff, laugh, phone, giraffe)
/eer/ear/ere/eir/ (deer, hear, here, weir)
Schwa (teacher, doctor, collar, measure, zebra, garden, fossil, lion, circus)
Soft c rule (cent, city, cycle)
Soft g rule (gentle, giant, gyroscope)
s/ss/ce/se/st (sun, dress, cent, horse, castle)
We have also read many books – both fiction and non-fiction and have focused on comprehension and also production of different types of writing for different purposes. We concentrate on play based learning so that the students have an experience to make their phonics stick to a memory.
Middle to Upper School Kids
These kids have been covering the same phonics program as the younger ones, but with more writing opportunities, more complex texts to read and view and some maths work to get their brains working on different concepts to ensure that they are building their skills in different areas.
Lower High School Kids
Homework club is ticking along well, with the kids all enjoying each other’s company as they work on their individual projects, home work or skill building. For some students it is about organising their workload and keeping on top of their assignments, whilst having some teacher support as they do it. For other students, it is working on their spelling and grammar. For other students, it is building skills in writing, research and depth of investigation. We often finish with a group activity to reward their hard work and focus, or to focus a new skill or topic – like forming an argument (sorry parents, I’ve been teaching them debating skills…)
Upper High School Students
Wow – these kids are working hard on complex texts! It is really fun to explore higher order concepts like power and corruption, wealth inequality, the consequences of choices, drink driving, Australian values, racism, context of production and reception, religious fanaticism and propaganda. We have some hearty debates, practice our writing skills, make copious notes, read websites that help with our understanding and we generally have a good time, whilst honing our skills.
Other Students
I want to give a shout out to my students who I see during the day, or for one on ones at night. Everyone is coming for different reasons and working on different skills. You are all showing grit, curiosity and hard work. Well done!
Professional Development
The AATE ALEA Literacy Conference in Hobart was wonderful and the workshops and lectures sparked many interesting conversations, leaving me buzzing with ideas. These holidays I am spending four days at Dyslexia Speld, learning the Sounds Write program, which is the gold standard program that many schools are using.
At Ms Calleja’s Classroom we care about your kids and strive to create a learning environment where everyone can shine to their full potential.
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