Peachester State School

Dear Parents and Peachester Community,

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I had to pinch myself in realising that we are at the end of week 10 of our term.  How does time seem to go by so quickly?  Typically, we don’t think of 10 weeks as being a significantly huge amount of time.  However, when I reflect on the term that has been, I am constantly amazed at how much we manage to fit into 10 weeks in school life.  Term 2 has once again, been a term of tremendous learning and a term of incredible highlights.  To mention but a few, we have celebrated:

• Peachester Community Bush Dance
• ANZAC Services
• Kids In Action - Part 1
• Mother's Day
• Under 8's
• 5 weeks of Footsteps Dance
• Prep Open Day
• National Simultaneous Story Day
• Chappy Week
• Instrumental Band Performance at Maleny Show
• CWA International Study Celebration
• Life Education
• Interschool Sport x 3 days (Soccer and Netball)
• Crazy Sock Day
• Athletics Carnival
• Pyjamas Day

Trust me, that is a lot to achieve in only 10 weeks, especially with staff at Planning Days, our Cluster Meeting Days with our neighbouring schools and 3 public holidays! I must thank and congratulate the wonderful and committed staff we have here at Peachester.  All of these extra events happen because of them, and these events happen above and beyond our day to day job requirements.  I know that sometimes, it is incredibly easy to see fault in what a school does (or does not do).  But when I look at the learning environment, the many opportunities we have available to our students – honestly, Peachester is kicking goals.

Yesterday we sent our student report cards, and next term will also be offering our student-led conferences.  This is a great opportunity to engage with how your child is going in their learning journey.  

As we enter into our school holiday period, I wish all of our families a wonderful break.  As always, I hope you find time to be together as a family and to fill your cups up with love, laughter and fun.  We look forward to welcoming you back to school on Monday July 10.

Kind regards

Kim Fillery

Principal

Issue 4 - Comprehension

Comprehension or understanding what we read is the whole aim of reading.  Good readers comprehend in different ways depending on the book, article or website they are reading. Some of the ways readers comprehend include:

To help children to see that the aim of reading is meaning making, read together for lots of different purposes then discuss and reflect on the things you read together. Comprehension shouldn’t be forced, it should come naturally from reading.

predicting before reading and as they read

making connections between what is being read and the reader’s past experiences of books, life and the world

asking questions about what is being read. What is this character going to do in this situation? Why did that character do that?

monitoring meaning, checking predictions, confirming them, correcting them, re-predicting and re-reading

creating a mental summary of key parts of the story or information

creating a mental picture of the characters and setting

inferring, interpreting and reading ‘between the lines’

considering the text purpose. Why did the author write this book? How does the author intend for me to respond to this article?

Share your response to a book read together with your child, for example: I liked the part when … What did you like? I was surprised by the part when … What surprised you?

Talk about other books or experiences that you are reminded of when reading aloud. You could say: This is like that other book we read about … That part of the story reminded me of when we went to visit Grandma and …

Pause and predict at interesting points in a story, when reading aloud, for example: Oh, that’s an interesting situation. I wonder what the character is going to do now? How do you think that character is feeling right now? What might happen next?

Retell stories to each other after reading. Make stories part of play using dress-ups, dolls or figurines, drawing and craft, sand play or play dough.

This term in English we have been looking at characters in stories. The Rainbow Fish was one of the books we read.

The preps wrote a sentence about the Rainbow Fish. 

The Year Ones have written a character description about what he is like at the end of the story. Check out this great writing from our students and our beautifully decorated fish!

Well done all year 1’s and 2’s who have all progressed so much since the start of the year. You should see their writing and maths work!   

Next term we will have a slight staff change with Mrs Brook Choice teaching in our class on Monday instead of Miss Lavina.  Miss Lavina will be in our class from Tuesday to Friday so she can take better care of her family. 

We have had a fun Pyjama Day today, it even made Reading Groups more fun!   Today, Lavina’s daughter Chloe brought in some Guinea Pigs for us all to cuddle.  They were so soft and calm. 

Oscar from grade 6 came and helped make our grade 1 stories into gorgeous books for us to take home.  Thanks Oscar, you’re a star! 

Finally we have all helped clean our classroom so it will be all organised for when we return.

This week the Year 2/3's have been continuing to write procedures in English. They wrote 'How to' make Arrowroot Faces, drew a picture of the face they intended to create and then enjoyed decorating and eating their biscuit faces.

All good things must come to an end…I am sad to go, but my time with year 3-4 is nearly over. We have had some fun and have completed so much work in our short time together. I am sure the students will be happy to have Mr Laurence return.

Last Wednesday we were busy participating in our sports carnival, wow what a sporty bunch of kids we have here at Peachester! A great day was had by everyone.

As we have been learning about procedure writing in English, I thought we could end our final week with making some delicious sandwiches. Some of the students suggestions, however sound a little dubious!

Have a great break , take care and stay safe.

Brooke Choice

Interschool Netball

On the 9th of June a group from Peachester State School competed in Interschool Sports and played Netball, on the day they got to play 4 games. The first game was against Glasshouse Mountains State School, 2nd was against Nirimba State School. For the third game the 5/6 girls were against St Michaels College 3 and for the final game they were against Elimbah State School. The girls didn’t win any games although they said it was a really fun experience and they are really excited to go back next week!

On the 16th of June a group of 6, year 5/6 girls including Carys, Isabelle, Celine, Amelia and Ashlee competed in Interschool Netball. The first game they played Mooloolah State School and beat them with 2-6. The second game the girls played St Michaels College 1 but unfortunately Peachester lost. For the third game the group played Beerwah State School and sadly lost that game too. For the final game they played Glasshouse Mountain State School 2 and lost 5-6, even though the girls didn’t win every game they had a great time.      

Interschool Soccer

On the 9th of June Peachester State School played Glasshouse District Interschool Soccer at Beegees Sport Ground. We played against Elimbah State School, Maleny State School Girls and Landsborough State School and we won all the games.

On the 16th of June Peachester State School played Interschool Soccer at Beegees Sports Ground.  We played Nirimba State School and Glasshouse State School. We won against Glasshouse and lost against Nirimba.  

Our Prep/1 Buddies

We have really enjoyed spending time with our Prep /1 buddies this term. We loved their rainbow fish stories that they shared with us.