Volume 31 Issue 8 25 Mar 2022 22 Adar II 5782

Primary News

Katie Brody – Director of Students K-6

Our new Emanuel Writing Books

Encouraging our students to develop the WILL, the SKILL and the THRILL of being a writer, has been a significant focus over the last few years. Writing to inform, to persuade and to entertain allows people to communicate effectively and is essential to life within and beyond school. To that end, the team in the primary school have created The Emanuel Instructional Model for Teaching Writing.

Scoping a wide range of text forms as part of this comprehensive system, our students are taught the form, language features and purpose of a wide range of texts as they travel from year to year in our Primary School. This includes studying and writing a quality Procedure, Explanation, Email, Podcast, Adventure Tale, Feature Article, Persuasive speech, Advertisement and the list goes on. The teaching and learning process starts with an independent ‘Cold Write’ where teachers ascertain the students’ existing skills and knowledge of the text form and then moves into a highly scaffolded and supported process of building schema through shared exploration of information and understanding of the text conventions including close study of quality mentor texts. Next the teacher administers a modelled and shared writing process grounded in cognitive science and embeds the elements of effective writing. Finally the students complete an independent ‘Hot Write’ in our new Emanuel Writing book.

Teaching the Ten Elements of Effective Writing includes explicit sessions that establish, reinforce and revise the mechanics of writing and and a range of important literary elements: 

Mechanics of Writing

Literary Elements

Cohesive Devices

Audience Engagement

Paragraphing

Ideas

Sentence Structure

Text Structure

Spelling

Vocabulary

Punctuation

Facts / Persuasive Devices / Character and Setting (Depending on the text form)

The ‘Hot Write’ is essentially a summative assessment that aims to have students show what they know and what they can do at the end of a highly explicit teaching and learning process. This is a special book we have had professionally printed. Inside the book there is a section for each year of Primary and, within each of those sections, there is a space for the ‘Hot Write’ to appear at the end of each term. The teachers will moderate these samples across the grade and will provide students with feedback that celebrates the skills they have applied successfully and sets goals to reach for next time. This magnificent book will be stored at school and will follow each child from Kindergarten to Year 6, eventually becoming part of the Year 6 Graduation gift. 

Cross Country Event – Monday 21 March 2022

The Sport and PE Departments ran a highly successful Cross Country event for Years 3-6 on Monday. With the weather holding up beautifully and the lush grass beneath the feet of our competitors, the students challenged themselves, pushed their endurance and showed fabulous persistence. Much gratitude goes out to our Sport and PE Department for their organisation and the running of this event, as well as to the class teachers who supported the students. It was lovely to be able to invite parents to attend and enjoy the morning outside.

Year 6 Pathways – Thursday 24 March 2022

It was lovely to have parents join Year 6 students for a morning tefillah (prayer service) and Torah reading. Parents personalised their child’s Tanakh with messages, family histories and photographs and formally presented it to their child. After a two year delay due to COVID, it was special to be together to mark this milestone.

Thank you to Mr Carpenter and Morah Gaida for their organisation and creation of such a lovely event.

Parent Teacher Night – Next week

The first opportunity for parents to meet with teachers this year is coming up on Monday 28 March 2022 or Wednesday 30 March 2022. This is a wonderful opportunity to establish academic goals together, as well as a chance to consider any social or emotional aspects. Teachers will have some preliminary feedback and observations to offer and are keen to establish beneficial working relationships with all parents. Please recognise that teachers will be making every effort to stick to the timeframes. Meetings with specialist teachers are 5 minutes but appear as 7 minutes on the schedule and class teachers are 10 minutes, but appear as 14 minutes. Please avoid talking through this transition time so teachers have a moment to gather their thoughts and notes in preparation for the next meeting.

We are now meeting on Zoom on both nights, so please endeavour to have your child’s surname on your profile so you are recognised prior to entry.