Important Dates

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TLC

Dear Sirius Community,

On behalf of our College, we would like to say a big thank you to all our students, parents and carers for your continued resilience and support throughout this year. We acknowledge that remote learning has not always been easy, but through our collective efforts, our students have continued to make valuable progress in their learning.

Along with the challenges, time in isolation has also brought us many positive outcomes. Teachers have noticed a growth in our students’ ICT capabilities as well as becoming more resilient to overcome challenges.

Remote learning has highlighted the high standard of work our professionals here at Sirius College are equipped with. Transitioning the curriculum to an online environment in a short space of time – whilst ensuring that students’ learning experiences remained engaging and differentiated – proved challenging. The fast adjustment of all staff to use online platforms effectively was critical and in essence was a demonstration of the professionalism of our staff and supportive community. Thanking Sirius staff and parents/carers once again for helping our students continue their learning!

As we approach the end of year, I would like to share several writing tips on how to help build your child's skills in writing.

Helping your child write

General writing advice for years Foundation to year 2

Learning to write begins with scribbling and drawing. Encouraging your child to write is an important first step. The next step is to encourage your child to write letter-like shapes. Then moving on to practise writing the alphabet – both capitals and lower case letters. After this, encourage your child to write sentences containing short words.

Here are some general tips to help your child when writing:

• Make sure you give your child the necessary resources, such as pens, pencils, paper or notebook, and a desk.Creating a special ‘writing box’ helps them see writing as an important activity.
• Support your child to read their writing aloud.
• Encourage your child to create a picture that visually represents their ideas.
• Always proudly display your child’s work in a prominent position in your house. This will give them confidence, and demonstrates the importance of writing.
• Create an ‘ideas bag’ or ‘ideas folder’ to use as a writing prompt.Inspire writing ideas by collecting objects. For example, photographs, pictures from magazines and brochures, movie tickets, or other items.

General writing tips for years 3-6

Your child will write longer creative pieces as they move through primary school. They will write in different genres, and explore non-fiction and persuasive writing.

Some general tips to help with your child’s writing in these years include:

• Continue to encourage them to write for everyday skills. This includes writing recipes, family messages, shopping lists and greeting cards.
• Make sure they have an appropriate place to write, such as a desk in a quiet room.
• Provide stationery, such as coloured pens and pencils, and different coloured paper.
• It is always helpful to discuss the writing topic with your child before they start to write. This will give your child ideas and confidence to start writing.
• Encourage your child to write different genres and different types of texts, such as fantasy, realism and adventure, poems or film scripts.
• Use a book your child has read as a springboard into creative writing.
• Encourage your child to edit their work for mistakes before they show you. They should also make sure the writing makes sense. Getting your child to read their work out loud is a good technique to find mistakes in writing.
• Using a dictionary helps with spelling mistakes.
• Using a thesaurus helps to expand your child’s vocabulary.

Source: State Government of Victoria - The Department of Education and Training

Best regards,