I-Centre 2011

Term 4 Week 5

 Well done to the children that completed the Premier’s Reading Challenge this year. 119,000 students  across the state participated and received either a medal or certificate. These have now been distributed to all classes.  The Premier’s Reading Challenge is now in it’s eighth year! More than 3700 students across the state have completed the challenge since it begun. Congratulations to Ryan Edwards, our first student at Rose Park Primary School to receive a Hall of Fame, Reader for Life certificate. Term 3 Week 9

Term 3 Week 9

Well done to the 368 students that completed the Premier's Reading Challenge this year. I can't wait for the medals and certificates to be handed out in Term 4! Many of you will be ready to receive your Hall of Fame medal or even Legend medal. Thank you also to the wonderful parent helpers who have assisted us in putting the stickers on the books. This has certainly helped students fond the books more easily.

We now have  a parent library in our I-Centre. Have you had the chance to have a look at the resources available? Some parents have also donated some useful books to this collection! Well worth popping in to have a look! Please let me know if you would like a borrowers card to borrow some items.

Term 3 Week 5

BOOK WEEK

One World, Many Stories

We have had so much fun celebrating books and reading! The recpetion classes made teddy bears which look beautiful hanging in the I-Centre. Please ocme in and have a look. The Year 1/2 classes enjoyed folding origami "peas in a pod" and adding themselves and a friend as the peas! Have you read the shortlisted book Two Peas in a Pod by Chris McKimmie? Year 3 classes loved making worry dolls. Did you know that in some cultures children tell their worries to the worry dolls before they go to bed. In the morning all their worries have gone. I think these dolls caused more worry though, just by making them. They certainly were very tricky to make. But, as usual the time spent was well worth it. They look gorgeous. We found out that different culture tell stories in different ways by exploring different cultures with the year 4/5s. We wrote our names in hieroglyphs, made Chinese slat books, read Aesop Fables and made a rebus story. The Aboriginal Rainbow Serpent looks lovely hanging across the I-Centre. The year 6/7s had so much fun learning the techniques of making a balloon sculpture. Yes, we did hear a few loud bangs throughout the lesson and a few screams too! (I only screamed once!!!)The winners of the teddy bear guessing competition will be announced at our next assembly!

Term 3 Week 1

This week in the I-Centre

Penny and Sue’s classes have continued to work on their Photostory Cinquain Poems about disasters. These are looking lovely, so hopefully when they are finished we can show them on the television in the I-Centre. They may need to be converted to jpeg images to play (so, keep this in mind when thinking about work you may like to share on the tv too!) Late last term, we were able to convert a Powerpoint to a jpeg image to show, which was very exciting. David, Joyce and Angela’s class have also used Photostory, but only a small group have been trained as mentors. This group will present their Aboriginal Art Photostories to their class next week and then become peer tutors for the rest of the class. These students will also be invited to train teachers in an upcoming staff meeting! I’m looking forward to the work that I will do with the year 4/5 classes about rivers of the world. We will be developing mapping skills and collecting data and making comparisons between different rivers. Look out for the maps on display in the I-Centre in up-coming weeks. Wendy, David and Tony accepted the offer to visit the I-Centre to learn how to search the Bookmark database for Premier’s Reading Challenge and/or Lexile books. The Lexile website now has our own collection up-loaded so students can search for books at home. The Digital Learning Committee met to plan for up-coming Professional development for staff. A decision to purchase five more Document Imagers (the Ladybird) was decided and these will be shared across the school. They’ve already been ordered! The Reception and One team met with me after school to learn how to use the Kidspiration program and to share ideas of ways to use this program in their classroom. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the student’s work. I have continued to align subject headings for our various units of inquiry and amending records to ensure books can be located each time a unit is undertaken.

Thank you to Merryl Vogt , who this week volunteered several hours to help put Premier’s Reading Challenge stickers on books. It will make it much easier for students to find these books.

Week 9 - End of Term 2

I thought you all might like to see some interesting data collected about the use of our I-Centre this year!

We have 45 000 resources (this includes everything with a barcode) available for borrowing. This year, since January 19 556 items have been borrowed from the I-Centre!.

Patrons have undertaken 5788 searches on our Bookmark Database. We have purchased and catalogued 734 new items this year (with further resources waiting to be catalogued shortly). Only 40 reservations have been booked (but I do need to sort out some issues here). The top three Fiction books are all Terry Denton books, Just Annoying!, Just Disgusting!, Just Tricking (141,136,129 loans respectively), Just Crazy! and Just Stupid! are at number 5 and 9. Three books on the top 10 are Selby books. Four books on the top 10 Easy Fiction list are Tashi (I’ll explore this as these are not really what I consider EF books!). The top 10 Non-Fiction books include 4 maze books and 3 joke books.

Week 3

We had a very excitng and successful Book Fair. Thank you to all of the students who purchased a book or two! We sold over $4000 worth of books, which means tha the school will receive $1200 worth of Lexile books for our school. Hoepfully these will arrive soon.

PS Please come along and help cover books every Friday! We desperately need more parents to help with covering to ensure children can access the new resources quickly.

Week 5

We finally have our whole school Progamme of Inquiry on dispay Please come in to have a look at the various units undertaken across our school. Don't forget that this Programme  of Inquiry is continuing to evolve, so of course it is still in draft form. We have all worked really hard to develop, review and evaluate this programme. It will continue to change as we continue the path along our PYP journey.

Have you visited the I-Centre to see our wonderful display of books about horses available for borrowing?. This display reminds everyone about our up-coming AdelaideCup Holiday and to promote discussion about horse racing! How do you feel about making horses (and other animals) race for our own pleasure? Why are horses, dogs, ferrets,etc chosen? Why is it so popular?

Week 4

Thankyou to our dedicated paret helpers who have visted the I-Centre to assist with covering! Don't forget that if you have any spare time or would like to meet some new parents we hold a regular book coverng sesson every Friday morning, except when we have school assemblies.

Our ICT and Student Action Team have met to discuss their ideas fr the I-Centre! They have lots of amazing ideas to help make our I-Centre fun and exciting! Keep your eye out for bean bags ad pillows soon!

Week 3

 The students have been encouraged to make their suggestions in our Your Opinion Counts Box. Students have already added their ideas of what they would like to see in the I-Centre, incuding various titles, how the I-Centre is organised and of course some comfortable pillows and bean bags too! Thank you to our wonderful group of students who have offered to be I-Centre Monitors to assist students at lunchtimes. Don't forget that if you help more than ten times you'll be invited to our end of term celebration, let's just say Kawabunga!!!. Students visiting the I-Centre at lunchtime need to book in so that we can monitor who is visiting the I-Centre and how often.

Week 2

 Week 1 was a busy week! Every class visited theI-Centre and we now have our Essential Agreement on display. Visit the I-Centre to check the out! Thank you also to Samuel fr modelling How to borrow! We encouarge children to be independent when the visit the I-Centre so all children learn how to borrow their own books. Follow the steps on display if you're not sure. We also love our new Book Browsers for Early Years students. Parents are always wecome to visit the I-Centre in morning or after school with their child. I hope to meet you when you visit! 

Week 1

 What a start to the year! All classes visited the I-Centre to revisit our Essential Agreement and browse and borrow, It was great to see everyone and to recommend some of my favourite books for you to read. Students will be able to reserve items from next week. So please ask me if you're unsure of how to do this. Thank you to everyone who nominated themselves to be an I-Centre monitor. I'm sure you'll have lots of fun helping keep our I-Centre working well and become an exciting place to share and enjoy our school resources. We now have seven MACS working in the I-Centre for students to use throughout the day, but students will need to book these for lunchtime use. Any parents who would love to be part of our book covering working bee please join us on Friday in Week 2. Hope to see you there, Karalyn

All Reading Challenge sheets are currently being handed in to Vivian for recording data, so congratulations to all our participating students. In our school we also recognise those children who take up our school challenge by continuing to read and record beyond the twelve titles. We recognise these students at an assembly in Term 4. Thank you to all parents who helped with the signing off on books. Thank you for your support.

We have just celebrated a wonderful Book Week with many successful activities. We had fun exploring the bridges in our playground while we searched for Wally. The Book Swap raised over $120, and we have many books to also donate overseas. If you have not yet seen our Story Bridge in the Library please come for a quick visit. We have had the most popular VIP Day, so our mini Library was well filled.  Just a quick remender that our Premiers Reading challenge finishes on September 3rd.  

End Term 2  Have a great holiday. Our Premier's Reading challenge is at about the half way mark. Children are telling me they have completed the required 12 titles, and are continuing to record on the back of the sheet. This gives them the chance to be recognised at the school level, where they may win a prize for the most read in their class.

We are planning for Book Week, to be held in Week 6 Term 3. The theme is "Across the Story Bridge" which links well with the Inquiry unit for the Juniors. A performance "Nanuk" about a bear losing his environment will take place for a number of classes at RPPS during Week 4. Notices will be sent home for those classes attending early next term.   

June update. We enjoyed our first National Simultaneous Storytime reading session in the hall. We registered 250 students. We were able to put the story on classroom whiteboards for individual reading as well. The Premier's Reading Challenge is well underway. We can hardly keep up with the shelving of all the books as students are borrowing so many!! It is excellent to see how keen the children are. If your child needs help in finding suitable books, please call in to the Library and speak to me.An adult needs to be the one to sign off on the titles. Children should be about half way through by now, especially if they are in the lower year levels. In the Library we are looking at books which display International mindedness. Room 14 students are helping with titles they are reading. Two International students have given a brief glimpse of their story, and have been interviewed as part of an ongoing display. More to follow!! A small group of students from Room 7 are learning about Biodiversity and are exploring different biomes. A display is evolving at the back of our mini Library.

May update. We have registered for Wednesday's National Simultaneous Storytime!! Across Australia last year over 120,000 students and adults took part in this National promotion of reading. It will be our first time and Years Reception to Year5's will read "Little white dogs can't jump" by Bruce Whatley in the hall at 10.30am. This will syncronise with Eastern states so we will all be reading together.

The Premier's Reading Challenge has commenced for most classes. Children have two terms to read a minimum of 12 books. Teachers will hand out forms to students for recording titles read. Children are asked to make sure the books challenge their reading. Some parents have asked if Junior Primary students must read the books they sign off. JP students just need to share the book they bring home with you.Talk to them about what they enjoyed in the book, illustrations, author etc. Participation shared with you is an acceptable response. If students read more than 12 titles and wish to share more, they can be recorded on the back of the original form. Please do not attach more pages before filling the reverse side of the form. It gives me an idea of interest levels, and the chance for a special Library lucky dip at the end of the year.

In the holidays Sue Quick and I attended an IB Library Workshop, which was very useful and most enjoyable. Internationalism plays an important role in our IB schools. This term we will be investigating Internationalism in literature. A display in the Library will be developed through the term to highlight various titles. This can also be shown through the children attending our school from many other countries. These children bring other cultures into our lives in a meaningful way if they can share their stories with us. Some of these students will be sharing their stories which will be recorded in a special, ongoing display in the Library.   

New Book Reviews.

A title which fits well with Internationalism in Literature is in the "My Story" series. "The Hunger. The Diary of Phyllis McCormack, Ireland 1845-1847" Writen by Carol Drinkwater. Through a fourteen year old girl, older readers explore the effects of the Potato Famine in Ireland. Whilst this is a fiction story the events and some characters are based on real events and people.   Classified in our Library for Senior Readers in Year 6 and 7.

"My Story Series"  D-Day written by Bryan Perrett. (F Per)   Recommended for older readers.

Although this is a fiction story, it is supported by a timeline, map and a series of photos.

IB Learner profile- Principled, ie soldiers need to beprincipled in following orders and obeying instructions to survive danger.

We have lots of other books in this series to read.

Welcome to our mini library.

We are circulating books and coping with the restrictions. 

Of course, we are extremely happy to see our slab for the new building looking great.

Room 1 students brainstormed how the learner profiles look in the library. 

Here are some of their ideas. 

I am knowledgeable when I:

• try to learn lots of new things by reading information books and reference books
• learn things and share them with others
• seek information
• read non-fiction books
• read new books
• use the library system to borrow books.

Content Manager: Karalyn Jones

Current as at: 4 Mar 10