Room 10 - KJ041
Term 4 Blog
Week 8
What a busy week! We have now finished moving our classroom into room 9 (in the new building). How exciting, even if it's just for a week. We have also created beautiful Christmas gifts to give to families. They are so lovely I wanted to share some of the designs with you. They have taken considerable time and the children thought carefully about the design that would suit your homes. I hope you all enjoy them when they arrife home. They can be hung on the wall or used as a trivet. Next week will be exciting too as we go to the Norwood Pool on Wednesday and to Norwood Bowling Alley on Thursday. It's been a very busy and productive year and the children are looking forward to both of these end of year celebrations. Thank you to the parents who have offered to help on these days. I do hope that everyone was happy with their class placements. It was a long arduous process and we have spent much time considering each child's placement. I've had a wonderful year with the class. They have all provided so much fun and happiness! All the very best for next year.
Merry Christmas!
Week 7
The focus this week has been on presenting the final Magic Tricks Homework Challenge. The children really enjoyed this challenge and some of the tricks were amazing. The children commented that they loved watching tricks and trying to work out how they were made possible. We have also started working on Christmas activities as the children are quite exhausted as we near the end of term. We have a busy last few weeks, with our excursion to the Norwood Pool (Are you able to assist?), moving classrooms (our class spends the whole fot he lats week in the new building) and hopefully a final end of year celebration for our class on Thursday of the last week too. Some parents have asked when they will be informed of class placements, hopefully you will receive a letter in the mail over the next week. Next week will be the final week that Homework is set (insert Cheering!).
Week 6
The children had an amazing time at That's Not Garbage! The children used drills, saws, pliers, glue guns and lots of other tools to assemble their instruments. The children used their designs and templates, previously created in our classroom to construct an instrument. It certainly made us appreciate the amount of work that is required to make musical instruments! Thank you to all of the parents and grandparents that came along and assisted with using the equipment and assembling the instruments.
Week 5
We are all really excited about visiting That's Not Garbage next week to make our replicas of musical instruments. Thank you to the parents who are coming to assist. It will be great to have so many extra hands to assist with the various tools, including hot glue guns and drills! The bus will leave just after 9am on Thursday, so please make sure the children arrive to school promptly with a packed recess, drink bottle and hat. We will return by lunch. The children may like to bring some extra items to add to their instruments. If you have any recycling material you're no longer using please send it along in a bag on the day. Old instrument keys, wire, buttons, leads or cords, etc. have been requested by the children. Their designs look great, so hopefully the end product will too. The children enjoyed the halloween spelling activities this week. The quality of work was amazing and we had a lot of fun listening to the children say their words like a vampire! I'm also enjoying the Magic Tricks presentatiions. Elise's Magic Show was amazing and so well prepared. Just as well the eggs didn't have yolk in them when we had to crack them open on people's heads! The tricks have all been fascinating and fun to watch.
Week 3
We have continued to explore various musical instruments and will be designing a piece and making a replica when we visit That's Not Garbage later in the term. These notes have gone home today so please let me know if you would love to come along. The children have focused on editing their stories to improve them in spelling and punctuation. We have also revisited the various structures of different pieces to ensure they include the features needed. Once we have made our replicas and typed our pieces of writing they will be on display for you all to see. It's such a busy time at school with teachers writing reports and working on class placements. If your child is not going to continue on at RPPS please let me know asap as this will impact on our placements for next year. I hope to see you all at our opening of our new building today or at tonight's ceremony. What a lovely memory for the children to be a part of.
Week 2
We have been watching a DVD about different types of musical instruments around the world. It has been fascinating to learn about instruments we’ve never even seen before and to discuss the colours, emotions and reasons that underpin music around the world. We’ve discovered that music can be used as part of rituals, celebrations and preparation for war to inspire strength, courage and bravery. We chose one instrument and decided to write either an Exposition or an Explanation. We completed an internet search to collect further information about our chosen instrument, copied and pasted information into Word and acknowledged our sources. We used highlighters to highlight appropriate information depending on which genre we were writing. We’ve discussed the key features of each genre, drafted, edited and re-wrote our pieces. They are fantastic and hopefully next week we will finish them and make models to match! In maths we have started a weekly test to ensure that concepts addressed throughout the week are re-visited. This has been a useful time for me to meet with small groups and re-visit concepts together. We also completed work on division, money, space and number. Some of the children enjoyed the extra challenges set and are still working on solving these puzzles. Perhaps they can ask you for help at home.
Week 1
It’s been a great start to the term! We used the Tournament Prioritising tool to decide on which holiday activity was our favourite, then wrote an exposition to convince others to do this activity too! Magnus did a terrific job of his and now I would like to go rock-climbing again! I introduced the Term 4 Homework Challenge to the children which will hopefully be lots of fun for the last term. We revisited how to write procedural texts and copied one to ensure we were clear about expectations for this challenge. The children need to present three magic tricks to the class and one written procedure to explain how one of these magic tricks actaully works. The presentation will be assessed and therefore will need to be presented in or before week 5. Please check the student diaries for more information. We started talking about our next unit of inquiry. This unit will inquire into how drama, dance and music influence our emotions, the similarities and differences across cultures and the purposes of each unique art form. We completed a class carousel brainstorm to share what we already new about these three art forms and will add to this later in the term. We will also explore different celebrations around the world which combine the performing arts. Enjoy the term!
Term 3 Blog
Week 10
We have had such a busy term! This week we explored exposition writing. The children needed to decide whether schools were important. Of course, most people voted against schools at the beginning. After further research, however, watching mini documentaries of schools around the world most children changed their mind! Children discussed the advantages and disadvantages of these schools in Africa, Peru, USA, Cambodia, etc. We wrote an exposition piece to justify our opinions and debated them with our peers. We sent our letters to Steven Marshall MP, and even got a letter back from him! In maths we explored estimation and it was exciting to run our mini competitions to see who could guess how many lollies in each jar. Some people's guesses were very accurate! We will begin the term with a celebration unit for the last term. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and we'll look forward to seeing you all next term.
Week 9
We started our next unit of inquiry with a visit from Steven Marshall, State Member for Norwood! He talked about the types of decisions made by our government and compared local, state and federal forums. He was very inspirational and many of the children have decided they would like to pursue politics one day too! We wrote letters to Steven Marshall and thanked him for coming. We told him what we would do if we were Prime Minister.The children watched a powerpoint of leaders from history and completed a Preferential Voting activity to decide who they would vote for. We reflected on how we had made this decision, what information we used and whether this was an appropriate or fair way to make decisions. Leaders included Hitler, Stalin, Queen Victoria and Pol Pot!. (So, I guess we shouldn't complain about the candidates in our recent election after all!). Some of the children already knew information about these leaders and it created much discussion about what makes a good leader; wealth, dedication, taking life seriously, a happy personna, being fat or skinny, being nice to children and animals (what do you think?). We will continue exploring decision making next week as part of our unit. I hope to invite Mr Darcy in to share his strategies in making decisions too. In maths we compared fractions and ordered fractions from biggest to smallest. You may like to continue working on this at home. As next week is the last week, and as it's been a busy term we will not have spelling homework (I can hear you all cheer from here......and I don't mean the children). However, I will send home the Times Tables Challenge as the children can focus on continuing to reinforce these at home. We will hold a Times Tables Challenge Quiz on Thursday! We will be exploring capacity next week and converting different measurments. Please see below.
Optional Homework Challenge
We have been discussing estimation and capacity. I will be running a FUN competition next week, Guess how many lollies in the jar and how much do they weigh? Children can bring some small change to enter, which will cover the cost of the lollies. I have also suggested that children may like to run their own competitions too. Children are welcome to bring their own jar filled with something that we can guess.We will attempt to reinburse with the profits made. It could even be liquid so we need to guess how many milllitres orlitres. Children who would like to enter need to bring some small change to enter the competitions on Monday (50c for guesses). Winners will be announced on Friday.
Week 8
I'm sure that everyone loved the long weekend as much as I did, and if you went to the show hopefully managed to avoid the wet weather! I hope everyone enjoyed the Spelling activities this week, related to The Royal Show. Did you use the link below to access the Fruit Machine? Although we're still working on our bio-diveristy brochures as a final assessment task, we will start our next unit of inquiry this week. We will be inquiring into decision making and the processes involved in making fair decisions. On Monday we are lucky enough to have Steven Marshall visiting to share decision making processes within the political field. I'm certainly looking forward to this unit, which will take us through into next term. In maths this week we revisited subtraction of money, which included exchanging. You may like to continue to work on this at home. Mathletics on Thursday allowed us to practise this concept too. The presentations about change from a baby to now have been nothing short of amazing. We've all enjoyed watching the children grow and change. Perhaps next term it would be fun to ask the children to predict their own futures and set goals to achieve! We have also revisited recounts and explored different adjectives to use to add interest to our writing. Peer evaluations allowed children to gather feedback from other students and use these ideas to improve their writing. We continue to re-visit using capital letters and fullstops!! Please encourage your child at home to notice when capitals, full-stops and other punctuation is used in daily reading. It can be useful even to point out different punctuation in the newspapers, signage, comics, etc.
Week 7
We have had a fun week swimming. The children enjoyed the week and I only managed to get splashed a few times. Thank you to the parents who ensured the children were at school ready to leave at 8:50. I know it must have been a rush to get to school by this time, but our lessons needed to start on time to ensure the rest of the day ran to schedule. Due to swimming committments the children have not had maths or spelling chellenges this week but we'll return to our normal schedule next week. Please do not forget that it is a school closure day tomorrow. I hope you enjoy the extra day. I know I will!
We did mange to find time to create these lovely biscuits for Father's Day.
I hope they actually make it home and you all have a
Happy Father's Day!
Karalyn
Week 6
BOOK WEEK 
We continued to work on our Bio-Diversity unit and have started creating a brochure about our choice of an Eco-system. We need to include a Food Web, information about animals that live in this eco-system and rules that people would need to abide by when visiting. We also created a quiz about eco-systems using Notebook software on the computer. We all enjoyed our class assembly (hopefully you did too!). We loved the role play using these quizes to present a game show. Some of the children obviously are actors in the making as they shone on the stage! Well done to Matt, the host, Jack (aka Jacqueline), the hostess and Soloman who played their parts so well.
We celebrated Book Week by reading some of the Shortlisted books. The children enjoyed painting their shoes, like Schumann the Shoe man and these will be on display until the end of the term, before we donate them to a charity in need of shoes.
VIP DAY ~ Friday 27th August
Thank you to all of the VIPs who visited our clasroom on Friday. We all enjoyed sharing our work with you. Some VIPs even had a chance to attempt to use the interactive whiteboard! Zoaha's grandpa created lots of excitement with his drawing of a car! Boris enjoyed showing his dad how to draw and write on the whiteboard too. Some of the children showed their VIPs how to use Mathletics. Everyone had a wonderful time!
We are sad to say Goodbye to Rebecca who is leaving to return to China after a 6 month visit. Her work has been exceptional! Please keep in touch with us Rebecca. We hope you loved the koala and remember us too. You can visit our Blog at this site to see what we have been doing.
Phew, once again it's been a busy week. Please continue to support the children with their Homework and Homework Challenges. It certainly makes a huge difference if the children have spent time preparing and practising at home. We have enjoyed seeing the Homework Challenges about change and look forward to seeing the rest next week.
REMINDER: We will be leaving at 9am for swimming next week, so please make sure the children wear their bathers to school and have a towel, goggles, etc. They will change after their lesson into school uniform before returning to school.
Week 4 and 5
It's been a busy two weeks, as usual! In week 5 we all enjoyed the excursion to the Bio-diversity exhibition at the SA Museum. The children loved exploring the many different eco-systems that we have in South Australia. The exhibits were facsinating as they showed the diverse range of flora and fauna and how these are interconnected. The children were surprised to learn how many native animals we've lost due to human intervention. It was also amazing to consider how long the exhibition has taken to create as some of the specimans are hand made. The animal exhibit was also extremely popular and the children enjoyed collecting information about the animals of the world and considering these animals adapatations to survive in their environment. The Aboriginal collection gave us another opportunity to explore Aboriginal culture and to learn how the Aboriginal people ensured that the environment was sustained over time. Thank you to all of the parents that came along to assist.
This week we have been busily preparing for our assembly. We have been linking Digital Learning to our unit and will be sharing a Bio-Diversity Quiz. We will also share other activities that we have enjoyed throughout the year. All of the children are represented in some way so I hope you can all make it and stay on for VIP Day too.
As part of Book Week activities we will be reading some of the shortlisted books and voting on our favourties. One of the books is called Shuman the Shoe man (and NOT surprisingly) I will be sharing this with the children! Watch out next week as I will be wearing my favourite shoes! Next week we will be painting and decorating shoes which we will donate to people who need them, including to Homeless Shelters in South Australia. I have managed to source some cheap sneakers and wellington boots which we will decorate with puffy paints. Some of the children have requested to paint their own shoes and will need to bring them along on Monday ready for this activity. Please send a signed note with your child if they choose to bring their own so that I know they have checked this with you. The children's own shoes will not be donated.
Week 3
This week the children have set up their own terraniums with caterpillars. The children are enjoying observing their behaviour and discussing how they interact within their environment. (Some have even proven to be amazing athletes at lunch times when the children raced them against one another!) Some caterpillars have started making cocoons (perhaps to escape the children!). Just as well the silkworms are staring to hatch! It's fascinating to watch these insects under the Digital Microscopes and see how they move and to notice special features not visable to the human eye. We'll be sharing some of our footage captured in our assembly in week 6. I hope you can come along! We watched an episode of BTN about Orang-u-tans and discussed our own opinions about the destruction of their habitat. The BTN site provides an opportunity for students to submit their own opinions about topics. The children recorded some ideas of what they may add and hopefully throughout the year we will have an opportunity to upload opinions and ideas based on current stories. The children made considerable progress on their webistes about their endangered animal. We downloaded images and typed up our information from our report. We also talked about Blogs and ideas of what we can include in an animal blog. In mathematics we completed work surrounding counting animals. This enabled the class to explore numbers beyond 1,000,000, inlcuding how to recognise, say and write these numbers. We also added numbers together to find out the estimate for various species. You may like to practice reading these numbers at home!
Thank you to the parents who have offered to assist us next week on our excursion to the museum. Please meet in the classroom at 9am on Tuesday.
Week 2
We loved visiting the Urbraae Wetlands as part of our unit of inquiry. We collected an amazing range of organisms and studies them under microscopes. It was incredible to watch insects, not visible to the human eye and learn how these organisms are dependent on each other to survive. We also explored the wetlands and discovered so many different animals that did not actually live in the water. Even leaves can indicate which animals live there by the marks they leave on the leaf! We tried to dig holes in the ground with our finger, like caterpillars, but it was impossible. We learnt alot about how the plants and animals have adapted to survive in the wetlands. During the week we continued to work on our animal reports and began publishing them on our own website. We will let you know when they are available for viewing. Hopefully soon! We also learnt that counting animals is done in different ways, depending on the type of animal! Thank goodness we didn't need to actually count all of that Krill. We talked about why animals need to be counted, when it's important to be accurate and when estimations are acceptable and how grids can ensure ease of counting and support a more accurate estimation. We also observed a range of organisms collected in the school yard and compared where they are found, 
what makes the habitat suitable and what changes may impact on this Eco-system.
Week 1
What a week! We have been so busy starting our unit of inquiry about Eco-systems. We collected information about Food Chains, Conservation, Endangered and Extinct animals and Eco-systems from articles and recorded unfamiliar words. This led us to create a Glossary of words, which we needed to find out the meanings of in Dictionaries. We also read an article about an Endangered animal and wrote an animal report. This report was revisited later in the week and we were able to edit the initial attempt to incorporate information, important vocabulalry and more useful and descriptive language. We are now going to continue working on these and then publish them on our own internet site! We will let you know when we have finished. We all really enjoyed exploring the Eco-systems within the Biome of our own school yard and discovered some fascinating specimens. By using the Digital Microscopes we were able to see these various creatures up close, watching them move and identifying their body parts. In maths, we had a fascinating discussion about the radius, 
diameter and circumference of a circle and whether there was a correlation between the three. We used the mathematical formula 2xpixr to find the circumference. Actually, I found out it was the celebartion of the pi formula on Thursday! What a coincidence. I'm hoping that we will, at some stage re-visit the work we undertook last term about time as part of our mathematical work. There just doesn't seem to be enough time!!!
The students are really looking forward to our excursion to the Urbraae Wetlands, where we will continue to explore Eco-systems and identifying chnages that may impact on them.
Term 2 Blog
Week 11
What an amazing term! Looking back at our Blog, we certainly have covered so much. It was lovely to relax on the last day of term and watch Alice in Wonderland, eat popcorn, lollies and little tea-cup biscuits, just like Alice at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party! The Homework Challenges were amazing. The children covered many different aspects of Forces and Motion and so many insights, opinions and questions were generated as a result. Thank you to the parents who assisted with these. I do encourage parents to help as it's a great way for you to work along side your child to inquire into the various concepts presented. Next term, the Homework Challenge will be based on the concepts Change and/or Responsibility......more details to follow. The Spelling Contract seems to be working really well, with most children completing two tasks each week. Some children are not completing the Times Tables Challenge, so I'll think about this over the holidays and perhaps adapt. The children have absolutely loved Mathletics! Children can continue to use this website at home as they all have their user name and password in their Diaries. Next term, however, I will be setting particular tasks to ensure we are working through various concepts, so children will not just play the Maths games available. Have a look, if you haven't already as I'm sure you'll be impressed! www.mathletics.com.au. Our unit of Inquiry next term is about Bio-Diversity (Change and Responsibility are the PYP concepts covered). This unit will include a trip to Urbraae Wetlands on the 29th July, catching the Circle Line Bus from Portrush Road and a trip to the SA Museum to see the Bio-Diveristy Exhibition. I will send out consent forms early next term and if you're available to assist that would be terrific. Enjoy the holiday! See you all next term.
Week 10
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The quality of the Forces and Motion Homework Challenge has been nothing short of AMAZING! We have learnt so much about forces and motion and the children have certainly been incredibly engaged by this unit. It was lovely to hear that even grandparents have been involved in these challenges (Your boat is amazing, Izzy!). Chelsea's presentation was just fascinating and initiated many further questions and inquiries that could be explored. The scientific vocabulary from these presentations has introduced us to many relevant new concepts and ideas too.
The unit about time has also been very exciting. We finally managed to blow our inflatible Solar System up (Thank you Solomon and his Dad Trent!). They have instigated many thought provoking questions about how time is different on other planets. It was also fitting that it was the shortest day of the year (but the longest in London) and (after the children stopped cheering because they thought school would finish earlier) we discussed why this is the case and researched information about Stonehenge and how this "monument" was built so many years ago as a mechanism for telling the time (seasons).
It was also really exciting to obtain feedback about our units and our progress within the PYP as part of our Pre-Authorisation. I have certainly learnt so much and hope that our units of inquiry continue to grow and develop. It's so lovely to see students taking further action as a result of a unit, even if it's just bringing an item in to share that relates to the unit or further inquiries they have been inspired to pursue. This week we got to see a globe of the world jigsaw puzzle and an interactive globe of the world whcih shares relevant information about Earth.
Week 9
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I hope everyone enjoyed the Long Weekend! This week we started our new unit, Time is an integral aspect of our everyday lives. This unit will include an inquiry into the history of time and how it has changed, the connections to the Solar System and how we measure time. We have created a set of clocks with different times from around the world and talked about why this is the case. We used a globe of the world and a lamp to discuss time zones and weather conditions depending on the placement of countries on the globe in relation to the sun. Interesting words arose, such as equator, southern and northern hemisphere, anti-clockwise, clockwise, axis, rotation, etc. This unit is a relevant transition from the migration unit as children have drawn on their knowledge about different countries, their own heritage and how we are all different, making connections with time, seasons, etc. Children have also listed what they already know about time on an A-Z Grpahic Organiser and we alo started to record information using a Lotus Diagram. Ask the children how these work! The children have enjoyed sharing the items brought form home which are used to accurately measure time, including Netwon's Balls, a Metronome, a Nurses Watch, etc.
Well done to Magnus and Charlee who shared their Forces and Motion Homework Challenge. Magnus made a winch and Charlee a siphon. Please encourage your child to present next week.
Week 8
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Another busy week! We began the week watching BTN (which I hope to do more off in the future). The segment was related to Asylum Seekers and Refugees, and defined what these terms mean, who these people are and the conflict arising between groups of people who have differing views of these people. The children discussed their ideas and then wrote an exposition about whether people should be allowed to migrate to Australia. Certainly a controversial topic, but fascinating to see the various viewpoints based on the information we've collected as part of our unit on migration. We also reflected on how we had developed the three Learner Profiles linked to this unit, Caring, Knowledgeable and Open-minded. The children had some amazing ideas of how they could be more caring toward people who have just arrived in Australia. It was, of course relevant to draw on Rebecca's and Heidi's experineces too as they have recently experienced moving to another place. The children all enjoyed sharing their food from their own heritage with the class. We also loved looking at Zosha's Scottish Kilt and Sporron and beautiful Scrap booking of her Family Tree. At the beginning of next week we will start the next unit on Time and how it is integral to our daily lives. I have asked the children to bring something in that measures time accurately and we have already received a small collection of item. I'll also look forward to seeing some of the children's Force and Motion Homework Challenges next week. Please let me know your thought on the new Homework for Spelling.
Enjoy the long weekend!
Week 7
This week we have continued to explore migration through watching and recording notes from the My Place DVD. This DVD showed lots of poignant moments in Australian history and created alot of thought provoking discussions about the lives of various families throughout Austalian history, events included The First and Second World War, The Vietnam War and how these events impacted on the number of people coming to Australia. We saw an Irish family, Greek family and Pakistan family all set up their homes here for a variety of reasons and discussed the difficulties they faced. The children completed their Flow Charts of Australian History, their Excel Spreadsheets to show the number of groups that have arrived in Australia and started to record their own Family Tree to track their own heritage using Inspiration. I'm looking forward to sharing the foods from around the world next Friday as a finale to our unit. We will eat at 2pm, so please only pack a small lunch for the children as they will have plenty to eat at 2pm. Parents are welcome to attend. I would also like the children to share some information about the food they chose to bring and, if possible how this food relates to their own family history.
Well done to Finn, who was the first student to show his Homework Challenge for Forces and Motion. I look forward to seeing the rest in Week 9 and 10.
What an exciting way to end the week by helping raise money by wearing our hair in crazy ways! Thank you to Pia West and Amelia Salisbury who set up a hairdressing station in the morning to help create some amazing crazy hair styles!
Week 6
This week the Year 4/5 teachers met to begin planning the next Inqiry unit. This was a very productive aftrenoon and we are all looking forward to beginning the next unit in a few weeks time. The students continued to explore Migration. This week Solomon brought some video footage of when he was a baby, showing his journey from Africa to Australia. The children thoroughly enjoyed watching Solomon grow and change throughout the movie. We deconstructed these stories from the movie to see the features of a narrative and attempted to write our own narratives about our place. We compared the different groups of people that live in Australia, but were not born here. We created a Graph, using Excel to plot and compare these groups. It was surprising to see how many people have migrated to Australia. It would be amazing to interview people to find out about their experiences. We have also been watching the movie called My Place and creating a timeline flowchart to plot the changes that have occured throughout Australian history, includng how families migrated at various times throughout history and the events taking place at the time that may have caused poeple to move. An exciting movie. We also painted our names in Chinese characters this week, after last week learning how to write different characters. Thank you Heidi and Rebecca...teachers in the making.
Week 5
The children enjoyed working in teams to build a working model of a machine using Lego Technics. This enabled them to explore wheels and pulleys, cogs and gears, hydrolics, etc. They also needed to carefully follow the instructions so that the finished machine would work. This activity supports the Term 2 Homework Challenge that students received this week, due in WEEK 9 or 10. I am looking forward to seeing what kinds of forces the students inquire into! We have also continued to explore migration and the students have been fascinated by items that people would take with them to a new country. After a discussion about things that our two international students miss the most, they taught us how to write chinese calligraphy. Next week we will learn to write our names in chinese characters. The students are really enjoying the Homework Spelling Challenge as they are able to make their own choices about how they learn their words. Please let me know your thoughts about this as I am always open to new ideas. In maths we looked at the formula for the area of a triangle. (PS The area is 1/2(bxh))! We also worked out the perimeter of a variety of shapes. These activities linked well with the migration unit as we have been talking about the dimensions of objects as well as how some things can not be brought to another country because of the area they take up. The children were also able to use their Times Tables to help solve the equations, showing them how useful it actually is to know them off by heart. Please keep working on the Times Tables at home as this assists the students with work undertaken at home.
Week 4
We reflected on our excursion to The Migration Museum. We wrote a recount of the day and looked at photographs to jog our memories about what we learnt. We have listed some questions that we would like to find out over the next few weeks, including How have passports changed over time and why? How many people have migrated to SA? When was the first school built? We are using Inspiration to create our own timelines of important events throughout SA history, linked to Migration. We used Tournament Prioritising to list items we would take with us to another country. We needed to decide on one item! (Parents, please let us know what you would choose!) This was very difficult. But the final list includes Teddy Bear, Pets, Money, Credit Cards, Family Momento, like "my Greek Cross" and Games (including the DS and Wii....no surprises here!). We also used a Venn Diagram to compare these items and this allowed us to think about what these things had in common and why we might have chosen to take these with us. It's very interesting to see similarities between these items and the items we saw in the museum. This unit has certainly taken an interesting direction and I'm looking forward to exploring this with the children further.
Week 3
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On Tuesday we all headed off to The Migration Museum. We learnt alot about the history of migration, how difficult it was in the past for people to enter Australia and why people may want to come and live in Austalia.
Sports Day was held on Friday. We all had fun dressing up in our team colours. Everyone tried hard at every event to do the best they could. Magnus' long throw was amazing and Thomas was good at high jump. Everyone enjoyed Tug of War, even some of our dad's jumped in to help! The sprints were very exciting. Rebecca was amazing to watch ad so graceful. After Lunch we all participated in the R-7 Relay. Our class didn't win, but we had fun. Rebecca accidently fell and rolled her ankle so couldn't run in the final sprint. What a shame! I went home with a headache from all of the cheering.
Week 2
I had a fantastic time in Singapore at the IBPYP Conference. I gained many new ideas to share with the staff and to use in our classroom to impact on student learning. It's been a busy start to the term, once again! Next week we will visit the Migration museum as a starting point to our new inquiry unit Migration happens for different reasons and impacts in different ways. On our return we will certainly reflect on this experience to gain a greater understanding of our own history. This will include developing our own family trees. This week we wrote a story called Help!. This included imaging what it would be like if you were stranded on a boat and needed help. This included beginning to think about the refugees and their experiences and further debates and discussions will arise about his issue as we are reading Boy Overboard, by Morris Gleitzman as a class. I have also developed a new Spelling Homework Challenge based on feedback from Student Led Conferences, so please let me know your thoughts on how this is working in comparison to first term. The Science Homework Challenges were so successful that I will develop another for this term and let you all know asap. Once again, if you have any issues or concerns please conatct me immediately so that we can make a time to meet.
Useful Links
Curriculum Overviews
Spelling Homework
Homework Challenges
Term 1 Blog
Week 9 - 
We have had an exciting week! Lots of students presented their Homeowrk Challenge this week and we saw so many different, amazing and thought provoking experiments that generated lots of interesting questions and inspired further inquiry. I was amazed at Jacks 'Lava Lamp" made from dishwashing liquid and salt! The salt dropped to the bottom, then floated to the top. James and Magnus showed how mentos can cause fizzy drinks to explode, Elise made an amazing Putt,Putt boat, by lighting a candle to make it move, Zosha showed how flour interacts differently with liquids and solids,......and there were so many more. You may like to ask your child which was the most amazing experiment. Then you could discuss why the expriment worked, where you have seen this idea in real life and how we could transfer this information into new situations. I'm looking forward to next terms Homework Challenge now!! It will be based on energy....more info to come early next term. We have also made cute little Easter Bilbies, painting them to make them look realistic. We also continued to explore written explanations, including writing an explanation of how we can make an egg get sucked through a bottle. We've continued Quick Maths and practised subtracting digits from numerals over 1000. This will need revision in term 2, you may like to work on this over the holidays! I hope everyone ejoys the holidays and I look forward to seeing you all again next term. I fly to Singapore for the IBPYP Conference on Thursday and look forward to using the information gained to improve the way I integrate inquiry in the classroom and across the school.
Above ~ Julien created a circuit with lemon juice which lit up alight globe!
Weblinks to Science Webistes....Check them out!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_Coke_and_Mentos_eruption
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000109
http://www.thetartan.org/2007/2/19/scitech/how
Week-8
We enjoyed making gloop! Although this was messy we were able to compare solids and liquids and discuss at what point asolid becomes a liquid or vice versa. We learnt how to write an Explanation and next week we will write up How to make Gloop, in case you would like to do this at home! It was terrific to meet you all at Student Led Conferences and lovely to share your child's work with you and discuss goals for the future. Everyone loved the Studnet Report, written by the children. It certainly showed how children really are able to reflect on their own learning and are aware of their strengths and personal abilities. We enjoyed celebrating Harmony Day on Friday. Lots of children wore orange or cultural clothing to celebrate getting along with others, caring about others and haveing tolerance for diversity. The orange hands across the yard looked lovely too! The Homework Challenges have been very exciting and certainly generated lots of discussion. I can't wait to see the rest as we head toward the end of the term. The children will need to present before the end of Week 9 (Wednesday is my last day!) Please don't forget Student Led Conference times this week. I look forward to sharing your child's work with you and your child.
Week-7 This ![IMG 0404[1]](../image/avuj/208-1274498269000.jpg "IMG 0404[1]")
This week we have been preparing for our Studeet Led Conferences. The students have thought carefully about how they can be successful learners, how they feel about their learning and even written their own student report. The students and I are really looking forward to sharing these with each of you. Please check your time. Well done to Boris who was the first student to present his Homework Challenge! We looked at how oil mixes with different materials. Boris showed how bread does not soak up oil, how paper towel and paper do soak up oil and what happens when oil and water mix. When are you presenting yours?
Week-6
It's been a busy term! We have explored making different choices as part of our inquiry, The choices people make affect physical, mental, social and spiritual wellbeing. This week we looked at Road Safety procedures and how we need tot hink carefully about the choices we make when travelling on roads. We also help Clean Up Australia on Frdiay.
Content Manager: Karalyn Jones
Current as at: 27 Jan 10
