1/2M
Welcome back to onsite learning! It has been wonderful to see some of the students back in the classroom, reconnecting with their classmates and feeling part of their school community. I also understand that your children may have felt anxious, scared or worried about returning to school. Hopefully, after today and tomorrow, the familiarity of the school and their classmates will ease those concerns. We are looking forward to having all the 1/2M students back in the classroom next Thursday.
Literacy
I believe we have a classroom of poets! Over the past two weeks, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the students' acrostic and shape poems. The use of poetic language by the students has created colourful visualisations in my head. We have also been practising writing simple sentences, understanding that a sentence begins with a capital letter, an end mark, and the sense makes sense to the reader. The students learn to identify the parts of a sentence such as a noun, verb, adjective and pronoun. During the week, the 1/2 students have participated in two online incursions, Cybersafety with Ollie and Martin and Wild Explorers with Melbourne Zoo. These incursions have been excellent prompts for the students to write about.
Maths
In Maths, the students have we have been learning about money. One of the activities included identifying the features of Australian coins and notes. We have played many money games together, such as I Spy and 'Can you guess who I am?'. This unit in Maths has allowed the students to engage with actual coins and notes. Playing shopkeeper has reinforced the students learning at home through play with family members. The students have also enjoyed working out the different coin and note combinations to pay for a certain amount. During the week, we have been learning about the transformation of objects when they flip, slide and turn. In addition, the students have been describing the position and location of objects in their homes using terms such as beside, above, below and behind.
Change - Inquiry / Ed in Faith
We read the book Living with God's Joy. The students reflected on the people or activities that bring them joy when they are feeling sad. The takeaway message is that God wants us all to live in peace and with joy in our hearts.
We have had two great incursions this week to add some variety to our daily learning tasks. On Monday, the students participated in a cybersafety incursion with Ollie. Ollie discussed how to be safe while playing games or watching Youtube. He encouraged the students to have a balance between screen time and green time. Green time is activities such as going for a walk, playing board games, Jenga, anything that does not need a device.
On Wednesday, the students transformed into Wild Explorers. The zoo incursion took the students on a learning journey through the life cycle of some endangered Australian animals such as the Echidna and Grassland Earless Dragon. The zookeeper discussed the life cycles and habitats of these animals. She also shared some ideas about how the students can help make a difference in saving these animals by taking care of the habitats in which animals live, learning about the local wildlife, sharing their stories with others, and not littering.
