The Learning Page
Highlighting our approach to learning...
Learning Article
SMPS kids love reading! Over the holidays, many students read on myON. The most popular book categories were:
| Categories |
|---|
| 1. Technology |
| 2. History |
| 3. Pets |
| 4. Earth and space science |
| 5. My community |
| 6. Vehicles |
| 7. Seasons and weather |
| 8. Life science and plants |
| 9. Fairy tales, fables and folktales |
| 10. Monsters and mythical creatures |
We also saw many kids continuing with homework on Mathseeds and Mathletics over the holidays. What a fantastic effort!
Introducing Elevate
SMPS is happy to announce the new ELEVATE program has officially begun. This program aims to make each student feel safe, happy and connected. Within this program, we will showcase each students’ strengths through various educational adjustments, whilst allowing them to gain a sense of achievement. This program gives individuals a chance to develop key social and emotional skills, build their capacity to self-regulate and develop life skills. Since the beginning of this program, various staff have already seen a difference in students' behaviour and classroom management skills. As this is only the beginning for the program, we can’t wait to see how each student will continue to flourish and excel in all areas of life.
Introducing Curious Minds
There has been so much happening in the realm of high-ability opportunities that we have now decided to name them all under the umbrella of Curious Minds. This name reflects the main driver of children participating - curiosity. Students at SMPS show curiosity in many different areas, often well above the expected knowledge of children their age. We hope that families who are interested will find something that their child is curious about in the offerings below. Please find the confirmed and finalised Term 2 classes below.
| Art | |||
| Biomimicry session: Students will discover how nature can be used for design inspiration and problem-solving, observe the tried and tested biological strategies and patterns of nature with a biomimicry educator and design their own nature-inspired innovations. | Grades 3-6 | Thursday 28th April | Expressions of interest closed
Maximum participation exceeded |
| Environment | |||
| WALL-E session: Students will participate in a virtual excursion to REPLAS, Australia’s leading mixed recycled plastic manufacturer who provides innovative solutions for plastic waste. Students will then undertake a series of investigations/experiments about plastics, engage with Reef HQ via video conference to learn about the impact of plastics on our oceans, and in particular, on turtles, and undertake a design challenge to create solutions to our waste problem. | Grades 3-6 | Tuesday 7th June | Expressions of interest closed
Maximum participation exceeded |
| Technology | |||
| Victorian Coding Challenge: This challenge aims to extend curious minds, nurture passions and support students in refining their coding skills. Students receive a virtual kit with a series of fun and engaging coding tasks. The challenges will require that students apply coding and algorithmic thinking in order to solve interesting problems. | Grades 5-6 | School holidays at the end of Term 1 | Expressions of interest closed |
| Maths | |||
So You Think You Can Count? Students will grapple with counting problems. We will extend on common problems such as “How many squares are on a chessboard?” and look at different ways to count a large number of objects. We will explore ideas such as binomial coefficients, partitioning techniques, and algorithmic thinking. The focus will be on improving students’ systematic reasoning. | Grades 3-4 | Wednesday 1st June | Expressions of interest open |
Crazy Cubes The goal of this session is to solve a difficult puzzle involving four cubes. This puzzle is hard! We will be using graph theory to find a solution to the puzzle and ask ourselves whether the solution we find is the only solution possible. All skills related to Graph Theory will be introduced during the session. | Grades 5-6 | Monday 20th June | Expressions of interest open |
Open Expressions of Interest
Does your child love Maths? Expressions of interest are open for...
- So You Think You Can Count? (Audience: Grades 3-4)
- Crazy Cubes (Audience: Grades 5-6)
Expressions of Interest for the maths classes will close on Friday 29th April at 9:00am.
We expect that there will be high levels of interest in these maths classes. Attendance has been capped at 10 students in each class. If interest levels exceed this, we will then use Mathematics results from students' reports to determine the final participants.