Specialist News
Performing Arts
In performing arts we have been learning about the circus.
Everyone has given different circus acts a go, including juggling, hula hooping, devil sticks and ribbon dancing. It was exceptional to see the grade 5 and 6 students completing these acts during the Halloween dress up days.
The prep to year 2 students have been filming themselves completing the different acts.
Year 3 and 4 students have been designing their own circus performance.
The year 5 and 6 students have been creating a face paint design that relates to a Cirque De Solei act.
Auslan
The last few weeks in Auslan has seen the Preps learning all about fruits. They are able to add their knowledge of colours to describe the fruit, and know how to say which fruits they like and don't like and what their favourites are.
Grade 1 and 2 students have finished up their exploration of signs for well known Pokemon characters. They have now learnt signs for Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, Venusaur and Charmander, Charmeleon and Charizard. They have had fun collating information for their Auslan Pokedex.
Grade 3/4's have been learning signs for food. We began with some basic foods and then moved into vegetable signs. The students have been playing bingo and memory games to consolidate their learning.
Grade 5/6's began learning about assistive technology for Deaf people this week. We are learning about hearing aids, cochlear implants and Roger technology. We have also discussed the hearing loop and how the students might feel if they were Deaf and were out in public and there was an emergency.
Physical Education
With the summer season approaching, physical education sessions have been centred around the Summer sports in preparation for term one interschool sports, which begin very early in the new year. The sports that we have been doing associated skills work for include Cricket and Basketball, with Volleyball, Soft Ball and Tennis to follow. Students in grades 4 and 5 will soon be selecting the sport that they would like to play next year.
Whilst the younger grades won't be playing interschool sport yet, they too have been learning fundamental skills for each of these sports. These skills have been applied to modified versions of each sport, giving them important exposure to them. Hopefully this will promote interest in pursuing one or more of these sports as they get older.
Visual Art
The Preps are creating dotty pumpkins in the style of Yayoi Kusama. No, they are not for Halloween, as the students keep saying. Yayoi Kusama is just very fond of dots and pumpkins...
The grade 1 and 2 students are exploring how many Aboriginal languages are still spoken in Australia. (More than 250 languages and over 800 dialects!)
Together, they are re-creating the Indigenous Languages map (by AIATSIS), with small clips of coloured paper. If you are interested, you can look up "Horton's map" on Youtube to hear all of the languages mentioned in a catchy song. The students are amazed at how long it takes to sum up all 250 of those different languages. Here they are at work:
The 3 and 4 students are painting an amazing landscape reflected in the water, after viewing the work of artist Belynda Henry and the grade 6 students have started making self portraits.