Learning & Teaching

Science Week

This week we had the amazing Mr Fitzgerald and his team of budding scientists from Salesian College come to St B’s to lead the learning around Chemical Science. Students posed questions, engaged in the learning with theories and wonderings as well as communicating their findings after their experiments. Our key learning at the end of the day was that science is everywhere in our world, we have future scientists in our midst, and most of all when science doesn’t go as planned, always question WHY and research more!

In Art, students looked at the similarities between artists and scientists, and experimented with Paint Pouring. Different colors of paint have different densities and viscosities, which allow the colors to flow and react in interesting ways. Lots of great observations and wonderings were made! “Look, the red and the blue mixed to make purple!” “What happens if you move it around?” “I wonder why the red drips faster than the blue?” 

Our wonderful preps are busily learning how to be a zoologist. Their current science unit of work has led them to pose many questions, lead to new discoveries and showcase their understanding of all things animals! Over the past number of weeks students in Juniors have been exploring how education, printing and technology has changed over time. They have started to formulate personalized questions about their own interest and will begin to further develop their understanding of the concept of change by examining artifacts and comparing them to what they are like nowadays. A history museum will be created to help students become real historians during their History unit of work. 

Our middle students are also developing their skills as historians, exploring the concept of perspectives and how this connects to our early years of history across the Australian landscape. These historians, too, are posing questions about the past, gathering information and examining various points of view across our historical sources of information. 

You may notice that our senior students have been working as geologists, physicists and social scientists over the past number of weeks. They are in the process of creating visual representations of their scientific findings about man made and natural disasters and the many ways in which our lives are shaped by this. 

Some students across the school have been working closely with Miss Petrina in the area of Mathematics. They have been put through their paces, thinking multiplicatively, manipulating resources, recording their mathematical findings and sharing their work with their peers. Keep an eye out for great seesaw videos of students talking about all things Mathematics! 

Our younger students in grade 1 and 2 will be participating in PAT Adaptive Maths soon where teachers will be able to use relevant findings to further develop student’s skills in key areas such as Number and Algebra and Measurement during the next few weeks. 

Literacy - Miss Petrina is really excited about taking a senior reading group next week! This group will be reading “All fall down” by Ally Carter. 

Miss Petrina, Tex and Lily explored the vignette “Black Cockatoo” recently and highly recommend others to read this short novel that explores deep themes such as relationships, spirituality and indigenous culture.