Team Foundation News

Topsy Turvy Tales

In Term 4 Foundation students are exploring the value of creativity in an inquiry titled Topsy Turvy Tales. In this unit, we are using creativity through inspiration from Fairy tales. We are reading and exploring a Fairy tale each week, identifying the various elements of a Fairy Tale including the use of love, royalty or magic and learning about the characters, setting, problem and solution.

At the beginning of Term 4, students were asked to share their favourite Fairy tale with the class. In sharing these different tales, students became familiar with these different stories. They learnt where these tales originated, the characters in the story and the reason why each person liked the story.  

Our Essential Questions for this unit are:

How can we be creative and imaginative?

What can we learn from fairy tales?

How can we design and make things using different materials?

Would you prefer to be a koala or a kangaroo? Why? What would happen if everyone looked the same? Which Fairy Tale character would you like to meet? Why? If you could talk to a spider, what questions would you ask them?

These are examples of Creativity Crackers which we will be using during the term to tune into our creative side.

Throughout the term, students will be experimenting with design using various materials and will be working towards creating their own puppet and mini theatre to perform their own Topsy Turvy Fairy tale! We will be immersing ourselves in Fairy Tales and completing tasks such as puppet and theatre design and making, building with different materials, brainstorming ideas to improve designs and through role playing, pretending to be a range of Fairy Tale characters.  

In groups, students will be exploring one traditional Fairy Tale to perform to an audience at the end of the unit. However, the trick is that the Fairy Tale has to be Topsy Turvy! They will select a place in their Fairy Tale that they are going to recreate as the setting of the puppet theatre. Each student creates a puppet of one of the characters in their group’s Fairy Tale. Planning, design and construction of the theatres and characters will require teamwork and creative thinking. Students will add sounds, such as voice, instruments, objects, that can help to perform the Fairy Tale. The puppets are required to talk and move during the performance. We’re looking forward to the Topsy Turvy Fairy Tale performances!

Enjoy walking into Fairy Tale Land which we will continue adding to each week in the foyer outside the Foundation classroom.

Term 4 Foundation Stars 

Week 2 - Mia

In Week 2 Mia was the second Foundation Star for Term 4. Mia shared a number of lovely photos in her Timeline. By looking carefully at the photos on her timeline we all learnt that she was the first baby born in her family. Her younger brother Riley was born when Mia was three and Riley is one of Mia's favourite people in the whole wide world! We also learnt that Mia has gone on an overseas holiday to Thailand with her family. She also celebrated her 3rd birthday with a lovely pink Bluey cake! When Mia shared her Personal Show Bag we learnt that she really likes soft toys! Mia shared six different soft toys with the class. Her favourite soft toy was her spotty teddy! For her Personal Skill, Mia drew a lovely picture of herself and her brother Riley. Mia took her time and put lots of detail into this picture.  Well done Mia for sharing your life with us! We learnt so much about you!

We will look forward to seeing future Foundation Star presentations in Term 4. Thank you once again to Mia's family for supporting her with this activity!

Miss Jones

Foundation Teacher