Platypus Classroom

Literacy

This past fortnight, our class has been very busy creating different types of texts related to our novel "Leila and the Blue Fox". Students have been experimenting with perspective-writing a short passage from a polar bear's perspective of hunting for food. The students have brought together the new knowledge they have been acquiring about the Arctic habitat and the mighty polar bear. More recently, students have been creating hybrid texts to spread awareness about the impacts of climate change on the polar bear population. 

Maths

In maths, students have been busy consolidating skills by engaging in maths games that utilise their understanding of place value, addition and multiplication. In our maths units, we have been exploring position by giving cardinal directions to navigate cardinal directions (Stage 2) and plotting points on the cartesian plane-crossing the x-axis and y-axis through translations (slides) and reflections (flips). Students enjoyed using technology such as the BeeBot Simulator (https://beebot.terrapinlogo.com/) and Polygon (https://polypad.amplify.com/p#axes). Your children may enjoy accessing these sites again during the school holidays. They are free to use and provide lots of mathematical experiences.

STEM

Over the past two Fridays, students have engaged in some teambuilding skills while engaging in a STEM challenge to build the tallest free-standing tower using only 5 sheets of paper, tape, and scissors - all in under 15 minutes!! Students evaluated their tower after their first attempt and experimented with a revised strategy the next day. Most students saw a big improvement. The week 1 winner was Grace and Tyler and the week 2 winner was Troy and Cooper. A great time and cooperative learning activity for all.