Specialist News
ART/AUSLAN (ARTLAN)
Lots of exciting lessons have been happening in our Artlan space. Preps continue their studies of colour signs, learning to sign their favourite colour and to interpret a partner's signing of their favourite colour.
Grade 1 have been learning signs for family such as mum, dad, sister, brother, cousin, aunty and uncle. Each student has drawn a family tree to represent the members in their families, including pets.
Grade 2's bird's eye view maps are coming along nicely as they learn how to use watercolour pencils and the ombre technique.
In Grade 3 we are discovering all about Australia's neighbours, this week again looking at New Zealand and traditional Maori artwork. Students built their own "marae" (Maori meeting ground) with icy pole sticks and hessian. We watched a tv program from NZ which featured deaf children using NZSL (New Zealand sign language) visiting their marae and showed what a marae is used for.
Grade 4's are discovering pop art and sign language from the USA (ASL - American Sign Language). We were inspired by Andy Warhol, used food as our theme and repeated our drawing four times to imitate a print, and coloured them using bold colours.
Grade 5/6's have continued our investigation into colour and emotion, learning about Picasso and his blue (sad) and rose (happy) periods. Here is some great work so far this week...
PE
For PE, we are highlighting your Sports Captains for the year as well as what our students have been accomplishing in their classes. Our school captains in 2026 are Oggie, Kody, Vikshana and Aaliyah.
Kody: As your PE captain, I look for students who spread kindness and have good sportsmanship. My favourite sport is AFL, Cricket and Basketball I love these three sports because they are good for agility, stamina and having fun.
Vikshana: As a PE captain, I want to show an example of what good sportsmanship looks like and to see people participating and having fun with what they are doing
Oggie: I look for students who try their best and have fun. My favourite sport is soccer and I look for sportsmanship and kindness. I love to show students how to do amazing skills in sports. This year, we are going to host tournaments for most sports. Thank you.
Aaliyah: I just want to show the preps an example of different sport and how to listen. I want to show good sportsmanship because I want the preps to follow my example and for everyone to be kind. I wanted to be a PE captain because I love sport and I love playing basketball.
This term, our Prep students have started PMP and have been doing plenty of running and jumping activities. Their smiles and excitement as they have fun in the gym has been amazing and we are so glad to have these students at the school.
The Grade 2 and 3 students have been focusing on fundamental skills with throwing and catching being the priority.
Grades 3 and 4 have begun the year with Net Sports. Students were packing and setting up Tennis nets, shaking the racquet’s handle to greet them and performing wonderful forearm strikes in the process.
Finally, Grade 5 and 6 students have started with Invasion Sports and are showing their understanding of games such as AFL, Soccer, Basketball, Netball and Rugby and how all of these games have similarities and are transferring their understanding into games.
STEM
Over the last few weeks, the grade 3-6 students have been competing in some challenges. They first had to build a bridge using 4 sheets of A3 paper that would hold 1 kilogram of weight! 50 teams competed in this challenge and only 6 teams were successful. Next up was building a tower with only 20 pieces of spaghetti and 1 metre of tape that would hold a giant marshmallow on top, we had about 50% success rate with this challenge, and lots of fun was had by all who participated.
This last week has seen grade 4-6 students try a range of different experiments using everyday household items like pepper, corn flour, detergent, milk, tissues, vinegar and bicarbonate soda.
Foundation have continued learning about the weather and how we can use the weather to work out what we should be wearing. The Grade 1's have started learning about healthy food choices and have learned how to safely use a grater.
The Grade 2’s have continued learning about our solar system. They have learnt about the different phases of the moon. We were all very surprised to learn that there are 891 known moons in our solar system and that Saturn has 274!!
PERFORMING ARTS
This week our Victorian State Schools Spectacular team had their first whole day learning experience. We learnt choreography for six different dances. These days are long and challenging. I am so proud of how well everyone did. I have never seen the choreographers get so excited or make so many positive comments.
LIBRARY
In the library we are also learning about how to communicate on digital devices, we discuss online bullying and what strategies we can use to stay safe online.
We learnt that this line from the old nursery rhyme:
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is not true at all!
Unkind words can have a devastating effect on people. To prove this fact, most students watched a clip in which rice was cooked and stored in two glass jars.
The first jar had LOVE written on it and the second one HATE. They were placed in different rooms and every day, all the people in the house talked to the LOVE-jar in kind and loving words, but the HATE-jar was spoken to unkindly and harshly.
After a week or so, the rice in the HATE-jar was showing yukky black spots and the rice in the LOVE-jar was still looking white and fluffy.
After another few weeks, the HATE-jar looked disgusting; the rice had turned into a greyish goop. The rice in the LOVE-jar still looked delicious.
The explanation was that the vibrations of our kind/unkind words went straight through the glass of the jars to affect the water in the rice. Since our bodies are made of 70% water, the nice or ugly words we speak to eachother (and to ourselves) will affect our bodies as well!