Specialists Updates and Celebrations

Physical Education (Prep)

Our Prep SMPS superstars have been busy with their first few PE lessons! Wow! They listened expertly and followed instructions.

They looked so smart in their SMPS PE uniform too! 

We have practised our listening and following instructions skills with some fun games. The Preps love playing the traffic light game. Green light means walk, red light means stop and then we start adding more colours and more actions. For example, yellow light was jump, blue light was run and we even had brown light meaning move like a dog! 

You might even want to try playing at home and see how great a listener our students are.

Mandarin (Years 1 and 2)

Over the last two weeks, we have learnt about Lunar New Year celebrations and Chinese customs. We have learnt about the story of 'Nian' and how and why the Chinese celebrate the Lunar New Year. This Friday is the last day of the Lunar New Year celebrations - the Lantern Festival. The tradition of the Lantern Festival is to enjoy lanterns so this week Year 1 and 2 students made Year of the Dragon lanterns to deepen their understanding of different cultures.

Visual Arts (Years 3 and 4)

The Year 3 and 4 students have been learning about the 7 Elements of Art this week. The Elements of Art are line, shape, space, value, form, texture, and colour. These elements are the building blocks, or ingredients, of all artworks. This week, the students briefly touched on all the 7 Elements of Art, as a refresher before we begin our studies into a different Element each week. The artworks students created this week used a variety of Elements - they made oil pastel self-portraits. This is an artwork all the students create at the start of every year and I love how the Year 3 and 4 students' self-portraits turned out!

Music (Years 5 and 6)

In the Year 5 and 6 Music Program our theme is “What Makes Pop, POP?” The unit of work breakdances many of the aspects of Pop Music so that students gain an understanding why this genre of music is so “popular”, how it is constructed and how to create parts of pop music including their own “catchy hook” melody.

In the first 3 lessons of the unit students have learnt about the role of drums and rhythm in Pop Music, which included learning bucket drum and drum kit parts to well known songs. We looked at the evolution of beat and rhythm in Pop Music with a focus on one of the current trends in pop music of using “dance hall” drum rhythms.

This week we began to look at the role of Melody in pop music. Our practical learning was to learn a melody from a number one hit song by Justin Bieber on guitar. 

Performing Arts (Years 5 and 6)

The Year 5 and 6 students have been learning about different dance styles from various periods of time. The theme of this week was all about Hip-hop and how it came to be so popular in the world today. The students started the lesson by watching a video that showcases hip-hop and all of the Elements of dance that make up movement. The elements are as followed: movement in the body, energy, space, timing, and the relationship with the audience. Each student had the opportunity to create their own hip-hop movement in pairs or a small group. From this, they showcased their knowledge by creating different shapes in the body to make a dance. After showing their class the dance, the students followed along by dancing to a choreographed piece, inspired by American dance culture.

Library

Library Lovers’ Day is celebrated internationally each year on February 14th. It is a day to honour libraries, librarians and library lovers, and the valuable roles that libraries play in our lives.

In week 3, SMPS joined in the celebration of Library Lovers’ Day. Students in Year 4 to 6 were invited to complete the sentence “I love my library because...”. The students recorded their thoughts on paper hearts which were proudly displayed in the library.