Student News
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Energy Breakthrough 2021
The ENERGY BREAKTHROUGH, is without doubt, one of the most exciting and important events in the Victorian Education calendar and among the finest student participation events in the world. Developed by the Country Education Project, the Breakthrough offers male and female students, in both city and country schools, exciting real world challenges in science, technology and environmental education, with a particular focus on transport.
The challenge requires a dedicated team of students designing and constructing a Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) and competing at the Energy Breakthrough Challenge Festival event to be held in Maryborough, November 2021.
This innovative challenge aligns with our school vision, student values, student agency and sustainability. Additionally, there is potential to build partnerships within the wider community.
This is a huge commitment that requires the formation of a dedicated team comprising of 10 students.
South Melbourne Park Primary School is hoping to participate with one team in the 2021 Energy Breakthrough Challenge. Please visit: https://www.eb.org.au/ of you are interested in the program. Early next term we will be requesting Expression of Interest from students.
Performing Arts: Mystery Sound
Students have been trying to work out the mystery sounds! On Tuesday and Wednesday last week, students heard the sound of 18 different instruments and they had to guess/match each sound. On Thursday the reveal video showed just how many sounds they recognised.
It was fun and engaging and the students were very surprised to see the amount of musical talent hidden away. Well done team!
Camping Out!
Last Friday we invited families to have a camp out in their yard, their living room, or build a blanket fort, and perhaps Google Meet with friends and 'camp out together', as a way to help everyone feel connected. It looks like a good time was had by all!
We had a lovely Friday connecting with some families for camp out and movie night:)
The kids enjoyed themselves...only Raph stayed for the entire movie but Dylan said 5 in total came along.
STEM NEWS
From Felix, Director of STEM
It is the end of Term 3!!!!
We have explored a lot in STEM this term. Let’s have a flashback to the fun and inventive activities we have had in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S.T.E.M).
This Term we were Scientists celebrating Science Week 2020: Deep Blue: innovations for the future of our oceans and discovered the importance of keeping our oceans cleaner and healthier for marine life and coral. We learned why this is important for us as we use our oceans for food and leisure.
We also experimented with Technology. SMPPS had the opportunity to let our creative side shine in STEM, by learning to dance using block coding during the live lessons. The students learned a new language, the language of CODE. We started learning to code with Scratch and ScratchJr and we had fun creating and exploring code through Code Spark Academy.
We were Engineers building boats and more with crafts at home. We WOWED our parents and community with the paper plane challenge and had fun playing and experimenting with different shapes and folds. We were also Mathematicians measuring, counting and recording our paper planes flying!
The best thing about STEM is you can find it in almost everything you do and everything you see. You can question, explore, experiment and test. When it doesn’t work, you figure out what’s wrong and how you can improve it and you try again. I got better at my plane flying but nowhere near the world’s record!
Here are a few photos of planes that our STEMgineers made and flew inside and outside the house. STEMazing creations and improvements from everyone.
Just like the paper plane, time has flown by too.
Now it is the holidays and it's a great time to start storyboarding and filming your SMPPS Film Festival videos. Goodluck everyone.
We’re busing making lots of tutorials for tips and tricks to filming, adding titles and editing your movie.
When you’re done with your film you can do some experiments and fun STEM activities with these links during the holidays:
Scienceworks play ideas and home experiments including ball runs and Melbourne Museum experiments, games and tours.
During the holidays if you’re out for a walk or looking out your window check out what type of clouds are in the sky. Hopefully you don’t see too many Cumulonimbus or Nimbostratus storm clouds out on your walk! ABC iView cloud search has lots of good videos and information.
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY NEWS
In case you missed this great video from the Director of Environmental Sustainability, Hunter, in the last newsletter, here it is again:
Team 1PYKB
Alessi's reading response
Harper's Maths
Maddie's Gratitude Tree
Henry's Published Writing
Video Review Challenge
Team 1PYKB were busy last week filming themselves giving a review of something they love. The challenge was to keep the video under one minute! Check out Matisse's review of SMPPS!