What's happening in our learning spaces? 

Students of the Week

Year F -1/2

We have had another busy and lively week in F-2 as we welcomed our mums into the learning space for Mother’s Day, began our Discovery Time workshops and celebrated our long awaited Art Show. It has been wonderful to finally share our learning and creations with family and friends this week. 

There were an abundance of smiling faces Monday morning as we held our Mother’s Day morning. Some enjoyed a variety of engaging literacy activities, showing our mother’s reading and language skills. Others had the opportunity to demonstrate their writing skills to their mothers, writing a recount of their Mother’s Day. It was wonderful to see the excitement and joy from everyone. 

As researchers we have begun our exciting new Discovery Time workshops. As part of our inquiry into Living Things and student voice, we have a range of exciting and fascinating stations to learn more about plants, habitats, life cycles and animals from different environments. We are looking closely at different things, reading a variety of information texts, listening to information with technology, recording our wonderings and discoveries and creating labelled diagrams. As inquirers we have used this time in Discovery to learn more about the living things in our world. Some of us have learnt that…

• I learnt that the middle of Earth has lava in it - Adam (FLW)
• I discovered that pigs like rolling in mud by looking at pictures- Damien (FLW)
• I found out that Orcas are also called Killer Whales, but they are a type of dolphin. As a researcher I found out by looking in a non fiction book- Thomas (1/2AM)
• I was wondering what gem is the rarest and I found out what gem is the rarest by looking at them in the sun. It is the Honey Calcite- Eva K (1/2AM)
• I found out that Zebras and Elephants have the same habitats. I looked in a non-fiction text but first I looked at the index to see what page those animals were on- Elizabeth (1/2AM)
• I discovered that frogs are amphibians - Rafael (1/2 AP) 
• I found out that sharks have sharp teeth - Jacob (1/2 AP)

We can’t wait to explore more about living things and how they grow as we participate in Discovery Time this term.

As readers, those of us in 1/2 have been engaging in a variety of non-fiction texts and demonstrating our ability to identify their different features. As thinkers, we have been using content pages to efficiently locate desired information and diagrams to better understand the text. We have integrated our fantastic new merge cubes from STEM into our learning. As readers we have been using this technology as well as books to  research, and learn about the life cycle of a frog. We really enjoyed using a variety of resources in our reading. 

Those of us in Foundation read the book ‘Dear Zoo’. As readers, we used nouns and adjectives to identify and describe what we could see throughout the book. We looked for high frequency words and joined in when reading. We loved making connections to the different living things we saw on our recent excursion to Melbourne Zoo. 

We hope our Mothers enjoyed being a part of our Mother’s Day morning. We can’t wait for the week ahead as we explore the life cycles of living things, learn new addition strategies and continue our information report writing. 

Leanne Wenckowski, Alycia Marsico, Stefanie Carriera and Alexandra Phillips, 

Foundation to Year Two Team.

Year  3/4

Last week we welcomed our Mums, Grandmothers and Aunties in our learning space on Monday to engage in an activity together for Mother’s Day. It was so lovely to spend the morning colouring in and writing acrostic poems. We are so grateful to have these amazing women in our lives. 

As mathematicians, we are learning to add numbers efficiently. To build our mental computation we begin our lessons with a game of Flipper. In pairs, we turn over two or more cards and add the values together. The aim of the game is to quickly add the numbers together using efficient mental strategies. 

As inquirers, we continue to research our big question ‘What makes a healthy habitat and why are they important?’. As e-learners and researchers, we investigated the life cycles of  living things by exploring websites and viewing documentary videos where we gathered important information about their stages of life. We presented our findings as a flow chart, take a look below.

We are so very proud of all our Year 3 learners who recently completed their very first NAPLAN test.   Congratulations for your persistence and hard work. We were all cheering for you and wanted all of you  to know that these tests do not assess all of what makes each of you exceptional and unique. 

Year 3/4 Teachers

Belinda Panzarino, Katarina Davidson & Graham Troy

Year 5/6

It has been another busy and productive week in Year 5/6! 

As we continue to work through ‘The Resilience Project’ the focus this past week has been on character strengths. We learnt that ‘Character strengths  are the positive qualities that a person possesses naturally and impact the way a person thinks, feels and behaves in their life’. We watched a video which listed character strengths and identified the character strengths of well-known people. We then played a fun and challenging game titled the ‘Human Knot Game’. Everyone joined hands to form a ‘human knot’ within the groups. Much laughter and strategising then took place, with each group taking turns moving and bending until the knot was untangled. We reflected on the character traits needed to complete this challenge. Finally, we all had the opportunity to write our top five personal character traits, and these will be used to design our ‘personal strengths logos’.

As mathematicians, we have been exploring the concepts of Measurement and  Location. Using our knowledge of timetabling and the grid reference system, we have participated in engaging and practical Maths learning activities. We used grid coordinates to map a bird’s eye view of our bedrooms. Each of us drew a detailed bird’s eye view of our bedroom, used a grid coordinate to create a map, and made statements about the map using the grid coordinates. Everyone’s favourite part of the lesson was the ‘Gallery Walk’ in which we all had the opportunity to walk around and discover what everyone’s bedroom looked like! 

Another Maths learning activity was the opportunity to plan our upcoming excursion to the zoo by creating a detailed map and timetable for our day! We used our knowledge of reading and interpreting timetables, to plan zoo activit\ies which include not only the times, but the time elapsed between activities. Again we used grid coordinates in our proposed schedules.Our timetables will prove very useful for next Monday’s excursion!

As writers and communicators, we have been planning, writing and compiling our ‘Camp Newsletter’. Unpacking and reflecting on our experiences at Sovereign Hill, have given us the ideas and content, for what will be an engaging and informative newsletter for the school community! 

A reminder that our excursion to the Melbourne Zoo is on Monday, 23rd May. The buses will leave at 9.00 am, so we need to ensure that we are all at school early! Please be mindful of the weather and bring a jacket if needed. We are looking forward to a great day of fun and learning!

Kind regards, 

Michelle Casamento, Viviana Clarke, Annette Gasbarro and  Olivia Sargent.

5/6 Teaching Team. 

More Camp Images