The Term so far...

Well, here we are, 8 weeks in, and it's been the longest continuous attendance on-site and in the classroom for our students in more than two years! Miss Judy and I are impressed with the resilience and persistence shown by our students and encourage them to strive to stay motivated and focussed as we come to the end of Term 1. There is still much more to be completed before we reach that point though!

Bayside track athletics will be held on Friday April 1st and we'd love to see everyone in attendance at Ballam Park, keen to have a bit of a run. Notices will come home shortly.

We're coming to the end of our Inquiry unit, importantly looking at how Jesus was an innovator and how we too, can be innovators by understanding his actions and how they can be put into a modern context.

Maths Investigations

We are coming to the end of our unit investigating SUBTRACTION, focussing on finding and using efficient mental strategies. Recently students were challenged to find ways to use the digits from 0 to 9 to compose a subtraction problem. While it was a struggle to begin with, students persisted and found many alternatives. Understanding how to rename numbers (and use 'borrowing') made the task easier.

Writing

This week we had a go at putting all of our learning about how to keep a reader interested by starting with a bang and then building tension. Here are a couple of examples that came from the following prompt.

The Explosion (by Nolwenn)

Katie and Kalia were packing their white and black bags,getting ready for their Christmas holiday trip. Kalia and Katie were twins but they were completely the opposite of each other . They leaped into a shiny silver Mercedes yelling hear we come!!!

Their dad ended up telling them to shut their mouths. As usual Kalia listened to her parents but Katie on the other hand was babbling away. They finally arrived, it was warm and humid they ran straight to the lake house. They slammed the door open to see a beautiful luxurious two story lake house. It had a huge chandelier dangling from the top of the ceiling, and there were about fifteen diamond tubes hanging from the chandelier.

then suddenly a huge earthquake erupted, the dining table shook, the lights flickered and the candles went out . It finally stopped then a couple minutes later there was an aftershock.

Four days later water started to boil. You would have to put tons of ice to make it cold .

A week later rocks started flying from the sky ,lava was drooling from the pitch black colored mountain ash was dropping from the sky like snow covering the roofs of houses making them white as snow. People running and screaming for safety, people running for their lives yelling in horror.The land got covered in ash knowone was ever seen again till one day.

The Curse (by Maria)

“Wow this resort is way better than I expected” Isla said to herself.

As she walked inside her resort, she heard a mummer when she got closer, “WHAT WAS THAT” she gasped. She went to the kitchen to get some food after her long journey, while she was eating she saw an unusual note on the table, she opened it and it read, (YOUR TIME IS NEAR), she put the note down and said to herself it must be a joke but in her mind she trembled with fear.

After what had happened she went to her room to get some sleep, she sat on the bed and checked her instagram before she went to sleep, while she was scrolling through her instagram, the lights started flickering nonstop, Isla put her phone down, she felt a cool chill down her spine, it felt like someone was watching her, she tried to open her bedroom to escape but for some reason it was locked from the outside.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAA” she screamed “ SOMEONE HELP ME”, then all of a sudden the lights turned off and everything went completely blank, Isla leaned against the wall to know where she was going, then that's when she bumped into something hard and tall, she touched it from the top to the bottom, suddenly she felt a hand touch her shoulder, she looked up and saw a face of a lady with an evil grin looking right into her eyes.

“PLEASE DON’T HURT ME ” Isla yelled with all her strength as she moved backward, the lady came closer and closer and she said with a wiry voice, “I have put a curse on this island for anyone who lives here because when I came here, everyone mistreated me, so I killed everyone of them and turned them into dirt in the ground and I am doing the same to you as well”, with that the lady laughed hysterically.

Isla was petrified and leaned. her head against the wall, right next

to her she saw a stick that was glowing, “Is this….. a magic wand?” She questioned herself, then all of a sudden the lady’s expression changed, “PUT THAT DOWN” she said with fury, Isla was confused, “why was she so angry”, Isla fiddled with the wand and suddenly it snapped loudly, “ NO NO NO” the lady screamed “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE”she repeated over and over again.

the lady disappeared out of thin air and Isla heard mummers outside, she went outside and saw crowd of people all staring at her, “We are human again” a tall old man said in joyfulness, everyone was smiling and cheering, “YOU SAVED US'' another man said but this time a short one, Isla was confused and asked “Who are you all”, one of the girls shouted out loud and said “We are the people who got cursed and you broke the curse ”.

Isla was proud of herself when she heard all these compliments from the people, she invited all of them to her resort to have some coffee, she realized how the people were different from each other, some have different opinions and thoughts just like the lady who cursed everyone cause they mistreated her, but that doesn't mean that she had to mistreat them back, just like what we all do.

The Cursed Island (by Christo)

Everybody told Steve not to go to the island because it was cursed, Steve didn’t bother though. He went to the island and he got on his boat, his boat was small and wooden and it wasn't very strong. Suddenly the water started bubbling. Steve touched it and it was warm. Steve wanted to know what was making it warm so he started boating around. His boat got really warm but Steve didn’t notice.

Steve was exploring the mountains and lakes. He loves exploring new places. He saw some lights as he was going towards it and suddenly the boat started to rock a lot. And then when he almost reached the lights when a big wave knocked Steve off his boat, the wave was bigger than Steve's boat. The boat crashed and broke in pieces but Steve landed near the lights he landed with a thump and he was unconscious.

When Steve regained consciousness a big thunderstorm came with lightning, the lightning hit the ground and started many bush fires, then a big earthquake came. Steve didn't know what to do so he went towards the light so could maybe get help from other people. when he got there and the people there didn't know what to do as well so they tried to figure out where it came from.

In the distance there was a mountain and there was a lot of smoke coming from it. Steve said to the others to wait at the bottom and he would climb it. When Steve reached the top he saw really hot lava bubbling making lots of smoke, that's why the water was bubbling. He ran to the bottom of the mountain and told the others what he saw.

Everybody was panicking, Steve said they should build some boats so they started building boats. The boats were big enough to fit 12 people at a time. Some time later while they were building lava started shooting out of the volcano some of it hit the boats luckily none of the people. They started pushing the boats on the lake and then they filled it with people and left the lake. All the people got on and Steve went last on a tinier boat that he made.

While they were traveling tiny bits of magma were flying into the lake with extreme luck it didn’t hit the boats. Few minutes later the lake made some big waves and rough waters and the thunderstorm came back. Then Steve realized there was another mountain which was safer, all they had to do was travel some more. They made it to the other side of the mountain and the people thanked steve.

Steve went back to his home.

Congratulations to our current leaders, War-reen!