Specialist Programs
Communicating with the Specialist Team
We look forward to partnering with you in 2020, and welcome your input:
Justin Scicluna (Health & Physical Education) Justin.Scicluna@education.vic.gov.au
Sensei Masae Uekusa (Japanese) uekusa.masae.m@edumail.vic.gov.au
Penelope Lang (Performing Arts) penelope.lang@education.vic.gov.au
Samantha White (Visual Arts) samantha.white@education.vic.gov.au
An Overview of our Learning
I can’t tell you how excited I have been this week to hear the sound of students laughing and playing in the playground and seeing my room full of smiling faces. (and a few yawns). I am so happy to be back to onsite teaching and learning.
This Term all students will be consolidating and expanding their leaning from Term 3 where the focus was on the discipline of Dance. We will be looking not just at the elements of dance but exploring different choreographic devices such as repetition, contrast, cannon and unison. We will listen to this year’s ‘Count Us In’ song and explore the creative processes behind the scenes.
Of course Term 4 means Christmas concert preparations, and although we will not be able to come together as a whole school community, we will be creating an alternative performance opportunity for the students. More details will be provided later this term. We will also be running “Upwey South’s Got Talent” but this will now be done as an assignment via Google classroom. All acts will need to be pre-recorded at home and ‘handed in’ online. I will provide more information soon, but now is the time to start thinking about your act. Please note that this is not compulsory.
So, as you can see we have had to make some changes to the way we proceed this term. I call these pivots (I had to demonstrate a pivot in our lessons!). Last week I took many of my lessons outside (when it wasn’t raining). The photos below are of our 5/6 students choreographing a contactless handshake to welcome each other back. There will be no cross-level sessions which means unfortunately choir will not be running this term. I will do my very best to ensure we have fun doing the things we CAN do.
It is great to be back…even if it means we have had to rise up onto our toes and pivot!
Keep smiling,
Penelope Lang
Foundation: This term, the Foundation students will predominately focus on developing their fundamental motor skills. This will be achieved through stationed exercises and individual practise. The students will also be exposed to small team games to teach them about the importance of cooperation with others to achieve a goal.
As a part of the health curriculum, the students will have the opportunity to identify different types of emotions and colour code them to further develop their understanding.
Level 1 & 2: This term, the focus for our 1/2 students will be to refine and practise their fundamental motor skills. Students will revisit both the under and overarm throw, incorporating the Tik, tok, Step and Rock and strongman/girl techniques. From here, they will move into small team games which will incorporate these skills. Towards the end of the term, they will learn skills associated with some of our country’s famous games (AFL and cricket).
As a part of the health curriculum, the students will be introduced to different types of food groups and understand how these foods can constitute a balanced diet.
Level 3 & 4: To begin the term, students had the opportunity to test their levels of fitness which will be followed up on at the conclusion of the term to track their progress. The focus for the Level 3 and 4 students will be around team games with the intension to grow both their fundamental and gross motor skills. Students will develop an understanding about the importance of teams in sport and how strategies can be applied to achieve a goal.
As a part of the health curriculum, students will have the opportunity to create a daily timetable to promote the fact that structure can assist with living a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
Level 5 & 6: To begin the term, students had the opportunity to test their levels of fitness which will be followed up on at the conclusion of the term to track their progress. The focus for the Level 5 and 6 students will be around invasion and target games. These games will have a big focus on gross motor skill development, strategy development, cooperating with others.
As a part of the health curriculum, students will have the opportunity to explore the topic of mental health. We will work through aspects that can help support mental health and strategies which can be employed.
Justin Scicluna
Physical Education & Health Teacher
Foundation students will be learning to tell the famous story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle in Japanese. This learning unit focuses on revising days of the week and numbers and, learning fruit names, additional animal names and action words. The students will participate in fun hands-on activities and learn the words and phrases with the help of gestures and mnemonics.
Both grade 1 and 2 students will learn Japanese through a fun treasure hunt travelling to the 3 virtual worlds. They are worlds of Japanese scripts - Hiragana, Katakata and Kanji worlds. In each world, students will have missions which help them learn to read the scripts and discover the keywords to unlock the hidden treasure. This adventure includes learning and revising shop conversation phrases, describing words related to shapes and sizes.
Grade 3 and 4 students will have an opportunity to develop their reading and writing skills of Japanese script through ‘the Hiragana belt challenge’ which is a belt-earning system such as Karate dojo (from white belt to black belt). This involves a variety of fun challenges to learn and monitor their progress in the Hiragana script. The students will be awarded with their Hiragana-belt certificates at the end of the term.
Grade 5 and 6 students are going to learn a new genre of Japanese writing through the unit ‘Time Capsule’. This will be a great opportunity for them to look back how far they have come after years of learning Japanese and all the memories of the primary school years. The students will work on the pages to seal all the words and phrases that they have learnt in the previous years in a new form of writing. Their Japanese book will be a little memory piece to keep for the future.
Welcome back to Visual Arts! A big thank you to all the parents and carers who supported their students in, not only class work, but in Visual Arts as well. It has been the highlight of my week to see all the creations students and families have completed.
We started off the term with all levels completing positive affirmation posters which we will be putting up around the school building. The Foundations to Year 2s focused on how to use water colour paints to complete their posters, while the Year 3-6s focused on developing their lettering skills. In the second week of the task, the 3-6 students were given the opportunity to use chalk markers, metallic markers and oil pastels to decorate their posters with.
In the second week of term the Foundation students were busy creating colourful backgrounds which they will use to make a collage of a flower in week 3. The Year 1 and 2 students explored primary and secondary colours, and used the primary colours- blue, red and yellow- to make two pieces of art. They have to choose two primary colours and then used the paint to dab paint over the paper. Students were excited to see that when the two colours overlapped a new colour had been made. They will be using this paper in the next session to design and make a bird. They then used the same colours to make a printed background using jar lids to make circles of various sizes. Again, the two colours mixed to the delight of the students.
