Specialists Updates and Celebrations

Visual Art (Prep)

It has been so exciting to see our wonderful Prep students settling into the Art Room so confidently. They responded beautifully to our Learning to Learn lessons and have now begun creating some amazing artworks.

At SMPS, students start the year by creating an oil pastel self-portrait - an artwork made by an artist to represent themselves. For many, it was their first time using oil pastels, and they had so much fun experimenting with different colours and drawing techniques. I absolutely love how their artworks turned out - the Prep students truly showcased their creativity!

Mandarin (Year 1 and 2)

Following the conclusion of our Lunar New Year unit in Week 6, Year 1 and 2 students will begin learning basic Mandarin greetings from Week 7 onwards. Students will practise how to ask and respond to “How are you?” in Mandarin, as well as learn simple feeling words and phrases. These language skills will be explored through familiar fables, linking closely to their English learning and supporting students to express emotions and meaning in a new language in a fun and engaging way.

Physical Education (Years 3 & 4)

This week in PE, our Year 3 and 4 students took part in their first T-Ball lessons. Firstly, we practiced some key fielding skills in our skill challenge. Next, we practiced fielding the ball to the correct area of the pitch with a teacher vs students challenge. After, we played a game of T-Ball using the correct rules.

Music (Years 5 & 6)

Our Year 5 and 6 students are currently learning about Pop Music. The unit of work is titled “What Makes Pop, POP?”. Students have looked at how pop has developed through the history of the genre with special attention given to identifying key artists.

Our focus instruments have been the drum set and bucket drums. We have explored the role drums play in pop music. Students have been learning how to play eighth note drum beats on the drum set, progressing through a group of rhythms at their own pace. We have also worked on some pop music playalongs on the bucket drums and students have begun to create their own percussion pieces on the instruments.

Shortly we will be moving on to guitar and kalimba.

Library

Our Year 3 students have been visiting the library to borrow from our collection of Accelerated Reader books. On Tuesday the Year 3 classes had their library session and they borrowed a total of 112 books to take home.