Learning and Teaching
Green Team News
The Green Team met in Brendan’s Garden on a cold, windy afternoon after a morning of steady rain. Despite the weather, the students were full of enthusiasm as they admired the first daffodil blooming in the centre garden bed and were excited to discover the purple cauliflower beginning to form its first small heads.
The afternoon was spent planting white and pink hyacinth bulbs, along with beetroot, broad bean and white cauliflower seedlings, helping to prepare the garden for a productive winter season. Our citrus trees have also produced an abundance of oranges, lemons and limes and each Green Team member enjoyed picking a fresh orange to take home.
It was another productive Green Team session, with our garden beds gradually filling with winter vegetables and flowers. The smiles in the photos capture just how much the students enjoy spending time learning and working together in Brendan’s Garden.
1/2T
This week, Year 1/2T is learning about different patterns. We have looked at ABABAB patterns, AABAAB patterns and AABBAABB patterns using different shapes and pictures. We are now learning growing patterns and how to work out the rules in a growing pattern. Here are some pictures of us making growing patterns using counters.
Spotting Patterns in 1/2R
Maths has been full of colour and hands-on discovery in 1/2R. Last week, our students explored the world of patterns, learning how numbers and shapes follow special rules.
What We’ve Been Learning
Finding the 'Unit of Repeat': Using unifix blocks, students created repeating patterns (like red-blue-yellow, red-blue-yellow). We focused on identifying the core "unit of repeat"—the exact sequence that repeats over and over again.
Growing & Shrinking Patterns: With counters, students experimented with increasing and decreasing patterns. They observed how patterns can "grow" (+2 each step) or "shrink" (-1 each step), building skip counting knowledge as well. Well done 1/2R.
STEM
Foundation
The Foundation students are learning about directions by programming the Blue-bots robots. They have been challenged to use the alphabet mats to spell out three letters words. The students take turns in inputting what they think they need to do and then testing it to see if they are right. If they are right, continue to the next letter, if wrong, clear the program and try again. This is a challenging activity, especially because the directions change as the robot moves but they have been doing an excellent job!
Year 1 and 2
The Year 1 and 2 students are also learning about directions by programming the Blue-bots robots. The point of difference now is that they need to use physical block programming cards to ‘write’ the program that they will put into their Bluebots. They will then test to see if it works, if it does then they will move onto another word, if not, they will look at where it went wrong and change cards to fix the error. This is a challenging activity, especially because the directions change as the robot moves and the students need to put the correct cards to match the direction. It has been great to see them work as a team to achieve a goal!
