Classroom News

Class 4/5 with Anna - Maths

Town planning.

Students in Anna's class have been given a budget of $900,000.00 to create their own mini city.  They have the challenge of sticking to a budget, while planning what they would like to have in their mini-city and what a city needs in infrastructure.

Students had lists catagorized as either Essential or Extra.  Items on the list had a monetary value assigned.  

Students quickly realised that a big portion will be gobbled up by roads.  This made for some creative conversations on how each other was working around this.

During this invesitigation it was interesting to see what each student thought was important to include to create a mini-city. Some thought housing, others farmland, but a school was included in all their cities. 

Canberra Camp

Last Wednesday our year 5 and 6 students headed off to Canberra.  After an early start and some last minute cuddles from parents, at 7:15am the bus departed school.

Their first day was straight into stop number 1, the National Electoral Education Centre.  Here our students, via a guided 90 minute tour, students:

• explored the history of democracy and voting in Australia
• met DemocraBot and became immersed in DemocraCity, an interactive virtual world, to learn about representation, enrolment, and voting
• experienced the electoral process in action by running their own election in a dedicated polling place. Students voted on their favourite fruit, count the votes, and declared the election result, while taking on the roles of voters, ballot box guards, scrutineers and polling officials!

Next stop was at the National Capital Exhibition. Here students spent around an hour looking and learning about the people and the events that shaped the story of our National Capital. From the first nations people, to the choosing of the site, the horticulturists behind Canberra’s beautiful trees and the international competition to design our nations capital.

Husband and wife team, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, won the design competition.

Students then set out to their accomodation at Canberra Carotel, where they could set up in their cabins and enjoy fish and chips for dinner.  

After dinner, the evening activity was a visit to the Australian Institute of Sport – Sportex. 

Students could get hands on with the interactive sports exhibit, set amongst a unique collection of Australian sporting memorabilia. They enjoyed fun interactive displays and learned about the history of Australian sport.

Not much sleep was had on the first night, I'm told.

Day 2  

After a restless night, they were up for breakfast early and ready to depart at 8.45 am for GeoScience. Throughout this semester our year 6 students have furthered their learning in science, space, engineering and design. While visiting Geoscience and the National Capital Exhibition, our students were able to link back to their curriculum, through displays designed to immerse our students in hands-on geoscientific activities.

Also while at Geoscience Australia, our students could add a layer to the 'visitor book' sediment columns. There were also a lot of hands-on specimens from the National Mineral Collection which also included a very special piece, some Moon rock, which is on loan from NASA. Excitingly our students could actually touch it!

Students attended the Australian War Memorial.  This visit assists our students in remembering, interpreting and understanding the operational experience of the Australian services men, women and animals during wartime service and the enduring impact on our society.

The National Arboretum aka “The Pod Playground” is a beautiful natural space to have lunch and undertake some orienteering.

Parliament House & Parliamentary Education Office (PEO) The PEO educates Australians about, and inspires their enthusiasm for, Australia’s parliamentary democracy.

From here they then depart for their accommodation to enjoy dinner before heading out again to Iplay Belconnen for some bowling.

Day 3 

After breakfast we packed up the coach to depart for Questacon, our final activity before the long drive back home.

Questacon brings science and technology to students. Last year we were lucky to have a Questacon incursion at our school, so it was great for our students to attend the centre as an excursion.