Primary Life
Spotlight on Chinese
Han Yu Ong - Chinese Teacher
Laughter was heard ringing at the ball court when some Year 2 and 3 students played “What’s the day, Mr Wolf?” in Chinese. Those who played sheep could be heard asking “狼先生，今天星期几？“ while the one who played Mr Wolf would try his/her very best to lure the sheep closer and closer to him, naming the days of the week in Chinese to indicate the number of steps they were to take.
The students felt a great sense of achievement knowing that they were able to apply what they were learning into games. It was definitely one of the highlights of their learning after weeks of exploring numbers and days of the week. They are also starting to read and write in Chinese characters – what an amazing feat!
Meanwhile, in Prep and Year 1 classrooms we saw students learning about God’s creation, naming the sun, moon, earth and stars, as well as animals and other things in nature. Often, these vocabularies were taught complete with specific actions or hand signs.
Lessons were both fun and exhilarating. Students were taught to read and speak as well as to act. “Guess the Word” game was their favourite and those interactive moments were priceless. Our little preppies also did “Show and Tell” in Chinese, introducing their family members to each other.
When it comes to understanding resilience, the senior students truly showcased its essence by putting their words into action as they transitioned smoothly at the start of Term 3 with Jin Laoshi, their new Chinese language teacher. Not only did they greet her with warmth, but they also embraced her with support and kindness.
With distinct focuses across different grades, such as exploring family members 家庭成员 for Year 4, delving into food and health 美食与健康 for Year 5, or uncovering calendars and events 日历和事件 for Year 6, the students welcomed new ideas and challenges simultaneously.
They now need to read and write more Hanzi characters 汉字 rather than just relying on Pinyin 拼音, while also engaging in conversations with both their peers and the teacher during class.
"It's very challenging, but I'm willing to give it a try," expressed numerous students. The senior students showed commendable effort for continuing on this exciting journey of learning one of the most complicated languages in the world!
Year 5 STEM Incursion
Jacob Abbott - Year 5 Teacher
Year 5 students had the opportunity to be immersed in a STEM incursion, focusing on incorporating knowledge and skills from various subject areas to solve a problem.
In this case, students used knowledge of angles, mathematics, digital technology, inquiry and engineering to build and program an autonomous ambulance that needed to be able to avoid debris and rough terrain to reach people who were stuck in a disaster zone.
It was fabulous to witness students displaying collaborative skills, problem-solving skills and resilience while programming their model ambulance to avoid disaster.
Year 1 Dream City Incursion
Mel Attard - Year 1 Teacher
The Year 1 cohort was thrilled head to the Community Hub to attend Dream City for the first time. We had an exciting day moving through a robotics station, a neonatal nursery and a virtual reality experience.
Robotics involved tackling challenging stations with robots controlled by tablets. It required us to use a new skill of coding.
In the neonatal nursery, students dressed up as nurses and learned about the needs of newborn babies. We fed them, changed them and cuddled them to try and stop the crying!
In virtual reality, students got to experience a world made out of a colouring book. They could change the colours and make the virtual world their own.
"I liked the nursery with the robot babies. I dressed the robot babies, I held the babies, and my baby didn't even cry one time." Ian Kao
What I liked about VR was that you could colour different colouring books. We coloured with controllers" - Noah Hii
"I loved the robots activity. I liked seeing them go up and down ramps. I hope they come back again soon" - JoJo Kyriakou
We focused on using our resilience and problem-solving skills throughout each rotation and had so much fun!