Teaching and Learning

Coliban Water Visit

Last Friday we were very fortunate to have a visit from an educator from Coliban Water, John McDonald. John ran an hour-long session for all of our students about where our water comes from and how important it is to us. All students constructed a chart showing the journey that water takes from the catchment to our towns, school and houses. The older students completed a Water Challenge - having to make decisions about where and when water might be most important, whilst the younger students made a water cycle chart. All students were then presented with a certificate and special gift bag as recognition for their entry into the Water Week Poster Competition.

News from Miss Duffy in Prep-2

In Mathematics we have been very busy applying all of the knowledge and skills that we have gained over the past three terms, so that we can conduct some mathematical investigations and be involved in hands-on learning. Last week we created our own pictographs after predicting how many mini M&M's might be in our plastic containers. We then had to work out the most effective way to count them and see if the number of each colour added up to the total we had arrived at. Some students grouped the sweets into 10's before counting, others used 5's whilst others just counting by 1's or 2's. Students then selected their own M&M pictures to create a bar graph with pictures. We were shocked to see how tall our graphs were and then discussed how we could use pictures to represent more than a single M&M so as to keep our graphs a more manageable size.

We are also going to be using our mapping skills to create our own pirate maps over the next few days. Who says Maths needs to be boring? Certainly not us!

News from Mr Collins in Year 3-6

Over the last 2 weeks the kids have gone on a journey through the writing process to develop their own procedures. The idea and writing stylistic choices were made completely by the kids this time. Out major focus during these sessions was the presentation of our work. At the beginning of each lesson we looked at different examples of procedures to draw ideas from. They look terrific!

In order to practice our measuring skills we completed an investigation where the kids had to design their own robots. The major mathematical component of the project came during the design phase where the kids had to use a ruler to draw everything to a certain scale that they could then multiply when building the robot. In the end, Lily decided to use the Tinkercad Program on her computer and then 3D print hers whilst the others chose to physically build theirs out of various materials. I hope everyone enjoyed having the robots invade their homes last weekend.

Art News

The students have now completed their ceramic puffer fish made from air-dry clay. Many were challenged by the need to keep the clay damp and how difficult it can be to join pieces together and get a smooth finish. We have fish in all shapes and sizes but all made from using a pinch-pot technique. Students this week are making clay coil pots.