Year Two

Places we connect to, and that connect us

By the Year Two Explorers

The Year Twos have been busy inquiring into why ‘Places are significant and given meaning by people’ as part of our Where We Are in Place and Time theme. We’ve been finding out about places that matter at school, in our local community, across Victoria, and throughout Australia.

You might have seen us on our scavenger hunt around the school, discovering special places, and then creating our own visual maps to show why they matter to us.

We headed off on a walk to Woodlands Park to see Essendon’s oldest timber cottage, which was moved to the park to save our community history.

We rode a tram to Queens Park to stand where Burke and Wills camped on their first night in 1860. We imagined we were Burke or Wills and wrote letters describing what they might have seen and felt on their journey to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Lots of our inquiry helped us understand how important place is to Aboriginal people. Our collaborative posters were a great way to learn more about different groups, and we are excited to create dioramas of significant Aboriginal places next week.

Each class wrote an Acknowledgement of Country to respectfully honour the Traditional Custodians of the land where we learn and play, and to strengthen our understanding of Country.

We’ve learned a lot about how different people - including ourselves and Aboriginal peoples - connect with places, how place names and Country carry meaning, and how stories shape what places mean. Places are stories, feelings, and connections; not just dots on a map.

The Year Two Team

Claire Eadington, Molly Todd, Carole Upton, Laveena Kukanesan and Amy Wirth