Specialist News
ART/AUSLAN (ARTLAN)
Fun across the school!
The science room has been buzzing with excitement over the past few weeks as students across all year levels have been immersed in hands-on investigations and engaging learning experiences.
- Our Foundation and Grade 1 students have been exploring mixtures and recently brought their learning to life by making — and enjoying — delicious chocolate crackles. Learning has never tasted so good!
- Grade 2 students have been diving into the world of recycling. They put their knowledge into action by making and testing their own paper, discovering firsthand how old materials can be transformed into something new.
- Grade 3 students applied their understanding of insulating materials to design their own insulating packaging solutions. The creativity, problem-solving and innovative ideas on display were truly impressive.
- In Grade 4, the focus has been on forces. Students wrapped up their learning about contact forces by applying their knowledge through a range of fun, active and engaging games, including an 'escape room'!
Meanwhile, our Grade 5 and 6 students explored light energy by building their own periscopes. This exciting challenge combined science, creativity and critical thinking as students investigated how light travels and reflects.
Students also explored our light boxes, experimenting with different prisms and coloured films to discover how light can reflect, bend and change colour. There were plenty of "wow" moments as they investigated how light behaves and created their own dazzling displays!
It has been wonderful to see so many students engaged, curious and enthusiastic in our science spaces. We look forward to sharing more science adventures in our next newsletter!
PE
The past few weeks in PE has had the wonderful opportunity of being coached by Football Star Academy's Coach Andre. He spent the whole week with all classes, teaching them Soccer. We could not thank Andre enough for his professionalism throughout his time at Pakenham Hills and we look forward to his return.
Our 5/6 students finished their Winter Sports Program with the annual Lightning Premiership Day. Our students competed against other schools in Soccer, AFL, Netball and Tee-Ball. It was a day of celebration as some of our teams were able to make finals in their respective competitions.
Thank you, students, families and especially our volunteers for an amazing term with so many incredible events having taken place over the past few months. We look forward to more in the next semester.
Performing Arts lessons are gearing up for next term's whole school concert "The Musical in Me." Students are focused primarily on dance. We have explored the elements of dance (body, action, space, time and energy) and applied this knowledge to create themed sequences of choreography. Classes have learnt their whole school finale and are starting to learn their musical themed class dance. In the coming weeks, year 5 and 6 students will be given the opportunity to audition for a main role.
LIBRARY
In the library most grades have been learning hands-on and 'unplugged' ways of understanding coding. Here are two students demonstrating 'drag and drop'.
It requires a different way of thinking to work out a series of steps (an algorithm) to make a simple program for a computer when the computer cannot think for itself.
Pick up cup - drag left - stop.
Pick up cup - drag left - stop.
We have also started our touch typing program.
No you cannot look at the keyboard while you are typing...
