Specialist News

Art, S.T.E.M. and Talent show -Thursday 12th September

On Thursday 12th September, Pascoe Vale North Primary will be showcasing our talents in an afternoon of displays, performances and more. It all starts with the Discovery Afternoon in the classrooms. In every classroom in the last session of the day, starting at 2:30 pm you can go and see an example of the work the students have completed in their classroom discovery/inquiry units. After that the Art and S.T.E.M. displays will be open for you to see. Starting at the library doors, you can wander down and through the Art room, down the prep corridor and up past the MPR. Mrs Debbie Buffinton has prepared and displayed a massive amount of the student's Art work for you to see. After the wonders of the Art show, you can pop into the S.T.E.M portable to see just some of the examples of the builds the student's have completed during their S.T.E.M. classes. There will not be as much to see as the Art show, as many of the builds and designs are take home but hopefully you will get to see a snapshot of the construction work we have completed.

But that is not everything, as the Talent show will be kicking off from 4 pm to 5:30 pm where the students will be performing songs and acts. This element of the show has been planned and co-ordinated by Mr Joel Brokate and will be something you don't want to miss.

Just a reminder though - that all students a the Art, S.T.E.M and Talent show need to be with a supervising adult.

S.T.E.M. News - Term 3

Here is a snapshot of what we have been looking at in Term 3. Our main focus has been looking at robotics and physics - with a splash of coding included. We looked at force, sound, light, circuits, electronics and used both the bluebots and the spheros. I introduce the concepts at Prep and then continue to build on them through grade 1 and grade 2.  At grade 3-4 and 5-6 the children cover the concepts in Physics, are required to be able to code their own 'basic' games and using block coding to control the Sphero (robots).

The two coding websites that I have currently introduced to the school are code.org and scratch. Both are online and are free to use. There is also an app for the Ipad (also free) called Scratch Junior which I plan to introduce to the grade 1s at the end of ther Term.

In Prep we looked at how things move and why things move. We looked at different types of robots, controlled the bluebots and created our own instructions for the Robots to follow.

Here are some photos of the Preps' chalk instructions.

Later in the Term, Preps were learning about social skills and group work and made these LEGO and Block creations.

The Grade 1s learnt to program the Bluebot robots and set about completing some challenges using just the robot and also the Ipad app.

Then they build some robots (most which will be on display in the STEM show)

The Grade 2s  had an intensive 5 week block on learning about coding and then building things that show one of the characteristics of Force (Push, Pull, Friction and Gravity) 

The grade 3-4s worked on Catapults at the beginning of the Term and with cross-collaboration with Art, they used their catapults to make Art.  They covered coding and robotics in the middle of the term and finished up creating rally car shells and we had the first (hopefully annunal) 3-4 Sphero rally car race. (Photos next Term I'm afraid)

The Grade 5-6s continued their investigation of Scratch and used the program to code games. They were even able to teach me how to code a basic 'catching' game. We also looked at creating electrical, motor and sound circuits. The 5-6s then used these concepts to either build something they uses the circuit (like the robot below whose eyes flash and will have a spinning bowtie when finished) or a game with moving parts.