What's happening in our learning spaces? 

FOUNDATION 

What a busy week it has been in Foundation!

There was great excitement on Thursday as the Foundation students had a rehearsal on the stage that had been assembled in the school hall in preparation for the whole school Dance Concert. What an amazing experience Thursday night was for everyone, as we performed our dance to the song “Hawaiian Rollercoaster Ride” from the movie Lilo and Stitch to an audience of over 450 people. Although we felt a little nervous as well as excited, the performance was amazing! We all cannot wait to do it again next year!

Friday was another exciting event in the lives of the Foundation students. We all dressed up as a Superhero as the concluding event on the National Awareness Day for Bullying. As a cohort, we shared our thinking about what Bullying is and what it isn’t. We have come to the understanding that Bullying involves a repeated action that occurs over and over. We also decided that we can assist our friends to make sure bullying does not happen. We can all be upstanders and tell others to stop what they are doing to hurt others and we can also tell an adult about what we have witnessed.

Last week also happened to be “Science Week”. As a part of Science Week, we participated in observing a couple of experiments. We also shared our knowledge about what may happen. (This is known as predicting the outcome.)

The first experiment was the White Flowers that changed colour once food dye was added to the water. The second experiment involved creating a “Walking Rainbow" using jars, water, paper towel and food dye.

Remember the Dress Up Day for Book Week is on Thursday 24th August and don’t forget to send through Father’s Day photos to your child’s teacher.

Have a wonderful week, 

Leanne Wenckowski & Alex Phillips

Foundation Team

YEAR 1/2

We have had yet another busy and fun week in the 1/2 learning spaces! There has been so much happening this week, and we can’t wait to share it with you. 

We began our week full of anticipation and excitement as we prepared for our Footsteps Concert. We were busy practising and getting ready for the concert, fine tuning our moves so that we could showcase these to our families on Thursday Night. It was one of our proudest highlights for the year and we are so thrilled to have shared this night with you all! We all did such a wonderful job and are so proud of the courage demonstrated to be able to get on stage and perform. The smiles amongst the audience and performers were collectively the biggest ones we’ve seen. Well done to everyone involved for all of their hard work!  Check out some of the photos from the evening below! 

On Wednesday, we celebrated National Science Week by engaging in numerous experiments. As scientists, we explored the scientific method, which involved documenting predictions and discoveries. As researchers, we mixed, stirred, poured, and measured all sorts of stuff to see what would happen. Some of us made slime, and looked at the reaction between glue and borax, and then enjoyed playing with the slime. We further investigated gravity and created helicopters, looking at the relationship between gravity and air resistance and how they work together to create a graceful, twirling miniature helicopter. Some of us made DIY snow out of shaving cream, water and bicarb soda, and we compared two different snow recipes to determine which was the best. We tested the textures to determine which was most like snow. Others created lava lamps with coloured water, oil and alka seltzer, investigating the exciting relationship between water and oil and how it does not mix. We thoroughly enjoyed exploring these different science experiments! A big thank you to all the parent helpers, Rita, Bianca, Tanya and Supriya, who volunteered their time to come and help us with our investigations, our amazing ESOs, Elena and Erika, and 1/2VS student teacher Eva, we couldn't have done it without you all! 

As mathematicians, we continued our investigations into measurement by exploring the concept of Area. As researchers, we went outside to find the area of shapes that we drew with chalk. We reconceptualised maths and used informal units of measurement to find the total area of shapes using ourselves as the informal unit! We further explored the use of the A=L x W formula to continue developing our understanding of area. 

Lastly, we celebrated National Bullying Prevention Week on Friday by dressing up as a ‘SuperHiro’. We learnt that Bully Zero uses HIRO as an Honesty, Integrity, Respect and Optimism acronym. We engaged in a parade at the end of our Whole School Prayer and spent the day engaging in different activities, examining the importance of preventing bullying. We identified what bullying is, what to do if it happens to us and who we can go to for help. As thinkers, we continued to look at the importance of being an upstander, speaking out when things aren’t going right and getting help from our trusted adults. We made connections by dressing up as a superhero to all the special ways we can do our part to stand up against bullying. Some of us even had time and opportunity to design our very own superhero that helped prevent bullying…some of our superpowers were being upstanders, being helpful and using kind words. Our superheroes were friendly, brave, kind, determined, strong and courageous.  It was such a fun day to be dressed up and fight against bullying together. 

This week is another busy week of Term 3, with Book Week celebrations commencing! Our Book Week Parade and Dress Up Day has changed and is now on Thursday, 24th of August. We will be holding our Book Week Parade in the morning in the hall, so please join us in the hall for this. We can’t wait to see everyone’s costumes! 

1/2 Team, 

Alycia Marsico, Vania Sparano and Vicky Karalis. 

YEAR 3/4

What an amazing and busy week!

Last week was Science Week and we started it with a bang!!

We were lucky to have Rhonda Spyrouin our Year 3/4 learning area sharing a food science experiment with us. This is where we tested how well sliced apples last in different liquids. We had a sample that was sliced apple on its own, we then had samples with Bicarb Soda mixed with water, lemon juice, water, vinegar and milk. 

We also had the opportunity to engage in a range of different experiments in the learning space, we had the opportunity to engage in creating Borax Slime, Marker Chromatography, Balloon and Baking Soda, Lava Lamp and Colour Changing Milk.

Over the week, children brought in experiments of their own to share with the classes. 

• Thank you Leon for sharing with us your lightening experiment with a balloon and spoon. 
• We also had the opportunity to speak to Darius about his egg and vinegar experiment. Darius soaked an egg in a jar of vinegar over 3 days, he then peeled the shell off of the egg and underneath was a bouncy egg! 
• Dianna shared an amazing explosive experiment where she mixed vinegar, food dye and bicarb soda. The explosion went up a paper towel roll with a smiley face, it was so funny watching it evolve! 
• Ava shared her ‘empty cup’ experiment, Ava filled a cup halfway with water and tied a tea towel over the top of the cup, when it was turned upside down the water stayed in the cup! 
• Zac also shared an amazing experiment, we watched a rainbow evolve from water, paper towel and markers.

We thank all the students for bringing in their amazing experiments into the Year 3/4 learning area, we really enjoyed listening and watching these experiments occur!

We had such a wonderful time at the Footsteps concert on Thursday night. We hope you had a wonderful time watching the children engage in their Egyptian themed dance, we enjoyed watching the crowd sing along to the “Walk Like an Egyptian”!

Year 3/4 Teachers

Belinda Panzarino & Bianka Zorzut

YEAR 5/6 

It was a jam packed week of fun in the SLA last week with our Footsteps School Concert, Superhero Day and testing out some science experiments. 

In Literacy, the students participated in various grammar lessons to work towards our class goal of proofreading and editing our writing for cohesion and structure. Throughout the week, the students learnt about where and how to use commas effectively in their writing and how to bump up their sentences from simple and compound to complex.  

In Numeracy, our mini architects are working hard on designing and constructing 3D models of a room. They have been exploring the various nets that create different 3D objects including prisms and pyramids. Each student is tasked with creating their own nets for the shapes they need to make, to create furniture for their room. We ask that students please bring in their own shoebox or box to create their room model in, by the end of the week. 

As Inquirers, our students are working towards beginning to film their short movies. Each group has completed a script that they will then convert into an interesting film! Our movie makers are exploring various camera angles and settings as well as organising their actors and actresses! We look forward to filming this week and then learning all about the editing process!

On Thursday, we put on our best caribbean costumes and our dancing shoes to put on a fantastic performance at the school concert. We are so proud of all our students for their positive attitudes and amazing moves on Thursday night. It was such a joy to see the weeks of practice come together and all the students so engaged and excited. Congratulations to all of the students for participating in our Footsteps program. 

On Friday we had a SUPER! day beginning with a visit from the Avengers at our Whole School Prayer. After lots of fun and laughter at our crazy superhero costumes, our students then participated in some science experiments to celebrate Science Week. We started by learning how salt causes ice to become even colder and how that can help to create Squishy Cream! (or ice cream). After that, we learnt all about base and acid elements and how they react with one another. We tested our scientific knowledge by observing the reaction of bicarbonate soda and vinegar. 

A reminder that on Thursday we have our Book Week Parade - we can't wait to see all our students dressed as their favourite book characters!

Have a fantastic week, 

Olivia Sargent, Aoife O’Flynn and Graham Troy.