Class News 

Foundation

Walk to ANZAC Gardens

This term the Junior School is learning about God’s creations and all living things. We are exploring how plants and animals grow and how we can be Stewards of Creation to help look after our environment. To begin our Inquiry and Religion units, we went for a walk to ANZAC Gardens where we used our senses to see, hear, smell and feel different plants and living things. We listened carefully to the birds in the trees and the leaves moving in the wind, we felt different trees, leaves and petals and we also saw how plants can be various colours, shapes and sizes.

Foundation, Year 1 & Year 2

STORY BOOK DAY @ STAR OF THE SEA

The students have loved working with the Star students and it was great to be able to celebrate last Friday and share the stories. The Foundation students were so excited all week and said Friday was the best day. 

These images indicate our strong connection with our big sisters and is an example of the great partnership between St James and Star of the Sea.

Year 6

Math - Measuring the school 

This term we have started a Smart Money budgeting project. Students are given 18 (imaginary) hectares of land they need to turn into a sustainable fun park with a budget of $1,000,000. To be able to visualize this we first took to the school to understand the perimeter and compare it to the land we have been given. We measured the school with a number of different methods such as a measuring wheel, very long measuring tape and pacing. We then compared with each other and noticed we all got a very similar answer. We realised how big 18 hectares is and how small our school is in comparison. We researched other parks within Australia such as Sea World is 25ha, Dream World is 85ha, Movie World is 168ha and Taronga Park Zoo is 21ha, to put in perspective. We then had to figure out the perimeter of our land on the map and put this on a scale. 

We worked out : 

16cm represents 360m so 1cm = 22.5m (360 ÷ 16) and 23cm represents 500m so 1cm = 22m (500 ÷ 23).

We then got to the planning of our sustainable park, with the budget of $1,000,000 in mind. We choose how many drink fountains, toilets, seats, car parks, playgrounds etc we need. Here we used our understanding of the size of the sustainable park and thought of Chadstone shopping center. We had to wheel and deal with our partner to choose each item within our budget (We also learned $1,000,000 can get spent pretty quickly). We look forward to continuing this project and learning more about budget and the value of a dollar. 

STEM MAD 

On Monday the 10th of October the Year 5/6s came together to share with the parents our STEM MAD projects. All of us have worked really hard on this project for the whole of term 3 leading into term 4 and we’re so excited to share them all with the parents.

In our projects we had to include the components of STEM MAD (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Make, A, Difference), the inquiry design thinking process and the Catholic Social Teachings. We also had to make sure that our project was realistic, helped our school community become more sustainable with the time that we had and our skills. With our projects we had to either fix a problem at our school or improve our school. We wrote speeches, shared presentations and shared more information on posters. We also wrote rubrics as a class to be marked off and to be sure we covered everything the assignment asked of us. Thank you to all the parents that came in and asked us questions. 

-Keeley C Year 6

Inquiry Galley Walk

After we held our STEM MAD expo it was finally time to get into our Term 4 Inquiry. We started this with provoking images, videos, scripture, picture story books and websites. We called this a gallery walk and used this learning opportunity to encourage students to ask questions on the topic and to guide our topic for term 4. Each student asked 3 questions about the topic and listed some things they already knew. Climate change, pollution, types of animal adaptation, Catholic social teachings and human/animal rights were some of the wonderings we will be exploring this term.