Curriculum Matters Again

News from the ICT LAB

The first few weeks of Semester 2 has seen a few changes in and around the ICT Lab. In addition to the regular Foundation, Level 1 - Level 4 ICT sessions the older students have been invited to visit during their lunchtimes for extra coding sessions in Coding Club.

Coding Club runs on Tuesdays and Fridays. It is for Levels 3-6. The students are learning the basic skills of coding and use both code blocks and Python programming languages. During Code Combat they have been programming their hero characters using Python language, to safely navigate a pathway to collect gems through a fictitious castle while trolls and other dangers threaten their hero. Some children have elected to use the blocks of code to create simple Minecraft or Star Wars games that have involved solving programming problems along the way.

Digital Media Club

This is only to the level 3 and 4 students every Thursday at lunchtimes. During this session the students are learning the basics of computer animation and have used Pivot Stick Animator to create short animated stick figure movies. It has been a lot of fun and the students have experimented widely discovering new tools and skills.

Foundation & Level 1 ICT session

Our youngest students have now all got an understanding of the keyboard and the corresponding letters. To reinforce their recognition and keyboarding skills they have been using a program called Tux Typing. Tux is a cute little penguin who gobbles up fish that fall from the sky or he zaps letter meteors to save the cities below.

Level 2 ICT sessions

The Level 2 students have amazed me with their problem solving skills. They have been introduced to Turtle Academy and Logo programming. They have used basic commands such as fd, rt, lt, cs, pu, pd, hide turtle and show turtle to draw an amazing array of figures.

Level 3 and 4 ICT

As a continuation from Semester 1 where Word and Excel were investigated, the Level 3 & 4 students have been discovering how they can use Publisher. They had lots of fun creating fictitious business cards and are now working on developing a calendar for the year using the many templates available in the program.

Heather Cook- ICT Teacher

!!! Premiers Reading Challenge !!!

There is only one month left of the Premiers Reading Challenge! We will be drawing the winner of our competition during our whole school assembly on the 10th September!

Students in Foundation to Level 2 need to read 30 books with a minimum of 20 from the PRC list and Level 3 to 6 students need to read 15 books with a minimum of 10 from the PRC list.

We have had a busy few days with the Book Fair… so many of the amazing books sold at the Book Fair are also on the Premiers Reading Challenge Booklist! Make sure that you are logging onto the PRC website and adding all of the fantastic books you’ve been reading!