News from SLC

In Maths, the students have been calculating elapsed time which has many different strategies, including a T-Chart, a N or Z Chart and a Number line. In SLC, we have been learning about how to use these different strategies to calculate elapsed time problems.

Here are 3 examples of the types of problems we are dealing with: 

1. Edward needed 25 minutes to bake cookies and 50 minutes to bake brownies. If he began baking at 7:30 a.m. when would he finish?  2. Christina spent 35 minutes writing in her journal. If she finished writing at 8:15 a.m. when did she start? 3. Halena worked on a project after school. She worked from 6:00 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. How long did she work? 

Using a number line you can figure these problems out, for example take question 3. Firstly you draw a number line and put all the information the problem gives you. We like to make our calculations easy so we jump forward by an hour at a time, as shown in the diagrams. Then we jump a small amount that we are okay with to calculate, that being 30 minutes and lastly we can make a small 15 minute jump at the end for easy calculation or you can do a 10 minute jump and then a 5 minute jump if that is easier. To calculate the elapsed time all you have to do now is add up all the jumps and you will get your answer. Which in this case is 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Have you ever wanted to know about an arctic fox, an axolotl or snow leopards? SLC can help with that by showing you our amazing informative texts that we have been making for the younger grades of the school. 

Our guide was to use simple language but still make it as exciting as possible. We wanted to hook our readers in with a sizzling start and then show how well we researched our topic with our 3 facts sections. Of course we had to end it with an impact in our conclusion. 

We also had to make a physical copy of our informative text so that the students of St Bridget’s can physically read our amazing writing. Some of the students have made little booklets and some have made books, even some funny shaped books. This informative text was selected by the students and based on what they are passionate about. In Term 4, when we come back to school, we might have a gallery of these books in the Library if you wish to have a read.

The creativity has been pouring out of us in SLC at the moment, during Literature Circle activities there is a role called the Creator where the students create a scene from a passage they have read in a creative way.

We have had some wonderful drawings, paintings and even some origami. These look amazing and are getting better every week.

The Creator also has to tell us about the scene, why they chose to create their artwork and why they chose to create it in the way they did. These are discussed every Thursday during our Literature Circles with the other students who are reading the same text but who have different roles. During these Literature Circles I have been so impressed with the discussion the students have had. The students are starting to become more independent by not relying on me as much as their teacher and are diving into the literature by having intellectual conversations, and analysing and interpreting the literature.

Lately to relax and get in a positive mindset, we have been doing guided meditation daily. This is where we sit in a quiet and comfortable place and we listen to guided meditation. These meditations try to bring up positive emotions through reflection and prompts. We also control our breathing which helps us to control our emotions and make them more positive. Even through the hard situation we are in right now, this has helped our class be more positive. The positivity of SLC during this time has been unreal. There are so many smiles and kind words being said to each other. SLC has certainly felt the positivity from our community and we want to keep sending this throughout our whole school.

Kind regards,

Mr Jack Cirillo

SLC Classroom Teacher