Junior School News
Year 6 - Unit of Inquiry
In the Year 6, ‘Where We Are In Place and Time’ Unit of Inquiry, we are inquiring into the migrant experiences of individuals and their contribution to Australia. On Tuesday (20 October) Mrs Paula Grados (Year 5 Teacher) shared her experience of migrating with her family to Australia from Chile as an 8-year-old. Mrs Grados shared the reasons her family decided to migrate and how migrating impacted her cultural identity. The students loved hearing about her experience teaching in Chile. Mrs Grados talked with such passion about her Chilean heritage and how the Spanish language is central to her identity. The student’s curiosity was well and truly piqued evidenced by their insightful and thoughtful follow up questions. The students loved hearing about her experience teaching in Chile. It is wonderful to have teachers that are willing to share their own experiences to benefit the learning of the students in our Junior School.
Thank you Mrs Grados!
Miss Jennifer Wheeler, Year 6 Teacher
Children’s Book Week 2020 in the Junior School
This year Children’s Book Week was rescheduled from August to October but the later date did not mean that we were any less enthusiastic for this week-long event. Each day our Library was run by different book characters and the students and teachers alike enjoyed guessing who would be in the Library each day.
On Monday 19th October we kicked off with a ‘Curious Creatures, Wild Characters' Pictionary knock out, with the winners receiving a Yowie chocolate each, reflecting one of the shortlisted books, “Yahoo Creek”, by Tohby Riddle.
This year’s theme of “Curious Creatures, Wild Minds’ inspired many innovative and creative costumes for our annual Book Character Parade on Wednesday, 21 October, this time held virtually with parents watching on Microsoft Teams. Each class paraded around our Library with their teacher and aides, followed by a prize draw for a participating student from each class. The recording of the Junior School Book Character Parade 2020 will be uploaded to our St Gregory's YouTube channel and a link will be sent to Junior School parents and carers.
The remainder of the day was filled with curious activities and wild author events. Mrs Borg’s class even appeared on book shop ‘Better Read Than Dead’s’ Andy Griffiths author event question and answer session following their live author interview. Our students are huge fans of Andy’s Treehouse series, so this was a thrill for so many of them.
Our Book Week festivities concluded on Friday, 23 October with an author visit by author/illustrator Gus Gordon. Well known for his picture books, ‘Herman and Rosie’, ‘Somewhere else’, ‘Wendy’ and, most recently, ‘Finding Francois’, Gus has also illustrated many other books including Tristan Banck’s ‘Tom Weekly’ series and many of the ‘Boy’s Rule’ series.
Gus started the morning session with interactive ‘Writer’s Workshops’ at the Marian Centre in the Senior School. This provided lots of opportunities for our Years 3-6 students to learn more about the craft of writing and hear about Gus’ perspective on creating stories that are driven by strong animal characters. We even learnt a new word, “anthropomorphic” which is when human traits and characteristics are given to animals. This is a key feature in Gus’ writing.
Our Kindergarten, Year One and Year Two students were then visited by Gus in the Junior School Library. During this session, Gus talked about the process of creating a book and more about his illustrations. Aurora in Kindergarten said, “I learnt so much from Gus today. He showed us that reading is really fun and you can learn so much by reading”.
We are very fortunate to now have an original Gus Gordon illustration to frame for our Library. Gus has been to a different school each day this week and he told me that St Gregory’s was the best of them all!
Before departing, Gus kindly presented the prizes for our Book Week competitions:
Jelly Creatures Guessing Competition- Stephanie In 4 Maroon correctly guessed 146 snakes and frogs in the jar and is now probably munching on them!
K-2 Recycled Curious Creatures Sculpture - This was most difficult to judge and the Junior School Cleaners had a very tough time deciding on the most curious, inventive creature. The winner of this prize was Elyse B in K Blue for her completely recycled muffin eating Unicorn, and the Runner-Up was Arabella G for her spectacular scorpion-like monster.
Book Bento- We had over 30 entries across the school in our Book Bento competition. This required students to create a flat lay picture of a book, surrounded by objects that tell the story. All of the entries were incredibly well-thought out and beautifully executed, so our Teacher’s Aides also had quite a tough time judging these. In the end they decided on Harlyn in Year 3’s ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ as the winner and Addison in Year 2’s ‘Charlotte’s Web’ was the Runner Up.
3-6 Short Story Competition- Judged by our Writer’s Workshop Team (Mr Weekes, Mrs Ivancic, Brother Paul and Mrs Cosentino), the short stories that stood out were the winner, ‘The Monster in the desert’, by Michael Y in Year 5, and the runner up, Annie in Year 4’s ‘The Magical Cactus’.
Congratulations to all of these incredible entrants. Each student who entered our competitions will receive a Blue Award.
Gus also had the pleasure of awarding 4 Maroon with the Premier’s Reading Challenge Class Cup. Their pizza and pool party will follow late this Term.
Overall Book Week 2020 was once again a huge success for reading and the Junior School’s commitment to literacy. A huge thank you to all of the Junior School teachers and staff, to Mrs Husband for her unwavering enthusiasm and artistic skills and especially to all the parents, grandparents and carers who are just as excited as our students to read, create and inspire throughout Book Week and beyond.
Rachael Cosentino
Teacher Librarian/Literacy Specialist