Around the classrooms

Poetry Week

Poetry Week will be celebrated at SKiPPS the week of March 21. All classrooms will be participating in poetry in a variety of fun and engaging ways.

“Poetry can provide comfort and boost mood during periods of stress, trauma and grief. Its powerful combination of words, metaphor and meter help us better express ourselves and make sense of the world and our place in it.” Richard Sima IAM Lab Communications Specialist  

If you would like to get involved at home, here are some suggestions of things to do.

• As a family, write a haiku a day (A short poem originally from Japan). It has three lines. It has five syllables in the first and third lines. It has seven syllables in the second line. A great way to discuss vocabulary choices and synonyms.

Our super school SKiPPS                                               

Celebrating poetry                                                           

Loving writing verse  

We love taking risks

Writing poems promotes word choice

Learning together

• Send your child to school with a poem in their pocket each day. The students will be encouraged to ask their friends if they have a poem to share.
• Send in any special poetry books that you may have at home that your child may like to share with their class.
• Write some of your favourite poems on the asphalt with chalk to share with the local community.
• Select a poem of choice and practice reciting it out loud – aim to try and recite without reading it.

• Act out a poem. Sing a poem. Find different ways of enjoying poetry!

It is fabulous to see students taking ownership of their new Classroom Libraries and being involved in the ‘sorting and classifying’ of books. There are plenty of new books on the way, don’t forget to share any favourites with me so I can add them to your classroom shelves.

As always, if you enjoy contacting books, then please let me know as I always have pile in waiting!

Jac

Play Leaders at SKiPPS

One of our key initiatives for improving student wellbeing at SKiPPS in 2023 is the Play Leaders program. 

WHAT IS THE PROCESS?

1/ Year 5/6 students completed applications to become a Play Leader.

2/ 30 students were selected.

3/ On Tuesday 28th February, students were taken through a full day of training. This included trialling almost all of the games on the games cards (see above) and then testing out their newly learnt skills on groups of Yr 1&2 students in the afternoon.

4/ Play Leaders will lead sessions twice a week, starting from next week (1 session = F-2 & 1 session 3-6).

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL STUDENTS WHO TOOK PART IN THE TRAINING.     THEY STEPPED OUT OF THEIR COMFORT ZONES, COLLABORATED EFFECTIVELY AND BOUGHT A POSITIVE ENERGY TO THE DAY.

“The people running the session were really nice and helpful and by the end I think everyone was doing a great job of working with younger kids because we’d learnt everything we needed to learn.” (Ella 5/6M)

“I definitely got better at working with younger kids, the training helped. They made the session exciting and used humour!” (Eve 5/6M)

Kitchen Garden program

This week 3/4PC had their first kitchen session and 3/4J had their first garden session of the year. This means that all of our classes have had an opportunity to take part in our new-look program.

The 3/4PC students, staff and parent helpers did a wonderful job of using our fresh garden produce to make silverbeet fritters, beetroot salad, flatbreads and poached rhubarb.

We even integrated some Italian language into the program when Elia taught us all how to correctly pronounce "buon apetito, piatto polito" (good appetite, clean plate).