STEM 

This fortnight the Grade 3/4 students have been working hard to complete their Learning Tasks for their unit on Digital Technologies- Secret Messages and Codes. For this learning task, students had to pretend they were a spy on a secret mission and encode a message for a fellow spy (partner) to decode. Students had to include some specific information in their learning tasks in relation to their chosen mission, such as their codename, the type of mission and location. Students were instructed to choose a coding strategy that they had learnt about throughout the unit to help encode and decode their messages. Students chose from a range of coding strategies such as the backwards alphabet code, the shifted alphabet code, symbol code and number-letter code. It was great to see the students getting creative with their learning tasks and interacting with their peers to solve their secret messages. The Grade 3/4 students should all be proud of their work during the term so far- especially on their Learning Tasks.

This week, students had the opportunity to use secret ink made from bicarb soda and lemon juice to transfer their secret messages onto a piece of paper. To reveal their secret messages, students chose a partner to use heat from a hairdryer to reveal the secret ink and expose their messages. Students enjoyed this hands-on learning experience as a fun way to end the unit. Students should look forward to learning all about Solids and Liquids as part of the Chemical Science unit in the coming weeks. Well done Grade 3/4’s!