The Sunroom 8s & 9s
Finally we are back in the Sunroom, and we are not sure which is brighter, the children's smiles or the sun streaming into our classroom. Either way, it is certainly a joyous feeling to be back together in the Sunroom.
Dance
This term the children have been highly engaged in their weekly creative dance class with Suzanne Russo from Kervette. Suzanne uses props as visual and sensory aids to enhance the children’s experience and lead them into imaginative worlds. The children have the opportunity to experiment with individual and group design with the use of props, different textures, colours, shapes and patterns during their movement improvisations. A variety of music is used including orchestral, classical, folk and world music as inspiration for the rhythm and beat that shapes the movement.
Maths - Shape and Space through box builds and optical illusions.
Through the exploration of drawn optical illusions, the children explored the mathematical elements of parallel line and length, perpendicular lines and angles.
The group made models of three-dimensional objects in order to develop their understanding of key features such as edges, faces, apex and vertices. We eventually set about designing a geometrical net that accommodated a classroom object. There was much to be discovered and developed through this project. The children considered questions through their explorations such as: Will these edges match up? Is that face the right size? Where do the tabs go? Is that face regular? Are the edges parallel? Perpendicular? How do you make it perpendicular?
Literacy
Newspaper reports have been a key feature of our literacy program over the past few weeks. Children have experimented with using a reporter's voice to structure a short news story. We watched a short film titled, ‘Snack Attack’, which featured an old lady and a young punk. The children then wrote a news headline and short report detailing the events that took place. Some headlines included, ‘Granny Caught Robbing precious Cookies’, ‘Granny Steals Mr Jeffries' Cookies’, ‘Punks Act of Kindness’, ‘Old Lady charged for Cookie Theft’, ‘Angry Granny Goes on Strike at Train Station’,
The retelling of stories has continued through the writing of ‘Fractured Fairy Tales’, where the students have had the opportunity to reimagine a well-known fairy tale into something just a little different. Some titles of the stories include, ‘Cinderella and the Apple Store’, ‘The Tortoise and the Fair’, ‘Peter Man’, ‘The Princess and the Pond’, ‘Little Red Lying Hood’ and Rumplebuttskin’.
Transdisciplinary Inquiry - Our Unit of Inquiry this term is: Systems, spaces and technologies are developed to support and meet the needs of civilisations. This is an inquiry into: the aspects of past civilisations that have remained; and how modern societies continue to adapt. The Sunroom children have enjoyed the collaborative nature of the learning tasks and are currently exploring a number of different ancient civilisations to enhance their understanding of how people lived, worked and were governed. The children are currently using Canva to create digital travel brochures for their chosen civilization.
WWF Fundraiser
Pre COVID, Eloise had been planning a fundraiser. Now that we are on the other side (so to speak), Eloise picked up where she left off, acting on her sense of compassion by organising a fundraiser to support the injured animals from last season’s bushfires.
The gigantic jar of jelly beans captured everyone’s attention...and expert guessers.
Eloise was very organised, creating promotional material, a spreadsheet for the many guesses to be had and a daily pop up stall for the hoards to cast their guesses.
Hard to believe but Rupert and Eddy had the same closest guess and so a tie break was called for. Eloise had this covered and so Rupert and Eddy had to guess what fraction of the beans were red. Both decided to hedge their bets and agreed to split the prize no matter whose guess was closest.
When there are 1196 jelly beans in a jar, who wouldn’t?!
Michael Price and Sophie Dall'Ava
8s & 9s classroom teachers
sophia.dall'ava@preshil.vic.edu.au michael.price@preshil.vic.edu.au