SPECIALIST SHOWCASE

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING & MATHEMATICS (STEM)

We’ve had an exciting start to our St Francis STEM program this year! Thanks to all the donations we received last year, we are nearly fully stocked for supplies! Here is a breakdown of this week’s activities for each level which were linked to the Inquiry topic of each level.

Prep: The Prep focus for Inquiry is about friendship and making friends. For this activity, we focused on Technology and Maths. After learning about coding with BeeBots as a whole class, the students were given a friend, a mat and a BeeBot. Their instructions were to guess the amount of “steps” the BeeBot would have to take to get to their friend and count the “steps” as it moved towards them while coding the Beebot. Some preps even challenged themselves and sat diagonally to their partner and had to code their BeeBot to make turns. They also made simple modifications to their known BeeBot coding to generate some different paths.

One/Two: See Year Two classroom clippings

Three/Four: Part of the Three/Four focus for Inquiry is the geography of Australia. For this activity, we focused on Science and Technology. After looking at the various geographical features of Australia (outback, forests, mountains etc) and students used their Chromebooks and the website: https://inkarnate.com/ to design Australia from scratch. The had to use the shape tools to make Australia, colour the different regions the appropriate hue and add geographical features like Uluru. They referenced concrete and pictorial models to facilitate their thinking. This will be an ongoing task as students will still need to add and label more landmarks, continuing colouring regions and add rivers.

Five/Six: Part of the Five/Six focus for Inquiry is desert plants. For this activity, we focused on Science and Engineering. After a discussion around the biology of a cactus, the students used cardboard to create a 3D cactus that could balance, was free-standing and used no sticky tape or glue. After learning about the slot attachment technique used in primary school engineering, the students got to work. The drew the design template of their cactus pieces, cut out, coloured and drew the features of a cactus before putting it together. The students investigated their thinking knowledge of cacti using visual models. This is an ongoing task but I have attached photos of the student’s progress so far.

DISCOVERY CENTRE

Welcome to the Discovery Centre for 2019.  Classes will visit weekly for a 30 minute lesson, with the Discovery Centre being open on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before school, at lunchtime (second half) and after school. Students are welcome to borrow at these times.

During lunchtime there is lots happening in the DC from quiet reading, the Lego Club, board games, drawing, and our very popular activity sessions - run by our Year 6 DC leaders. The DC leaders are already helping out before school and at lunchtimes and doing a wonderful job.  I am looking forward to a great year with - Joel V., Holly, Edith, Xavier, Tara and Angus.

We have started the year with two displays which are in deep contrast.  The first for the younger students a “Fairy” display, accompanied by a “Thriller” display for the older students.  

We our also continuing with our popular “Book of the Week” and this year have featured “Dog man : brawl of the wild” and “Mr. Bambuckle’s remarkables : on the lookout”.  The Dog man series, is in fact the most popular series in the DC, and the students love the graphic novel format. Mr. Bambuckle is also popular and this fourth book in the series follows the adventures of an eccentric school teacher and his class of interesting students.

I am looking forward to a great year, and it is a real privilege to be able to witness their development as readers.

Happy reading,

Mrs. Johnson