On Friday morning we celebrated the end of Showcase with a mini Olympics session organised by our incredible Stage 3 teachers, Miss Jones and Mr Murray, facilitated by Stage 2 and 3 students (fabulous leaders in the making Stage 2!). Our students absolutely LOVED this experience!! It was such a great way to let off some steam and celebrate everything we have achieved so far this term. Thank you SO much to Gabi Jones and Jason Murray for sharing so many engaging resources and for organising such varied (imaginative) and athletic activities for the entire school.
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What an incredible week we've had! It was so exciting to finally arrive at performance week and thrilling to watch our beautiful students, who have worked so hard, singing and dancing in front of such a large and appreciative audience. I loved seeing students have the opportunity to challenge themselves and thrive in such creative ways. This term I have often been reminded of Ken Robinson's Ted Talk about the importance of creativity in schools. If you have a spare twenty minutes, please watch it https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en Thank you to all the parents who helped in so many ways... offering moral support, selling raffle tickets, sewing and stuffing octopi legs, designing costumes and generally answering any call for help with generous enthusiasm. I would particularly like to thank Karen Clark for sewing our stingray costumes, Sarah Long for designing and creating the Hollywood-ish, glamorous, shimmering and stylish curtain which you see as a backdrop on the stage. Lorna Heffernan, I don't know what I would have done without you, you conceptualised our stunning costumes, made many of them and calmed me down when things were getting stressful. A million thanks! And finally, hats off to our talented students! Thank you for working so hard to squeeze all our singing and dancing practise along with all our other learning. You are the best! And I love learning with you every day. These stunning photographs (except my dodgy few at the end in our Holding Room) are courtesy of amandanaylorphotography.com.au/ Writing Club combined with Book Week = Lots of Fun!!!
It was raining heavily as the morning bell rang last Friday so we all raced quickly into class and had to wait until Monday this week to share our awards. Congratulations to Sam for his well prepared Public Speaking presentation. I would like to additionally acknowledge Sam for recording a written interview with his Nonna, Roberta, as part of our History assessment - brilliant effort Sam! Thank you so much for bringing the past to life for our class! Your interview really helped us to understand that some things have changed while others have stayed the same.
Well done Keeley! You also presented an original and creative speech about your Secret Life as a Superhero and were a very worthy recipient of our Reading Award this week.... which Harry Potter are you up to??? This week we have adjusted the way we run maths groups so that we begin each maths lesson with whole class learning about a topic and then rotate through different activities so that each child has the chance to work with me in a small group as well as using independent activities to extend and consolidate their understanding. This week we have been learning about the features of three-dimensional objects, comparing them to two-dimensional shapes and identifying their features, including faces, edges and vertices.
This evening my belly is full of delicious homemade soup and my heart is overflowing having just arrived home from our inaugural Soup, Slippers and Stories night organised by our wonderful librarian, Mrs Murphy-Haste. Her idea was that during a time when our world seems fractious it is important to come together to share our stories (and keep oral storytelling alive).
I feel incredibly privileged to be part of such an amazing school community. I adored hearing stories of love, libraries, poetry, waiting, longing, joy, heartache, midsummer, winter, schooling, travel, homesickness, celebrations, history, work and family. When Mrs Murphy-Haste asked our students to reflect on the stories they had heard, a very keen and thoughtful listener said, "They are all very different". And yet, I couldn't help but feel they were also all the same. What a magical evening!! Thank you so much to the brave and humourous storytellers, respectful listeners, soup makers, AND Mrs Murphy-Haste. I can't wait for the next one! We had a fabulous day at http://www.schoolhousemuseum.org.au/ When we arrived back at school, we had a quick discussion about the things we loved most about the day. Below is the list the students came up with :-)
Using the ink quills and blotting paper Treasure hunt of old things Toasting bread in the fire Doing the puzzles Craft – weaving Using the stamps Looking in the old suitcases Everything! Marching and doing the ‘drill’ Experiencing school in the olden days Old toys Using the slates Being immersed in history! Writing Club was buzzing this morning with 28 enthusiastic authors from Kindergarten to Year 6. So many wonderful ideas, words and perspectives!! I am always so inspired to spend time with these enthusiastic students. As you may know, we have been creating imaginative texts inspired by the BOSTES Write On competition photo prompt https://writeon.bostes.nsw.edu.au/ I hope you enjoy reading some snippets (you can read the full stories at the next author's breakfast!) of what was written this morning. I will post samples by all our students over the coming weeks. This concept is challenging for our kindergarten students because it is quite abstract. They did such a wonderful job noticing so many different things and imagining what was happening to the children in the picture, or putting themselves in the picture. One of the things I love is the way that so many of these writing samples make you feel as though you are just at the beginning of the story. There is such a feeling of potential! The picture is very grey. The children are from different schools. The girl on the end is four years old. The children are going on an adventure. Amelie I jumped off the roof. It would have a pool. Under the pool there would be a house. Under the house there would be lava. Under the lava would be water. Tom I will walk on the wall. I’m one of the children. I like walking on the wall. I will bring a dog. They are in the olden days. They are wearing no shoes. They are happy. They are sad. Thomas I see children and they are on the wall. One of the children is holding a pole. There are seven children. Georgia I was on a wall. I was on a pink wall. I was on the wall with my family. It will be so much fun together. The people on the wall are girls and boys. I am five and I am having fun. Yay, yay, yay. We have a girl line and a boy line. They are next to each other. We all have gold here. The girls have blue dresses and the boys have green pants. I screamed and screamed because it was so much fun. I had a blue bow in my hair. I wonder what will come next? Chloe I see children on the wall. They are from NSW schools. Some of them have no shoes on. Maia Once, long ago, there were seven kids whose mother was in hospital and whose dad was at work. The seven kids were at their school and they were poor. They had no monkey bars and no equipment to play on, they only had a wall…… Wendy Once upon a time there were seven children who lived in a black and white world. There was no colour. One day, the oldest child, Sam said, “I’m sick of black and white, let’s go find some colour!” Ali Dear Diary, We have finally arrived in the new country down under. The journey from France was awful! I was sea sick, but not as bad as Father. We arrived here at 3.45pm. It’s so warm in Melbourne that I can’t believe it’s Winter! My little brother, Simon, thought we were going to England, so he was a little disappointed. When we dropped the anchor, the Captain yelled at the top of his lungs, “You will be in Quarantine for three months at the very least!” I looked at mother and father and they looked very worried…… William Hi, my name is Clancy. I am the youngest boy and I love maths! I want to go to school! Connor calls me weird but Lucy understands me, she is very kind and generous. I love my wall. I walk beside it, my fingertips just lightly touching it. It feels rough, but there is a space where it is smooth. This is where I like to sit and read…. Elliot We have been learning a lot about fractions over the last two weeks. So far, the most important thing we have learnt is that when you divide something into fractions - the parts have to be equal! We haven't talked about pizza (sharing a circle) so much since Sam returned from Italy last year!
We talk about the whole, halves and quarters. Some students noticed a pattern and experimented by dividing a whole into halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and continued to divide, share or think about following the pattern so that they imagined 32, 64, 128 equal parts! WOW! Keep up the amazing effort 1/2T! In Term 3 we are really enjoying our gymnastics sessions. We have already participated in so many activities and there are many more to come! |
Rebecca ThomsonI come to teaching later in life with all the enthusiasm and passion it takes to complete a degree while parenting and working part time. I was lucky enough to complete my internship with Skye Surrest on Stage 3 in 2013 and am now loving my third year teaching a Stage One class at Brookvale Public School. Brookvale is a very special school. The staff are amazing, incredibly dedicated, kind and supportive... But most of all, I love the students! 1/2T are such a wonderful class and I adore teaching and learning with them every single day! Blogs I follow
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January 2017
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Welcome to 1/2T
These pages will give you a glimpse of the learning experiences in our classroom.
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