Welcome back - Term Three
Welcome back to school for a new term!
We started the term with a fantastic performance by Yirra Yaakin, who told us the story of how djitty djitty brought karla to the land and how walitch the eagle got his bent beak. They also performed the story of how koorlbardi the magpie and wardong the crow got their black and white feathers.
The students have been learning to read and use the ‘oi' sound this week. As usual we had a range of activities engaging different learning styles, including movement, iPad activities, games and independent work. On Friday morning they used oil to create some translucent artworks.
Our shared text, 'The Very Noisy Bear' tied in with the sound of the week. We tried an innovation with toy farm animals to use elements of the shared text in creating a new story. We had some interesting innovations being told!
Another reading rotation was a booklet with pictures (no text) showing some possible beginnings, middles and endings of a story about two bears. The students could make up different stories and tell them to the others in their small group. As we will be writing narratives later in the term, the students will be getting lots of practice telling, sequencing and hearing stories.
In writing we have started looking at descriptions. We have been doing focussed writing rotations this term, developing some of the different skills needed to write a description in small groups. Before children can write, they need to have the words required for the task, understand what these words mean, and know how to put them together. So we have been talking, listening, tasting, looking and playing with words, learning to describe all sorts of different things. We added adjectives to a story to make it more interesting. We played a game with monsters, asking questions of the person who had secretly chosen one card to find out which one they had chosen.
The students played barrier games, where one student described an object and the others had to try to guess what it was.
We even tasted different fruits, engaging our senses and tuning into the different words we could use to describe the fruits. The very brave even tasted lemons!
In health we investigated how germs can be spread and why this is not a good thing! We investigated the way germs can spread form person to person with paint! Two students had blue paint and two others had yellow, while some students had none. After a short time of shaking hands to say hello with people in the class, the students looked at their hands. Most were now covered with yellow and blue paint - some hands were even green! They students took a print of their colourful hands and wrote about ways to stop germs from spreading. We also learned how to cough and sneeze to prevent the spread of germs.
In Maths we are learning about money. This week the focus has been on recognising and describing Australian coins. Some of the activities included rubbing over coins, gold coins with yellow and silver with grey; playing coin bingo; barrier games, with one child taking a coin, describing its size, shape, colour and image to partner; sorting Australian coins from foreign coins (they LOVED this activity!) and matching games (matching the picture of a coin with the correct words and symbols).
In HASS we have started to learn about how places change. We discussed the school and how it might have changed. Mrs Jones from the office very kindly took us around the school and told us about some of the ways our school has changed. Did you know the Year One classroom area used to be the whole school, and that the church services were held there? And the computer room used to be the library! We all learned some interesting things from Mrs Jones.
In art we have been busy celebrating NAIDOC week. We looked at images of hand art on cave walls and rock faces, and discuss how the hand is a symbol of belonging, and how the images were made (by spraying ‘paint’ onto the wall with the mouth, over a hand). The students made some artworks by flicking paint over a hand-shape they had cut out. We will keep these hands and use them for a whole school NAIDOC activity, which we have organised for this week.
We also washed some paper with dye, then sprinkled salt over it to create an interesting effect. This will be used during next week’s art lesson.
Have a restful weekend!