Well, it wasn’t the usual start to the school year, however Year 3, Room 1 have wasted no time in organising themselves and their belongings. Everyone has started the year with a ‘Growth Mindset’ and written themselves a goal to work towards.
The students have also participated in a range of activities to get to know one another and their teacher. A couple of our favourite activities included, creating a ‘WANTED’ poster for a class mate, and ‘Get to know the teacher by only asking a yes or no question’!
Alongside the fun, the students have tackled all their learning goals to their absolute best. Immersing themselves in four square writing, discussing states of matter in science, and drawing crazy pictures using odd and even number concepts were amongst the many learning activities that we all enjoyed. We are all looking forward to a fabulous and fun learning journey!
This term, Room 10 have been working on a group Maths project. All of the groups had a 5-hectare piece of land for a zoo design. They had to fit stores, kiosks, animal enclosures and other buildings in the area. Some students found it easy while the others found it quite challenging. We also had to design a poster so it would be appealing to the eye with colours, pictures and drawings. We had to work in groups of up to four and all of us were committed and worked really well together. All the students seemed to enjoy the activity and all the posters turned out amazing! We are looking forward to presenting our Zoo designs next week.
Later on in that term, Room 10 participated in an incursion from Renata and Charmaine. We were told all about how the Indigenous Australians were treated throughout history. They did a blanket activity which taught us how many aboriginals died and what happened over time. All of Room 10 listened carefully and learned at least one thing about Aboriginal Culture and their history. Another exciting event was the Crepe Reward Day in French. As you can see they were a big hit! Thank you to Mrs Marinucci. Room 10 have been great this term!
Room 6 have been extremely busy making 3D Beast Shapes using 3D nets to design and build their Beasts. They have been exploring and connecting three-dimensional objects with their nets and other two-dimensional representations. Students have also been comparing and describing two dimensional shapes that result from combining and splitting common shapes.
Whilst we’ve been busy with Mathematics, we’ve have also been busy studying Biological Science, studying our Living Eggs, that are now rather lively and cute! Thanks to Living Eggs, WA, room 6, along with room 5 have been looking at the life cycle of chickens and how they develop. On October, 22nd, 2020, we hatched 3 rather cute chicks and have been observing them grow and learning just how dependent they are on us. Students in room 6 have completed their Information reports on Living Eggs and will be completing a Procedure document on how to look after poultry from fertilised eggs through to adult chickens. We are having so much fun looking after our 3 little characters, affectionately called, Fluff Butt, Nugget and Schnitzel. They have become a large part of the Room 6 North Perth Primary School Family.
Still on the egg theme, we have been enjoying our STEM project, The Great Egg Drop. The students in room 6 had to design and build a vessel that would hold an egg securely and protect it from breaking. Once their vessels had been built, the students then tested their design by dropping them from 1 metre, then 2 metres and finally from the veranda on the oval, approximately 3.5 metres. Nearly all the vessels worked from 3.5 metres and all vessels protected their eggs from the lower heights. This activity also gave the students the opportunity to work collaboratively with partners or in small groups.
This has been a very busy term in room 6 and the students have worked extremely hard, so now we busy getting ready for NPPS Night of Celebration!
In Week 2 of Term 4 we celebrated Book Week with the theme Curious Creatures, Wild Minds. The children in Room 13 enjoyed coming to school in their favourite book costumes and there were some amazing, creative ideas to see.
To celebrate the occasion, we met with our Year 4/5 buddy class and enjoyed sharing stories together in the library. The year 1 students were able to show their older buddies their favourite books and their older buddies read stories to them. They also all participated in a Scavenger Hunt around the library to find various texts. There was great excitement as they scoured the library for books about Science, chapter books, books in different languages and a variety of other topics.
Book Week provides a valuable opportunity for the students to appreciate all the beautiful books we have around us and all the different genres we enjoy reading.
Last term, the Pre-primaries in Room 20 were busy getting ready for the day when they found a little Beebot named Benji in the classroom. He had somehow made his way into our small world tray and was spotted hiding under some leaves! We later read a narrative about a fun yet risky playground adventure Benji and his brother, Bertie, had been on at North Perth Primary. The students learnt to orally retell the narrative, The Playground Adventure, and enjoyed coming up with some actions to help them retell the story. They have since innovated the original story with their own ideas and did a marvellous job!
As the students explored the text, they also participated in a variety of other learning experiences to extend their learning. They developed their coding skills by learning how to control the Beebots. They listened and responded to numerous poems about minibeasts. They also engaged with the design process by designing a minibeast to create with salt dough.
Term 3 has proved to be fun and exciting. Some other highlights have been attending swimming lessons, participating in our Drama Stars and protective behaviours incursions and joining in the Early Childhood sports day! We hope you enjoy taking a look through the pictures below to see some snapshots of Term 3 in Room 20.
Do you want a magnificent suit or the best new sparkly crown money can
buy? Well, you need to visit the Year 2s in Room15. During Term 3, they have
been busy writing persuasive texts about the wonderful products they can
make for an emperor.
After reading the narrative, The Emperor’s New Clothes, the students learnt
and orally retold a persuasive text called ‘Buy My Spectacular Suit’. They had
lots of fun coming up with actions to help with the retell.
As they learnt the text, the students explored the persuasive devices writers
use to persuade including modality verbs and emotive words. Here are some
of the emotive words the students brainstormed:
Our focus book for this term is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. As part of our hook for the book, the children ‘discovered’ some caterpillar eggs left in our classroom (real silkworm eggs).
We have been watching them closely, and just as this goes to print, the eggs have begun to hatch. We are now parenting baby silkworms! Baby silkworms eat only mulberry leaves and plenty of them as they grow.
In addition to this we have also started using the BeeBots. These are robots that help us learn some basic coding skills. Luckily, we don’t need to feed these little guys too!
In the last two weeks of Term 2, students in Room 14 explored the process of designing and producing a product that meets the needs or wants of the community as part of the Design and Technology learning area.
As a class, we discussed how shops need to provide products that customers want or need to buy. In small groups of three to four students they had to decide on a product they could make to ‘sell’ to their classmates using the given materials. Once this was agreed upon they then drew and designed what their product would look like and described the purpose of it. The students then had to have a go at making a prototype. They then got feedback and had to decide on any changes their product needed. Once this process was completed, their group then produced between four and six of their chosen stall items. The next task was to design and make advertising and signage for their stall. Students set up their stalls and took it in turns to run the stall and shop at the stalls using pretend money. They then reflected on the success of their store.
It was a wonderful morning and there was such an exciting buzz in the air as students participated in this rich learning experience. There were wonderful products produced such as, fidget spinners, photo frames, friendship bracelets, knitted fridge magnets and lots more.
We have had a fun-filled Term 2 in Room 18 with an integrated theme of Australia and Australian animals based around a book called Can You See Me? by Sue Briggs, Bev Harvey and Bronwyn Houston and NAIDOC week earlier in the term.
The Kindy children have made lots of amazing artwork that parents have missed out on seeing with restrictions in place. They have learnt many different art techniques. They have made air-dry clay echidnas, step by step drawings of possums (from Midnight Possum by Sally Morgan), observational still life drawings of a banksia (these were fantastic!), wattle art using different mediums, dot paintings and Aboriginal flags using stampers to name only a few! They have had sensory experiences with gum nuts, seed pods, wood and bark, played barrier games using an Aboriginal themed background and played in our camping dramatic play area that included a campfire and Australian animal puppets.
In Term 2, the Year 1 and 2 classes began to explore Information Reports, and in Week 6 they were ready to begin a Talk 4 Writing Unit exploring how to write an information reports about animals. Quite, coincidentally Perth Zoo decided, that with the Zoos recent lack of visitors, they needed to allow the animals some mental stimulation. Over the long weekend, they asked permission to bring a Panda on a tour of North Perth Primary School. We of course welcomed the Panda to our beautiful school.
The Panda had an extensive tour of the school, visiting a range of classrooms, going up to the office, and searching the Secret Playground for bamboo. The Zoo Keepers have informed us that while the Panda thoroughly enjoyed the outing, it was disappointed by our woeful lack of bamboo shoots on the school grounds.
Over the rest of the term, students in Year 1 and 2, are going to analyse the features of an information report, using one that was provided to us about the Panda Bear. We will then use this knowledge to innovate our own Information Reports about an animal of our choice.
I know I can’t wait to see what creative ideas the children come up with.
