Book Club discussions have begun

We had our first lot of discussions today with our book club groups. We had to come up with a couple of fact questions (the answers will be straight in the text) and then come up with some discussion questions that made us think (the answer is in our head and not direcly stated in the book). If the answer was short it wasn't a good enough question. We had a sheet of question starters that helped us with our discussion questions. Some of us found this easy and many found it quite difficult. It's definitely a skill that we will be working on over this term! It was great to go around and listen to the discussions happening! 

Here we are:

Science and ice-cream

You may ask what science and ice-cream have to do with each other. Well today we found out! We had Miss Butcher help us investigate what happens when we cool milk. We had to make predictions about what would happen to the milk when we cooled it down with ice. There were a few different ideas about what would happen.

Then we got to put milk, sugar and vanilla essence in a ziplock bag. We filled another bag with ice and salt and then placed the first bag of milk inside the bag of ice. 

The fun part was mixing it all up. Our hands got very cold! The milk first became slushy and then became more solid, just like ice-cream. We actually got to eat it! Some of our ice-cream was delicious but some of the ice-cream tasted a little salty as we had not sealed our bag well.

The excitement of the investigation and then actually getting to eat the outcome was over the top. Those dazzling smiles were all around and the conversation about science and the change of substances was very intense. What fun we had!

ANZAC Assembly

It was difficult to explain to some of the eager sport fanatics that even though the sun was out sport was cancelled today. We had our ANZAC assembly which was wonderfully run by the year six leaders. Our two SRC representatives took the wreath that our class parent had decorated (thank you!) and laid it at the front of the assembly remembering to bow their head showing their respect to fallen soldiers. It was a solemn occassion and we al were on our best behaviour. We got to see Mr Rod Mason in his army uniform. He is a captain and army musician and he told us about his experiences of being a peace keeper in different countries. 

We got to listen to the band play, conducted by Mr Mason and also the senior choir sing, led by Mrs Nylund. They were both brilliant and you could really tell that they had put a lot of time and effort into their peformances!

After the assembly we had a writing lesson, recess, assembly and then a grammar lesson on 'adverbial phrases'. It sounds so tricky but isn't really! We practiced adding adverbial phrases to sentences in our grammar book.

After lunch we got to do some art! We painted amazing landscapes of poppy fields which is very fitting with ANZAC day being on Saturday and our ANZAC assembly being today. 

So although we missed out on sport because of wet, soggy fields we did get to do some painting which we always love!

Welcome back!

Welcome back to a new term. I can't believe that is is already Term 2! There is so much happening this term. We have our ANZAC ceremony at the end of the first week, then NAPLAN for our year threes followed shortly by our excursion to the Field of Mars. Winter sport will begin this term and homesport will be doing the Sports in School Australia (SISA) program on Fridays for homesport.

In science this term we are looking at a unit called 'Melting Moments'. Here is an overview of the unit:

Every day we see or use things that have been melted or frozen, heated or cooled. All around us are items that we find both useful and attractive that have been moulded into different shapes using heating and cooling. These can range from cast iron frying pans and plastic rubbish bins to chocolate bilbies. Understanding the properties of materials and how they change state under different conditions can help materials scientists to develop even more extraordinary products to help improve our quality of life.

We'll be carrying out some investigations and experiments this term to help us understand how heating and cooling change the properties of materials. I'm really looking forward to this!

Book Club began today. We chose our novels at the end of Term 1 so there were a few last minute changes this morning before everyone began reading. We are trying to build up our ability to read silently for at least 20 minutes. Some of us are already there and some of us are working on it! There'll be lots of reading, comprehension activities and 'book club' discussions where we'll get to share our understanding of the book with our peers over the course of this term.

We'll be writing stories and explanations this term and look forward to sharing some of these with you in the coming weeks. Our writing is improving all the time. We're learning to plan what we want to say before we write and then write fabulous work, revising and editing it at the end. Some of what we write we'll publish and some of it is just for us.

The last day of last term we received our letters from our Penpals and managed to reply over the course of the day. For the last day of term we were amazingly all present and very busy and still managed to finish the drafts and then write our letters ready to send. I sent those wonderful letters over the holidays and hopefully we'll get our next letters soon. This snail mail business is really exciting! We're doing lots of writing and it doesn't feel like work at all!

Number groups are all working hard and over the next few weeks the number teachers will have the opportunity to meet with parents to talk about how everyone is going. We're all working hard on strategies to help us with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing numbers and also working with fractions and problem solving. In class this term we'll be looking at the difference between perimeter and area, 2- and 3- dimensional shapes and continue to do a bit of time too. We looked at telling time last term and many of us found it very tricky. Many of us don't have the opportunity to use analog clocks and noone seems to wear watches anymore, so we need a lot of practice to really understand what the different hands mean. We're also working out what the two hands are trying to tell us as they move around the clock face.

Today during number groups my number group looked at the connection between multiplication and division using arrays. We used stickers to make the arrays and got to take home the left overs which was exciting.

For the next two weeks we'll have Miss Butcher (a practice teacher) teaching some of our lessons. She spent last term in and out of our classroom getting to know us, our class routine and a little about our school. She'll be back again later in the year to do some more with our class and we're really looking forward to having her.

This term we're really hoping that the wifi is complete and we can start using our iPads in our room to do research. We don't want to have to wait for library time or computer time to be able to research. We want to be able to do it as we're writing. The wifi will also mean that we can write a little more on our class blog. We love sharing our work! Today we had the chance to practice a NAPLAN maths test for year 3 and do a short maths assessment for year 4. Then we got to look at our slide shows from last term and make some adjustments to finish them off. I'm hoping to upload these to the blog over the next couple of weeks.

This morning I had a call from my parents to say that a tree had fallen through the roof of the house.  Thank goodness they're both safe as it fell straight over their bedroom. You can see from the photos below how enormous the tree is. It makes the house look really small!