Mad Monday

This morning we had a book club meeting where we had to mark each others' effort, completition of work, participation and neatness of work. It was great to see some of our groups complete their roles: discussion director (writes thoughtful questions to discuss), summariser (writes a summary of the part of the book that was read), word wizard (finds interesting words or words that they don't know the meaning of and finds the definitions of them for their group) and the literary luminary (they find an interesting passage in the book to share and explain why they chose it. eg. change of setting, funny, important plot development).

Others are slowly learning each of these roles and are developing the ability to listen and share their thoughts and opinions.

After maths group we continued with our pen pal letters which are almost finished. This is the third letter we have received from our pen pals and we are really starting to get to know who our friends are.

Graphing can occassionally be a little bit of a dry subject but since I bought some smarties to liven the lesson up with and made everyone graph their container of smarties there has been great enthusiasm in completing their column graphs.

This afternoon we will be writing a narrative that we will end up giving to our pen pals. We are going to start today and hopefully edit it. When we get to publish it we have little booklets I made for the stories to be written in. What a great way to share our fabulous story writing!

Adding dialogue to stories begins with a comic

Learning how to add dialogue to our stories begins with first being able to use dialogue with comics. We loved coming up with what the characters were saying! 

Drama and the Crossing

Leading up to the play today we did some 'reader's theatre'. This is where we 'read' from a script while performing and is much more accessible to everyone rather than just the 'peformers' in our class. They also learnt a bit about who crossed the Blue Mountains and why. History and drama at the same time!

NAPLAN is over!!

This week has been a busy one, with NAPLAN tests for year 3 and 5, and a change of place and routine for year 4. We are grateful that Friday will see us return to normal routine! We started the week with our amazing excursion to the Field of Mars EEC (Environmental Education Centre) followed by TWO tests for year 3 on Tuesday and then one each on Wednesday and Thursday. So a few days goverened by standardised tests, pencils, timers and small bubbles to be coloured in.

Year 4 from our class hung out with the rest of the year 4s from 4/5C in the library and computer room. There was maths, English and library research before having to go back to their classrooms. Today the year 4s from 3/4T and 4/5C visited the Life Education van together. They learnt lots from the lovely teacher in there and also had a visit from Healthy Harold who I heard was telling jokes!

The afternoons of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday saw us listen to some great multicultural public speaking competition speeches. We took turns being the time-keeper and ringing the bell to let everyone know when the speakers were at 2 minutes and then 3 minutes. After each speech we listened to Mrs Taylor give everyone who gave a speech two stars and a wish. That just means that everyone got feedback from me about two areas that they had done well in and one area that they could look at improving for next time. It meant everyone learnt a great deal about what is needed in a good speech and why.

Tomorrow will be the first training of the season for winter PSSA. The rain and mother's day breakfast meant that we haven't actually had a training session for any of the PSSA teams. I know that I'm looking forward to running through some skills and drills with the AFL PSSA teams tomorrow morning!

Next week we'll be looking forward to being back into our normal routine. Except for Monday, where all of stage 2 classes will be involved in a morning and middle session science experiment extravaganza! How exciting! I can't wait to look at how matter changes!

Field of Mars Excursion

What a wonderful day for an excursion. The sun was out and although it was a little windy the breeze was lovely. We started with our walk down to the Field of Mars Reserve and the Environment Education Centre (EEC) flanked by Mr Smyth at the front and myself at the back with our beautiful fluorescent vests.

Arriving at the EEC we were met by two teachers who took us through what we were doing today. It was so exciting to hear that we were going to be explorers/photographers with an iPad and would be taking photos of nature that we would turn into a book using the app, book creator. Straight away there were nods, hand grabs and glances as friends tried to plan who their partners would be. 

Before splitting into pairs we found out about different sorts of photographs and artistic rules that we were going to have to use when taking our photos. We needed to think about our subject when taking photos and where we were placing it in our photo. The themes we needed to think about when taking our photos were: ant's eye view, use of light, rule of thirds, leading lines, textures, macro, looking down into, looking up, colour, framed, pattern and contrast.

We were allowed to walk around the Field of Mars EEC with our partner to take photos that fit each of those themes. Some of us saw an eel, ibises and even a water dragon, but most of us took photos of flowers, lichen, trees, ferns, the river and moss. We took turns taking photos and helped each other take the perfect shot.

After lunch we came back in and played around with book creator to create our 'nature book'. We had to create a title page and then also chapter titles using the themes we were using to take our photos in the first place. We had to choose three photos for each theme and were allowed to edit the photos using the filters that were available.

Finally we had to choose our favourite photo which we had printed for us and framed. Wow! What an absolutely amazing day!

The Cross country was finally run!

Our cross-country finally happened and with beautiful, sunny skies that stayed like that for the whole day! 

We made the walk down with our buddies, holding their hands and guiding them all the way to Buffalo Park. It was lovely to hear the chatter as we walked down which I'm sure distracted many from noticing their tired little legs!

My job on the day was helping out on the finish line which meant I saw how much effort everyone put into their run, which was a lot! It was great cheering our class over the line!

Once all the races were done, the cake stall was empty and their energy spent we then made the very slow walk back to school. I think there will be many good sleepers after our day. 

We collapsed on the floor or at a table back at our classroom. Then after much discussion, watched a little of 'Nim's Island', which some of us are reading in book club to finish the day. 

WE HAVE WIFI!!!!!

We finally have Wifi!! I am so excited! It means that we will be able to start researching in the classroom with our school iPads. Instead of waiting for our computer time which we only get once a week, we will be able to book a time with the iPads when we need to do research and then log in to the DET school wifi and get onto the internet. I can't wait!! You can see one of the magic boxes in the photo below with its beautiful green flashing lights (only without them flashing!). 

BPPS Fete

Saturday came and the rain stopped long enough for us to have a wonderful time at the school fete! I managed to bring along two of my own munchkins and bumped into many of you around the school grounds. That 3/4T barrow of booze looked amazing! Thank you to all the great contributors of that as I'm sure we sold many tickets at our stall!

I saw our wonderful boys dance in the hall but unfortunately couldn't stay to see the girls as being attached to a three year old meant that my day was a little goverened by him. He enjoyed his bag of fizzers and managed to get blue fizzer stuck to everything! Sticky, but happy! 

We did buy a few books, went down and spent money at the side show alley and visited the amazing toy shop in the Bristol building. Wow! What a great setup! The balloon lady made us a cute pink penguin and a super red sword and kept my two smiling for the rest of the afternoon.

Although brief, the rains poured heavily which of course meant that I ended up buying a great BPPS golf umbrella. What a bargain! My husband said I should've bought two! It only added to the atmosphere and I'm sure many more people bought a coffee and an extra cake to enjoy undercover.

What a wonderful day Boronia! You've outdone yourself again!