Fabulous Friday

Katija: I had a good day today. My favourite bit was when we went to the computer room. I wrote a story about Hop the easter bunny. We did science and had to do a survey about four trees. We had to take photos of them with an iPad.

Madison: I had a very good day. It was the best day at this school. My favourite bit was when my class went in the computer room and published some of our stories. 

Charlie: Today I had to do a survey about trees in our school to find the gum trees. We then had to take photos of them using an iPad to find evidence of insects and animals. I really enjoyed publishing my story on the computer. I liked having 'Taylor Time' this afternoon where we got to play with photo booth on the iPads and do drawing.

Working hard

We've been working hard this week and have settled back into school and our normal routines. The week began with us catching up with our shotput which we weren't able to finish last week because of the rain. The afternoon then had us enjoying our first gymnastics lesson which everyone loved. The equipment was great and we worked hard at the different skills we were practicing. I watched everyone's trampoline jumps and their landings. We had smiles all round while performing skills on the different equipment.

We continued with our HSIE unit, 'People and their Beliefs' and came up with some questions we have about different cultures and religions. Liam asked why we don't just have one religion. Much deep thinking went into the questions that we ended up with and that we'll answer over the term.

Our science unit, 'Among the Gumtrees' begun with us first singing along to 'Among the gumtrees' and 'Kookaburra sings in an old gum tree'. We then spoke about what a 'survey' is, as we will be doing our own survey tomorrow. We thought about the surveys we have done and the surveys our families have taken part in. Surveys have questions that need answering. The answers or data is then put together to learn something. We will be doing a survey on trees in our school on Friday. The purpose of our survey is to identify which trees are gum trees and which are not. We will also be looking at what sort of animals and insects we might find on gum trees. We spoke about the 'evidence' that we might see that will tell us that animals or insects live there. We thought about what sort of evidence we might see and came up with a long list of: droppings, eaten leaves, bird and ant nests, spider webs and scratchings on bark. Tomorrow we will be taking photos of our findings and then analyse the data from our surveys too. We will be little scientists this Friday!

A visit to the library had us choosing our novel for this term. We had a look at novels that interested us and then checked them with me before getting Mrs Paull to scan them out. We have begun to read them already and will be practicing some of the comprehension skills we learnt in term 1 and 2. That will be making predictions about what will happen next, making connections with the text, summarising sections of our novel, visualising parts of our novel through drawings, monitoring our understanding of the vocabulary and language used in the novel and asking questions. We will be learning about 'author's craft' as a class. This means learning to critically view and respond to a novel by looking into the author's mind and trying to understand the workings and intentions of the author. It will also help us as writers ourselves!

During writing lessons we have been learning about information reports, what they are and where we find them. We know that they are informative writing and are filled with facts. So we have begun researching an animal to find our own facts online. We will then write that information into our own words which should end up as our first information reports. 

We're learning about visual literacy this term and have already been learning words like, 'vector' and 'salience' and how the artists that draw and paint the images in our picture books do so with meaning. We are going to learn how to 'read' pictures. We already read pictures all the time. Everytime we see a sign that doesn't use words but rather symbols we are reading pictures. It is known as environmental print. We brainstormed the sorts of signs we read everyday and came up with this list: no smoking, watch out for children, falling rocks, hospital or first-aid crosses, poison, emojis, handicapped parking and of course the golden arches. We will continue to learn many new terms to help us read images this term.

Our buddy time this week involved using air dry clay to create 3 dimensional insects. We had looked at information books about insects with our buddies last term and then drew the insect that we were the most interested in. Working with the clay was tiring for our small hands. We had to knead the clay to make it pliable and then work quickly with our buddies to create our insects. They will dry over the weekend and next week we will paint them. It has been a great way to get to know our buddy and we've really had fun at the same time.

Wow! We really are working hard at our learning!

Welcome back to Term 3!

The week has been pretty good. We have done shotput and discus. We have done some writing of what we did in the holidays too. We did some sizzling starts and one person from each table had to read their work out loud to the class. Everybody on my table was too embarrassed to read their stories out loud so we did '21 is in' and luckily I didn't have to read out to the class.  

Millie

As you can see from Millie we had a very busy first week back for Term 3. We began the term by changing the seating arrangement as we do at the beginning of every term. We also changed the layout of our tables as well. Our class jobs were given a cull so that there are less jobs and more responsibilities per job. We had the chance to verbally share what we did during our holidays in small groups and also listen to our friends share what they did. We then wrote a personal recount about our holidays and some of us shared these with the class. 

We began our HSIE unit, 'People and Their Beliefs' and found out what everybody knew about beliefs and cultures. We all had a chance to share and have our comment typed up onto the Smart Board with our names. The next thing we are going to do is think about what we want to find out about beliefs and cultures around the world. As part of our homework this term we will be doing a project on a country and its major religion. All the information for this will come home on Monday. We also had maths groups and worked hard on our strategies with the four operations. 

Our assembly has been changed to Thursdays after lunch. This will take a little getting used to! I know I needed reminding on Thursday morning that we had an assembly that afternoon! 3/4T were very good about remembering that we had an assembly and were all lined up on Thursday straight after lunch. Well done 3/4T!

During computer lessons we all learned how to use our collaborative OneNote file for our class where we all get to use the same document at the same time. It means that we can research during library time in small groups and add information to our groups page within OneNote and all be typing at our own computer BUT all get to see each other's work at the same time. Wow! Technology really helps us collaborate with our classmates so easily!

We wrote stories this week remembering all of the strategies that we had learnt last term. We had to ban the boring bits by making sure that we started from an exciting part to help draw the reader in. That is why we begin our stories with 'sizzling starters'. We also had to have some complications in our stories and we think of these as pebbles, bricks and boulders. The smallest problem in our story is a pebble problem. We then have a slightly larger complication which is our brick problem and then we go onto the huge complication in our story which is the boulder problem. It helps to make sure that we have an interesting story. We also have to include a conversation in our stories between two characters  and then make sure that we have used some descriptive vocabulary and figurative language in our work. Wow! So much is expected of us. We have come a long way with our writing this year. We can't wait to share some of our fabulous stories with you all.

We made minions with Mrs Stephens and all got to joke about Bob and his 'b-a-n-a-n-a'. The minions are displayed on the bulletin board in the office. It says, 'A minion reasons to love 3/4T'. Go and check it out!

It was such a short week! We did manage to do our discus just before it began to rain thanks to Sam. We all had some practice before we did our proper throws with the discus. We have some talented sportspeople in our class. We will have to wait until next Monday to do our shotput! A pity that PSSA got rained out again. Hopefully this coming week will be better weather wise. 

Video Conference Number Two

This morning we had a follow up with Mrs Donaldson, 4P and Bungendore PS through video conferencing. We had looked at their school through google maps and street view and could see that their school grounds were much bigger than ours. We then came up with 10 questions we asked them today. No technical glitches today and we even managed to get the zoom on the camera working. Yay!

Here are the 10 questions we asked them:

We found out that half of their class had horses in their back yards. Many of them live on big properties. One of them lives on 12 000 acres and has hundreds of cows and sheep. Half of the class catches a bus to school and the other half get to school by car. Only a few students walk to school because many of them live quite far away from school.

They were suprised that we have double story buildings at our school and wanted to know what it was like to be on the second storey of the building. While we were having our VC a message came through the loud speaker in the room we were in about the dances leaving for the North Sydney dance festival. 4P wanted to know what the sound was as they don't have any sort of intercomm at their school and only get messages on a piece of paper once a day. It is brought around by some students.

They also have three composite classes at their school which is the same as us. We were so excited about all the questions and answers that we asked and listened to that we ran out of time before we finished asking our questions. I've sent the remaining questions to Mrs Donaldson and she will try and answer them for us. We will have another VC next term and at the end of next term we are going to share the video that we make about our schools!

Video Conferencing with Mrs Donaldson

We've not only created great friends with our pen pals this year through letter writing, but we've also managed to find another school to develop a great relationship with too! On Thursday we will be having our second video conference (VC) session with them using the television and camera in Miss Hristofski's room. It's just like skyping with family!

After our last VC session we had to come up with 10 questions to ask the 3/4 class at Bungendore Primary School. We had to think about the difference between thin and thick questions just like in reading groups! Here are our fabulous questions:

1. We all either walk to school or go by car. How do you get to school? Why did you choose that way to get to school?

2. We have dogs, cats, fish, sea snails, guinea pigs, a hermit crab, one turtle, three chickens, ducks and a lizard as pets at our homes. What sort of pets do you have?

3. Half of our class have ridden a horse, but none of us have horses as pets. Does anyone have a horse or have they ridden on a horse?

4. We have three composite classes at our school. One is a kindergarten and a year one class, we have a year three and four class (that is us) and lastly we have year four and year five class. Do you have composite classes at your school? How many and what are they?

5. We have a small vegetable garden at our school. Do you grow any vegetables or have animals at your school? What sort of things do you grow and where?

6. Do you have any playground equipment and do you have to share it with Kindergarten, year one and year two or is it just for years three to six to use? What is the best thing to play at recess and lunch and why?

7. Our year fours are going on a two night camp in September. Do any of the students at your school go on camps? Where do you go and why?

8. We have 16 iPads at our school for 460 students. We also only just had WiFi connected this term so our iPads are not ready to use yet. What sort of apps do you like to use on your iPads and why? How many iPads does your school have?

9. Have any of the students in your class received their pen licence yet? What do they look like? How do you get your pen licence?

10. We looked at your school through google maps and street view and can see that your playground seems really big in comparison to our school. How many different playgrounds do you have at your school and what do you use them for?

Semester One memories

Amelia:

I have really enjoyed the first semester at school but I am really sad that Emma, my friend is leaving the school. The whole class is thinking of something nice to do for Emma before she leaves. The whole class has enjoyed writing to our pen pals. We have probably written about three letters but since I've been away they have probably done four. But we can't wait for the holidays! 

Charlie:

I realy liked when we made the ice-cream and I can now make it for my family. Another thing I liked is when we got to do the video conference and we tried to guess the other school's name. I've really liked PSSA A.F.L, although the juniors haven't won a game yet. We have only got four more days to go until the holidays.

Caillie:

I really enjoyed the first semester at school. When Miss Butcher came we made ice-cream! It was delicious! I've also enjoyed SISA. I like writting to our pen pals and receiving their letters too. I'm really sad Emma is leaving. But I can't wait for the holidays either!!!

Lucas: 

I've really liked when we did the experiment with milk and vinegar and it turned into plastic. I've loved everything this year, mostly Mrs Taylor. I'm really exited about the holidays but I'll miss everybody. Bye Emma!

Lucas out.

Millie:

This year has been a really good year and I really liked the ice cream experiment. I also really liked theexperiment where we made the plasticine stuff with Mrs Taylor. This year has been the best year ever! The only bad thing about this year is that EMMA IS LEAVING ); I am so sad! I wish that she wasn't leaving! At least she hasn't left yet because if she is going to leave today I am going to die. So it is a good thing that she isn't leaving today.

Emma:

This year I have really enjoyed our class. I will miss my lovely 3/4T class because they have always been there for me! I think that all of us have enjoyed our pen pal letters. They were so much fun! I really liked doing the ice cream experiment with Miss Butcher. I like my peer support group and Josie and Pascale my peer support leaders. I like art with Mrs Stephens. I like maths groups with Mrs Smith and Mrs Johnson and maths with Mrs Taylor in class. I'm really going to miss our school and all my friends and teachers.

Are you north of Macquarie Park?

Last week I made a connection with a lovely librarian, Mrs Donaldson, from a school near Canberra. After chatting, we decided that we'd let our classes meet and ask each other questions to work out where we are both from. 

This morning after assembly we took some atlases and with a partner came up with some great questions to ask the other class, to work out where the other school was from.

It took a few minutes to dial up the other school via our video conferencing equipment. Technology of course, always likes to work in its own time when we're in a hurry. We kept the other school waiting for a good 10 minutes while getting the equipment to work. Luckily our persistence paid off and the video conference, once up and happening, went off without a hitch!

Firstly, I spoke to both classes about what we were doing. I let them know that it was important to be still and quiet during the video conference unless we were asking a question. This was so we didn't distract each other while trying to listen to each other. Then we took turns asking questions. The rule was one 'yes' or 'no' question per class. It probably took us about 15 questions to work out where they were from and not long after that to work out where we were. 

We had atlases in front of us, but once we had worked out the area we were focusing on we changed to 'google maps'. This gave us the opportunity to zoom into the map and see the area close up. 

Now that we've met each other and have worked out what schools we attend, we are going to come up with 10 questions for each other. We also have to create a presentation of our school that we can share. I can't wait!

Here are some photos of today: