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!
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