Egg dropping fun!

The egg-drop has been one of our highlights this year! The design process made us think about which materials to use and how to keep the egg safe. We had a couple of practice runs of throwing our packages off the balcony and seeing how they faired. Poor Mr Lau didn't know what was going on! He thought we were throwing rubbish over the balcony. 

The egg-drop intrigued year one so much we ended up with Mr Lau and his class as spectators. What fun we had! Having a whole class ooh and aah over every drop really added to the occasion. 

Watch us below:

Packaging Experiment

Amelia

Today we did some science experiments. We had to drop a can of baked beans on to a protected biscuit. Then we had to record the changes it made when we dropped the can on to the biscuit. The types of packaging we were using were bubble wrap, air bags and paper. Everyone thought bubble wrap would be effective but it actually wasn't. We were so suprised that we got most cracks from the bubble wrap. After that we handed in our work and got to eat the biscuit it was very yummy.

Jade

Before we dropped the baked beans we had to hold a ruler on top of the packaging. We had to measure 10,15, 20 and 25 centimetres and drop it from that height. The reason why we did this is to get prepared for the egg drop. We had to see which materials are best at protecting the biscuit or egg. After we dropped the can we had to record the cracks, crumbs and splits on the biscuit and where they occured. We had to work with partners and of course I went with my BFF, Amelia and afterwards I wanted to eat the can of beans. 

Welcome back!!

I can't believe that we're about to head into week 3 of term 4! Where has the year gone? We've been very busy already and really have hit the ground running!!

Unfortunately I wasn't at school on Monday (thanks to Hamish having a nasty stomach bug) to be part of the SISA social skills program but heard it was a great success and lots of fun too! Everyone got to work together and learn to cooperate with one another while learning to play some really cool games. The best part was that year three got to hang out with the rest of year three and the year fours got to hang out with the rest of year four. What a great opportunity for everyone in each year to hang out with their friends from other classes!

In class we have begun to look at writing procedures. Today we were lucky enough to be sent some iBooks to read from a class at North Ryde primary. They had written procedures on how to make origami after their class had read the book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. They had turned their procedures into digital books which included short videos that helped with the steps. After watching/reading one we made some paper cranes. Unfortunately we don't get to keep them as I have promised that we'll give the class the origami that we make so that they can see how effective their procedures were. You can see the three books we were sent via the itunes links below.

How to Fold an Origami Dove

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-fold-an-origami-dove/id1046818738?ls=1&mt=11

How to Fold an Origami Butterfly

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-fold-origami-butterfly/id1047636174?ls=1&mt=11

How to Fold an Origami Iris

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/how-to-fold-an-origami-iris/id1047552523?ls=1&mt=11

 

Next week we'll be combining procedures and measurement by reading a recipe to make something yummy to eat. We'll then write our own procedures that explain how to make the recipe. Yummo! We looked at what 'mass' means today and practiced writing the shortened form of kilograms and grams as well as changing weights from kilograms to grams and from grams to kilograms.

We have begun to read the novel, The Inventions of Hugo Cabret, which has wonderful black and white pictures in it which add to the story. We have begun to read the images by looking for the salient parts, reading the characters body language and facial expressions as well as looking at how the use of light and shade can add meaning to the images and hence to the novel. 

We're fine tuning our comprehension strategies and skills by revisiting some in more depth and also introducing some new ones. This week we're looking at identifying the main idea of a text and the details that support the main idea. We're joining 4S twice a week while we explore our comprehension skills and strategies. 

As part of library research we are looking at people that have made a difference in some way to the world. At the beginning of this term we made a poster of our 'famous' person and later this term we will be using the information we have found to create a large cardboard poster that we will show off to other classes.

During science we'll be looking at packaging. What is it used for? Why do we have packaging? What is the design process when companies look at packaging products? We'll have to design a package to contain an egg and stop it from breaking when we drop it from our classroom to the concrete below. This has really excited everyone!!

Science - Among the Gum Trees

Over the term we have looked at eucalyptus trees, explored their life cycle, tried (with some success) to germinate seeds we found, learnt about how bees are part of their life cycle through pollination and even learnt about how eucalyptus oil stops bread from going mouldy. Here are some great photos from the term.

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!

Experiment 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!

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!

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!