Celebration of great work!

Throughout the Gold Rush inquiry all the children have been involved in many amazing projects!

Freya and Teisha have been working on a story book called "Mike the Miner" which they developed from their learning in the inquiry.

Please enjoy!

 

Well done Teisha and Freya!

Winding down the year ...

Tomorrow and next week the children in the 3-4 neighbourhoods will be starting to perform or present their learning on the gold field inquiry. Children have been engaging in a variety of projects including drama, model making, film, digital and board-game construction, story book writing and illustration.

Our intention is to end the year in a low key manner where the sharing of these creations is based more on informal feedback from peers and teachers than on a final formal performance. Parents are very welcome to be part of this process and to come in whenever it suits tomorrow and next week to join in the learning process as a source of support and feedback.  If your child is involved in a drama performance we can arrange for ‘special viewings’ of these when required. This doesn’t have to be pre-planned.

Dress up day tomorrow (Friday 13^th December) is a voluntary activity and it is designed to be a bit of fun for the children.

We would also like to dispel any belief in our community that children watch videos for the final week. This has never been the practice in our neighbourhood. Learning continues until the final day when we may put on a video only in order to pack away furniture in the afternoon so that the neighbourhood is prepared for the cleaners.

We would like to extend a big thank you to our parent community, some who were able to make it to the parent afternoon tea, for all your support this year. As a team we have greatly enjoyed working together and alongside your children. Our goal for 2014 is to look at how we can develop greater connections with our parent community so we welcome any ideas on this.

To anyone leaving our community this year we wish you all the best in the future and to those remaining with us we look forward to seeing you all again in the new year.

3/4 Assembly on Tuesday!

On the morning of Tuesday the 26th of November the 3/4 neighbourhood is presenting the school assembly.

One of the things we are showing is our 1850's based song "Look Out Below!" by Charles Thatcher.

The children have been practicing and they are sounding great!

We ask that everyone could dress up as in a costume from the Victorian Goldfields for the assembly (please don't stress, something the symbolises the era is fine!).

Also, the following week we will be having a dress up day where everyone will remain in character all day long. 

Please help your child organise their costume.

Thanks!

Here's some inspiration...

"Look Out Below!" by Charles Thatcher

For our Victorian Gold Rush Inquiry we have been looking at (well, listening to) Charles Thatcher's amazing song from the time - Look Out Below.

It was written about the life of a digger.

We have been learning it this last couple of weeks.

Here's the song:

And the lyrics:

A young man left his native shores,
for trade was bad at home.
To seek his fortune in this land,
he crossed the briny foam.

And when he went to Ballarat,
it put him in a glow,
to hear the sound of the windlass
and cry "Look Out Below!".

Amongst the rest he took his chance,
his luck at first was vile,
but still he resolved to persevere,
and at length he made his pile.

So says he, "I'll take my passage
and home again I'll go,
and I’ll say farewell to the windlass
and the cry, "Look Out Below!".

Arrived in London once again,
his gold he freely spent.
And into every gaiety
and dissipation went.

But pleasure, if prolonged too much,
oft causes pain you know,
and he missed the sound of the windlass
and the cry, "Look Out Below!".

So he started for this land again
with a charming little wife.
And he finds there's nothing comes up to
a jolly digger's life.

Ask him if he'll go back again,
he'll quickly answer, "No",
for he loves the sound of the windlass
and the cry, "Look Out Below!".

Student Profiles Template

Here is a template for the Student template which you can download and use to guide you in how the profile is written and laid out. The guideline is as follows.

1. Office WORD document

2. A4 portrait

3. Insert 2 photos 

4. Insert text ( Arial 10 pt, single spacing)

The template is for guidelines only and there is no need to submit student profiles in this format.

Any questions, please speak to Tomo or Rita.

profile pro forma

Student Profiles - Revised

In order to further promote a sense of belonging among students and teachers at Princes Hill, we are introducing the development of student profiles. We are seeking to understand what has contributed to your child becoming the person your child is today?

Each child from Prep to Year 5 is asked to write their autobiography with the support of their parents.

Please ensure that the autobiographical information provided is suitable for sharing with the all the members of the neighbourhood. The teachers will read the published profiles to get to know the many aspects of their students and the students may share them with each other. The first step in helping students learn is to get a clear picture of who they are, both as a group and as individuals. The children will update this profile each year.

The children from Year 3 to Year 5 will upload the student profile template on to their laptops and are asked to complete their autobiographies with their families by the end of November. This activity will be included in your child’s learning agreement.

An autobiography includes information such as name, when you were born, where were you born, your parents name, background, languages spoken at home, interests and hobbies, trips, special events, possible aspirations.

The children in Years 3, 4, 5 who are not part of the laptop program and the Prep to Year 1 children are asked to write their autobiographies with their parents in a word document: font Tahoma, size 10, about half a page [up to 500 words]. Please email it to the school (princes.hill.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au) or your child’s home teacher by the end of November. It will be copied and pasted into the student profile template which has been specially designed.

Science Fair

We began back in Term Two by looking at a science concept that was broad enough to be explored through many facets of science (physical, biological, chemical, technical)

The big Idea that we selected was ‘the total amount of energy in the universe is always the same but energy can be transformed when things change or are made to happen’

We worked on consolidating what energy was and what it can do and thinking about where it comes from – chemical, heat, water wind, solar, electrical, nuclear…etc

The skills and understandings we were working on developing were
· Identifying, describing and measuring the transfer of energy
· Explaining phenomena in terms of flow of energy.
· Focusing on direct experience and observation of phenomena and materials.
· Introducing the way objects change and beginning to recognize the role of energy in these changes.

Science rotations were developed in kitchen chemistry, physics, robotics, gardening and science through sound (music). We also ran optional workshop series that explored potential and kinetic energy through dance. Provocations were set up to engage students in experiments based on potential and kinetic energy during learning agreement times.

Students began to demonstrate an understanding of Kinetic and Potential energy and the various types of energy.

We then introduced the concept that allowed the students to relate work to force and distance and characterize the relationship between work and power. The introduction of these concepts built on from the understandings introduced in previous weeks and extended the knowledge of scientific language. We began heading towards the notion of conversion (energy changing one form to another) and that energy is neither created nor destroyed (linking back to the big idea).

Students demonstrated their understanding of Kinetic and Potential energy by putting together their science investigations through an experiment of their choice. We were looking for transference of reading and writing skills (procedural text) within the presentation. We were also looking for transference of skills in writing a conclusion. The conclusion students wrote helped to determine the sophistication of thinking around the concepts of energy. These can be found in the children’s portfolios. Explicit targets around making statements and following this up with reasons/evidence were held.

In term three we looked to provide opportunities for students to explore their own interests in the inquiry of energy. We wanted them to select their own experiment, to determine their own process of exploration and to create their own provocation. We also wanted them to explore possibilities of sharing their own discoveries in different ways. We decided to encourage students to step into the shoes of a scientist when looking at their experiments. They were provided with science briefs to give guidance on these expectations.

The big idea that we decided to explore was.

What are the discoveries in energy that have made a real difference in our world?

We began with a research phase where the emphasis was on finding out that there is reasons behind why scientists go about making discoveries that are connected to the needs of societies. Students were involved in conferencing with a teacher to demonstrate that they had sufficiently researched the discovery, the scientist, considered aspects of teamwork and their ideas on what lead to the discovery.

As a teaching team we decided to select working groups for the students to extend their interpersonal skills through working with a range of others who were not in their friendship group. The teams were mostly mixed gender, age and interests. This raised issues of cooperation and collaboration, equity of workload and roles and engagement, all of which we challenged groups to manage themselves.

The second phase of the inquiry was to increase understanding of the science fair idea through the planning and advertising of the event (plan, roster, proposal of how we advertise it, radio announcement) Students worked out the logistics including how many tables were needed, what the space could look like etc. Students began exploring the concept of a Science Fair through a variety of mediums of expression, including radio advertisements to promote the event, SketchUp, MineCraft and mathematical processes to work out the logistics and possible layout and physical diagrams. Much of this was conducted alongside explicit targets in shared reading and writing with a mini inquiry into advertising. Mathematically we explored number concepts such as arrays (table set up) either as repeated addition or as multiplication for those ready to work with this concept.

The third phase focused around creating an experiment or demonstration and being able to explain, as a group how that experiment would help the visitors to the expo/ fair, understand what their learning was about and how it connected to the discovery they were investigating. Where ever possible teachers would model the idea of the documentation of process before, during and after the demonstration/ experiment. We needed to be explicit about what a scientist would do if something did not work. For safety reasons, scientists would go back and analyse the reasons for the failure and re-plan the experiment (children were mostly changing the variables without analysis). Students mostly elected to do this by filming what they were doing in stages.

Students devised a list of possible questions about content, process and teamwork. They practiced their delivery and the presentation of their learning through conferencing of the different stages of the brief with a teacher. Conferences focused on the teamwork aspect of the group also. We have focused on reflection as a genre, processing writing through a series of drafts based on reflections of working within their group. This has been placed in the portfolio but many students have included this in their individual booklets. Students around the various phases of the inquiry completed self-assessments and teacher conferencing documents are also available for viewing in individual inquiry booklets.

Here are some photos of the Science Fair day.