Science Week

This year’s National Science Week focused on ‘The Science of Light’.  To investigate some of the ways we can observe this topic, the Year 3/4 neighbourhoods looked at a ‘Camera Obscura’ (pinhole camera) as well as a solar balloon.  Both experiences opened up interesting discussions and piqued the children’s scientific curiosity.  Below are photos of both experiences, including the inverted image that was created by the pinhole camera.

This is what Louis W. had to say about science week:

“This week was science week and we made a solar balloon that heats up using the suns heat to fly and the other thing we made was a camera obscura that was a dark room with a tiny hole in the wall and on the boards there was the image out side, up side down!  It was so epic, you could see people out side. I had a fun time. It was cool.”

This is what Lexi had to say about science week:

“Three white boards were all adjusted to our eye and then we saw the trees some other kids went outside and we saw them upside down.  This is because our eyes are like a lens then our brain flips it around.  We all have this and it is totally normal to have this. The white board was like a projector screen. We did this experiment in the media room. The whole room was dark pitch black otherwise it would not work. There was a little whole in the media and it was acting like your eye with out a brain.”

Book Swap

THE GREAT BOOK SWAP

As part of Indigenous Literacy Day on Wednesday September 3, we are holding a Great Book Swap to help raise funds for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation to buy books for remote indigenous communities who don’t have access to books. There are schools involved all across Australia and the target is $100,000 to buy 10,000 books.

If every child can please bring a book (or books) to school that they love but no longer want and a gold coin donation on Weds Sept 3, then they can be part of the book swap. By donating a gold coin, they can then swap their book for a new book that someone else has donated. 

1. Books need to be dropped off in the gym before school starts, and the swap will happen at lunch time. 

2. If you're wanting to swap more than one book, it's a gold coin for each book you want to swap. So if you swap five books, it's five coins. 

3. This year if you want take home a junior book, please donate a junior book. If you want take home an older book, please donate an older book. Otherwise we end up with lots of books for little kids, but no books for the older kids. 

4. Please don't donate school readers, library books, board books or really young picture books. Please just donate books you think someone will love!

See you all on Weds September 3 so we can raise money, and all have a terrific new book to take home.

Princes Hill Primary School is participating in National Science Week 2015, 15th – 23^rd August, as a way of further promoting science in our school. Science activities will be scheduled to run in each neighbourhood next week. We want to encourage children to try more science at home and at school.

We also encourage parents who are interested in science or work in a field of science to come along and talk to the children about the work that they do.  Please contact your child’s teachers to book in a time to organise a talk, demonstration or a hands-on activity that the children can participate in.

Thank you for your support.

David Hornsby Parent Information Night

Literacy consultant David Hornsby conducted a parent information night on Tuesday the 28^th of July on how parents can support their children with reading. The focus of the day was on how we can develop thoughtful literacy with our children. 

David spoke about the pivotal role of content knowledge in the making-meaning process that is reading.   Meaning generated by the reader will be influenced by the background knowledge they bring to the text. With this key idea in mind, David emphasised the role parents can play in ‘stirring-up’ their child’s background knowledge around the content of the texts they are reading.  This requires parents talking about the content of the books your children are reading before, during and after reading.  What do you think this text is about?  What do you know about…?  What do you think you will learn about…?  What did you learn about…?  What would you like to learn more about…? Where can we go to find out more about…? 

David also emphasised the importance of teaching phonics, but always within the meaningful context of a whole text. He spoke emphatically about the importance of starting with a whole complete text before dealing with abstract decoding practices such as sounding out words.  ‘Meaning is the way into phonics’. 

David spoke passionately about the centrality of the Literature strand in our national curriculum and the importance of quality literature for building thoughtful, feeling, literate citizens. ‘We hit them in the heart, before we hit them in the head’. 

David’s presentation was appreciated by all the parents and staff who attended for the clarity, poise and humour in which it was delivered.   

 David is away at the moment but is happy for the presentation slides he used on the night to be shared with the community. Once these slides are made available, they will be posted on your child’s neighbourhood blog. 

Tim Aris 

Head of Curriculum

Term 3 Weeks 1 and 2

This video shows some of the learning that has been going on in the 34 neighbourhood over the first two weeks of this term. We have been continuing to develop our museum exhibits as well as writing narrative, reflective and report texts. Multiplication, measurement, area and construction feature in our maths workshops as well as a variety of maths targets which address the individual needs of students, such as the time target that can be seen in this video. Reading scientific report texts to assist in building knowledge within our museum inquiry has been a feature as well as specific guided reading sessions which serve to focus on the strategies that students use when they read. Weekly music sessions with Deb are also featured.

Parent Information Evening - Reading with your child

PARENT INFORMATION EVENING – Reading with your child
When: 28 July, 6:30-7:30pm
Where: PHPS Gymnasium
Presenter: David Hornsby

 David Hornsby was with the Victorian Ministry of Education for 28 years and taught at every year level from Prep to Year 6. During that time, he also lectured at La Trobe University, the University of Melbourne and RMIT University. For 4 years he was an education department curriculum consultant in primary and secondary schools. He was the principal of Ringwood Heights Primary School for 5 years. He is now a full-time education consultant working with teachers and presenting at conferences both nationally and overseas. He has completed many lecture tours of the United States and the United Kingdom, and has also worked with teachers in Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malta, New Zealand, Singapore, Milan, Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. He has written or co-authored many books and two CD-ROM series. Parents from the Community Relations sub-committee of school council will be present in the gym from 6pm to help answer questions around subscribing to the blogs, access to Compass, and general school communications.

PARENT INFORMATION EVENING – Reading with your child

When: 28 July, 6:30-7:30 pm

Where: PHPS Gymnasium

Presenter: David Hornsby

David Hornsby was with the Victorian Ministry of Education for 28 years and taught at every year level from Prep to Year 6. During that time, he also lectured at La Trobe University, the University of Melbourne and RMIT University. For 4 years he was an education department curriculum consultant in primary and secondary schools. He was the principal of Ringwood Heights Primary School for 5 years. He is now a full-time education consultant working with teachers and presenting at conferences both nationally and overseas. He has completed many lecture tours of the United States and the United Kingdom, and has also worked with teachers in Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malta, New Zealand, Singapore, Milan, Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. He has written or co-authored many books and two CD-ROM series.

Parents from the Community Relations sub-committee of school council will be present in the gym from 6 pm to help answer questions around subscribing to the blogs, access to Compass, and general school communications.