Category Archives: Science

Experimental Stomachs!

This term, S2-Flynn are studying the human body and how all the systems work. This week we have learned about the digestive system, so we did an experiment showing how the stomach breaks down food. We used plastic zip-lock bags as the stomachs, orange juice as the digestive juices and bread as the food, and kneeded it all together through the bag to show how the stomach muscles squeeze everything up. It was great fun, but we did wonder what the cleaner thought we had been doing when she emptied our class rubbish bins – the bags looked pretty gross!

Experiment: How does the stomach digest food? from Mrs Klose on Vimeo.

CSIRO Mini Beasts Visit

We have been learning about Mini Beasts throughout this term.

On Monday 16th August we were really excited to participate in the CSIRO Mini Beast workshop.

One of the students in our class was lucky enough to re enact the lifecycle of a butterfly.  She wore a caterpillar costume and even went into a cocoon.

We had a look at some real stick insects. One was brown and prickly. Vanessa explained to us that the prickly bits were there to protect it from being eaten by birds.

The other two stick insects were similar. The male was brown and thin and the female was green and its body was larger. This was because the female carried lots of eggs to reproduce. The male was able to fly and the female was able to fly short distances only for example branch to branch. These creatures are easy to miss in the wild because they are camouflaged by their colour and shape to suit their environment. This protects them from predators.

We also got to see a bush cockroach and some beetles.

We learned that a person who studies mini beasts is called an entomologist.

All the children in S1 Irwin had an enjoyable afternoon learning about Mini Beasts.

The Wild Ones enjoy making Mini Beasts!

Look at 1 Wild making their mini beast biscuits.

Some are making ladybirds, some are making spiders and others are making butterflies.

One thing is for sure they were well organised, worked well together and were having a great time.

Watch out for the dinosaurs!

Stage 2 reading groups have been reading and learning about dinosaurs. Students have been reading information texts, and have been learning to locate information in texts by using the contents page, captions, diagrams and headings.

Students selected and researched one dinosaur of interest. They wrote  short information reports and labelled diagrams about them.

Have a read of some great examples:

Triceratops (By Jimmy)

Triceratops was a dinosaur. Its name means three-horned face.

Triceratops had a large head with three horns on it. Around its neck it had a thick, bony plate.

Triceratops was a plant-eating dinosaur. It lived in forests and grasslands.

jimmys diagram

Brachiosaurus (By Victoria)

Brachiosaurus was a dinosaur. It means arm lizard.

Brachiosaurus had a long neck and a thick tail.

Brachiosaurus ate leaves in the tops of trees. Brachiosaurus lived in forests near lakes. This dinosaur liked standing in water.

victorias diagram

Do you have any questions about dinosaurs? Perhaps we can answer them for you by finding the information in our dinosaur books.

News from S1Bird!

Skipping!

We practiced for Jump Rope for Heart during Golden time on Friday and we had a great time.

Transport pictures

We have been learning about transport. We worked with other people to draw a transport vehicle and then we wrote about it. It was interesting to share our ideas. 

Tadpoles

We have tadpoles in our classroom! We have enjoyed learning about frogs and tadpoles. We feed the tadpoles fish food and crushed lettuce. The tadpoles are growing bigger each week. We hope they will grow their back legs soon and turn into frogs.

What do Little Big Planet, Alice, Underland and Journey to the Centre of the Earth have in common?


When you walk into 3 Baz the class is a-buzz with all sorts of activities. The class have been on a Journey the Centre of the Earth, enjoyed Alice’s adventures in a variety of Wonderlands.

Do you know Alice was originally having her adventures in Underland?

Every student is actively engaged with their learning, pursuing their interests in their unique way. They are using books, computers, the internet to explore The Earth. Some are looking at Natural Disasters, others are exploring ancient creatures. The Dodo bird might even be brought back from extinction.

All are looking forward to creating their own Sack Boy to play Little Big Planet where they will use all their knowledge about growing a planet to develop their own.

Welcome to 1Base

We are named after Graeme Base. He is a famous Australian author, artist and illustrator. We like lots of the books he has written and our favourite so far is Jungle Drums. It is important to have Australians authors in this job to make reading fun, have our voice heard and so life isn’t boring.

We have been doing lots of learning in mathematics about numbers, addition and time. Our favourite game is Around the World. We have also started using Matheletics in the classroom and some of us have been using it at home. We like this because you can compete with people from around the world.

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We have reading groups from Monday to Thursday and we like them a lot.

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In science we have been learning about the weather, seasons and how to dress appropriately.

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During Golden Time we have had a lot of fun making a Chinese Dragon, building towers out of sticky tape, straws and newspaper and cleaning up Belmore South Public School. We are working on our own class blog and will let you know when it is ready to see.

We have a Moshi Monster and her name is Lilly. She has purple and red fluffy skin. She has big, green eyes and long ears. Her tail is as fluffy as a fox. Lilly has two pointy teeth and a tiny brown nose. We like our Moshi Monster.

S 3 Clark . . . Why we chose our class name.

Written by Mutu and Haley

Each class at Belmore South had to learn about 4 famous Australians and then choose one to be their class name. We had to choose between Graeme Clark, Marie Bashir, Deborah Mailman and Dick Smith.

It was a hard choice but we were only allowed to choose one. Graeme Clark and Dick Smith were very close. We had a bit of a debate about why people chose them. Some people changed their votes and Graeme Clark won. Most people chose him because of his great work for deaf people. We think he is a great role model and an inspiration to everyone.

For his great work he received some very prestigious awards.

Here is some information about Graeme Clark
Why is he a famous Australian?
Professor Graeme Clark invented the Bionic Ear with a team of scientists in the 1970s. They worked in Melbourne, Australia.
The Bionic Ear is worn by over 100,000 deaf people in over 80 countries.

How does the Bionic Ear work?
The Bionic Ear is properly called a cochlear implant. It is an artificial hearing tool. The Bionic Ear helps a deaf person to hear another person speak.

There are 2 parts to the Bionic Ear.
One part is placed under the skin behind a person’s ear. This is done in a hospital during an operation. The parts placed under the skin are the electronic equipment needed to control the flow of electricity into the ear and the equipment needed to change electrical signals into speech.

The second part is worn on the outside of the body. There is a microphone to pick up the voice of the person speaking, a speech processor which turns the voice sounds into electrical signals and a transmitting coil which sends the signals to the equipment inside the deaf person’s ear.

Why invent the Bionic Ear?
Professor Graeme Clark’s father had a hearing problem and didn’t have a very good hearing aid. Clark from young age liked conducting experiments and this interest led to him doing a degree in medicine. He entered into a partnership with a friend of his father’s, learning to be an expert nose and plastic surgeon.

However it still frustrated him seeing profoundly deaf people come and go realising that he couldn’t help them. But then he read an article by an American surgeon and was inspired to go and research electrically stimulating the hearing. He then decided to leave and go and live as a research student at the University of Sydney. Money and financial successes were unimportant to him. This began his research path to inventing the Bionic Ear.