Haldon Street Success!

Dance group had an amazing time walking in the street parade, and performing, at the Haldon Street Festival in Lakemba on Saturday.
We arrived early, did our makeup, and put our walking shoes on to proudly represent our school.
During the street parade we handed out books, which were donated by our school library, to children along Haldon Street in order to spread the ‘reading bug’.
Straight after the parade we headed to the main stage to perform our story dance to our wonderful community.
Thank you to all the teachers, parents and students that turned up to cheer us on! We had an amazing time and could not have done it without you.
Check out some of the highlights of our day in the gallery below…

Now we eagerly await the final results for the Wakakirri prize….keep your fingers and toes crossed!

S1 Matisse Research Possum!

This term S1Matisse will be  learning all about Australian animals.  As some of you may know our class mascot is Possum.

Possum is an Australian animal.

Possum is an Australian animal.

Every Friday someone in S1M gets to take Possum home for the weekend.  This term each person that takes Possum home will put on their thinking caps and answer a question about our native mascot.  To answer this question they will have to conduct some scientific research.  Every Monday they will share their scientific findings with the class!

This weekend Harper will find out which species of Australian Possum our furry class mascot is.

Do you know?  We will give you a clue…look at Possum’s ring-like tail!

Reading with S1Picasso

Looking After Pets

In our reading groups this week, we have been reading a book called “Pets Need People”.  It talks about things you need to know when you have a pet.  S1 Baker has guinea pigs as their class pets.  We learnt about guinea pigs and then we took photos with them.  Here are some things we found out about guinea pigs.

What do Guinea Pigs look like?

Guinea  pigs have black eyes, ears and  no tail.  They have white, brown, yellow or black fur.  Guinea pigs have short legs with clawed feet. They  have 4 toes at the front and 3 toes at the back.  Guinea pigs also have sensory whiskers.

Where do Guinea Pigs live?

Guinea pigs need a hutch for shelter.  They do not like cold, wet windy places.  Guinea pigs like to be let out of their cages and petted.  They need to have their cages cleaned regularly.

What do Guinea Pigs Eat?

Guinea pigs like to eat apples, grass and other plant material.

Interesting Facts?

Guinea pigs are popular pets.  They live for 6 to 8 years, they grow to 28 cm and weigh 0.9kg.  They are burrowing animals and they squeal when they are excited.

This is Gus.  He visited our class from S1Baker.  He felt so soft and made a noise when we patted him.

S1Baker Welcome Pepi and Gus!

In the holidays, Miss Hackney bought guinea pigs for our class!

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Miss Hackney’s dad built the cage for them.

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They are both baby boy guinea pigs. The black one is called Pepi, and the orange one is called Gus.

Pepi’s favourite foods are parsley and watermelon, while Gus loves to munch on celery and beans.

We are learning to clean out their hutch, and each week two people in our class have a turn.

On Friday, we gave Gus a bath with guinea pig shampoo but he didn’t like it very much!

Here are some photos from Pepi and Gus’ first week at school…

Great Schools ‘Show Off’!

This year Belmore South Public School has entered the ‘Great Schools Show Off’ competition.  This exciting new project engages students in telling their community, and the wider world, about the many positive and exciting aspects of their school through the use of digital media.

Throughout Term 2 our new film club ‘Short Cuts’ will be working with Miss Pleasance to create a 3 minute film that will promote our great school.  Creating this film will involve many different aspects of development including storyboarding, creating scenes and shots, directing, producing, filming, editing and acting (just to name a few!).

Panasonic will be providing the following prizes for regional and state winners:

Regional Winners will each receive a: Digital still tough camera – valued at $499

State winners will each receive a: High Definition Camcorder – valued at $1,499 and 42″ High Definition Plasma TV – valued at $1,099

Stay tuned for regular updates, photos and eventually our Great Film!

Great Schools Show Off Banner

Reading Groups with Ms Hargraves

In Ms Hargraves’ reading groups we have been focusing on developing a rich and deep understanding of the stories we read.  To do this we have looked at language and it’s structure, at retelling events in order and at connecting the story to experiences and knowledge that we have already gained about the world, other stories and ourselves.

In Stage 1 we have been recreating, retelling and organising events and words from our stories.  We read a story called “Toy Town”.

We had an entire bag of toys to find in the story.

We had an entire bag of toys to find in the story.

We found the nouns within the story and labelled real toys with their nouns.

We used our story to find the correct nouns.

We used our story to find the correct nouns.

We wrote the sentences from the story on strips of paper and then we worked together to put them into the same order as the story.

We worked together to reorder our story.

We worked together to reorder our story.

We worked together too!

We worked together too!

After all this hard work we created our own Toy Town and played together!

In Stage 2 we are reading a story called “Freckle Juice” by Judy Blume.  We have found lots of new and challenging vocabulary in this story.  To help us understand these words we have been creating our own puzzles and writing clues to help each other find and understand these puzzling words.

We made our own word puzzles!

We made our own word puzzles!

In Stage 3 we have read “Charlie Rabbit” by Garth Nix from the Kid’s Night In anthology.  This story is set in London during World War II.  To help us understand this complex story we have been learning about that era as well as how the story might connect to the world we experience now.  We are helping each other make connections between “Charlie Rabbit” and our own knowledge and experiences by playing a connecting game together.  We have to be able to make a clear connection between the story and another example within different categories in order to move forward in the game.  Some of us have found strong similarities between the devastation in World War II and the current devastation in Japan.

We are all looking forward to exploring many more stories, vocabulary and experiences next term!

Today was the BEST day as our teachers celebrated Term 1

The achievements of the teachers at our school are amazing. At the end of each term we have a celebration of our achievements. This term we had a Cafe themed for Easter.

We celebrated the Quality Teaching that is happening in all our classrooms. Our focus for today was on sharing something we have done this term that we are proud of. The context was Reading and Writing.

We have such a wonderful mix of youth and experience and it is so exciting to be able to share and learn from each other. Every teacher in our school is a leader.

The ideas, the creativity, the innovation around the Cafe today reassured that learning in this school is engaging and exciting and the teachers are of the highest quality.

3 Fred report . . .

What S3 Fred has been doing!!
Hello everyone! Have a read of what S3Fred has been doing !!

Our class had to decide on a class name. We voted for Fred Hollows out of Nancy Bird, Ned Kelly and Pemulwuy. We voted for him because he was very intelligent and he gave back eyesight to people. He worked with indigenous people to build a medical centre to treat eye disease. He then went to work in Africa in a place called Eritrea. He created a lens factory and trained other people to treat the eye disease. He died in 2008 from cancer but his wife created the Fred Hollows foundation to continue his work.

Well, we did some contract work, we had to choose what activities we wanted to do and when we wanted to do them. That was a lot of fun!! What S3Fred has been doing this week!!
Hello everyone! Have a read of what S3Fred has been doing this week!!

We also looked at Bloom’s Taxonomy tasks, the levels are remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating! They are from low to high thinking skills.
Also we did reading tasks, we picked a book to read chapters 1 and 2 and choose from different tasks. A few examples are draw your favourite character from the book and 5 questions you would ask the author and there were more activities to choose from. That was really an amazing thing to do!!

S3 Fred have been working out strategies to help us with the NAPLAN Tests. Last week we did a math test to see what things we need to learn and made goals from what we didn’t know. Miss York set us some work that matches our goals. We do worksheets and play Mathletics to achieve our goals.

We have also been writing our narrative quality criteria, it means things that make a good narrative these were some of our answers complex sentences, orientation, complication, resolution, who, what, where, when and why. We have also been learning about descriptions for our narrative. We had to use our imagination and think about different settings. We were playing a game called the circle game, whoever had the ball had to say something that is shiny some of our answers were gold, earrings, necklace, diamond and a gold key. For NAPLAN we have been learning about our senses to put into our narrative we had to think about our five senses and pretend that we were in a setting eg shopping centre, cemetery, hospital, jungle, desert, and forest.

Ms Dyer and Mrs Pericles present at a conference for teachers

Inspire, innovate leading digital education 2010 is a conference that was held at NSW Department of Education and Training Technology Conference held at Acer Arena on the Olympic site at Homebush Bay.

Both Ms Dyer and Mrs Pericles were asked to present at this conference. They were very honoured as they were speaking along with a number of distinguished national and international speakers.

The two international speakers were Dr Stephen Heppell from the UK and David Warlick from the USA. They were also fortunate to hear Westley Fields from Sydney.

Ms Dyer spoke about how to get teachers using technology effectively in schools and Mrs Pericles presented a workshop on digital games based learning.

From the feedback from participants at the conference they felt both of Ms Dyer and Mrs Pericles had helped them with their developing deeper understanding of ways to use technology.

Assembly Awards

In our Performance Assemblies the class who is presenting the Assembly chooses 3 awards:

  • Classroom of the Week
  • Best Behaved Primary Class in the Assembly, and
  • Best Behaved Infants Class in the Assembly.

These girls had the hard job of choosing the best Assembly classes

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Congratulations to

  • 2 Preston and Ms Kaporis who won Classroom of the Week
  • Best Behaved in Assembly

3 Baz
1 Wild

The class representatives were so quick to collect their awards they were a blurr across the stage.