This Literacy group are thinking of descriptive words they can use to make the story they are reading more interesting . . . just listen to the talking. What do you think?
Untitled from Gail Miller on Vimeo.
Tag Archives: critical thinking
Kindergarten Group Learning Time
KWiggles and KFox have been hard at work during group time.
The teachers have used “Best Start” results to put together a learning program that caters for the different needs of each child. The focus is on Literacy and Numeracy activities. The children are enjoying learning many new concepts.
During week 8 Kindergarten parents will be meeting with kindergarten teachers regarding their child’s Best Start results as well as some information on how to help at home.
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Maths in action in Stage 3
Our Maths Program is personalised to suit each student’s personal needs. All the Stage 3 classes have done a diagnostic Maths Test.
The students and their teacher analysed the results of this test. They worked together to determine individual strengths and weaknesses and the where to next for the student.
Armed with this knowledge the students set their own Maths goals for the term.
Taking a walk . . .
This was the title of our writing task for the month of February. Every month our students will be facing the challenge of a whole school writing task.
Once the topic is determined by the Principal stimulus pictures and the task are loaded onto our school server. From there the teachers retrieve the document and display the stimulus pictures on their IWB.
This is followed by a great deal of discussion about the pictures and then the task is analysed. The discussion is designed to develop a rich vocabulary using lots of WOW words that make writing more exciting and interesting to read.
Students follow a stage appropriate proforma to help them plan their writing. This helps them remember the structure needed when writing. They plan their writing before drafting their response to the task. Once finished writing they then use a checklist to ensure they have correct spelling, interesting words, punctuation, grammar etc. They edit their work and then hand it to their teacher.
The writing is ranked according to the Australian National Writing Assessment Rubric across individual classes, stages and finally the whole school. Once these have been ranked the students have their work back and they evaluate it and assess it in terms of the appropriate writing rubric for each stage.
Students are acknowledged for their writing through publication on the school blog and with an Assembly Certificate along with house and class points.
Our students come from cultures which are not known for their written histories they are more oral/aural with colourful artwork. The oral stories are wonderful and the artwork amazing. Convention in our culture requires writing. We want them to write and write well . . . this takes concerted effort and training.
1 Bird
Our class is called 1Bird. We are named after Nancy Bird-Walton who was a famous Australian pilot. She was one of the first female pilots and she worked for the New South Wales air ambulance service. We pretended to fly in an aeroplane with Nancy Bird-Walton. Wow, it was so much fun!
We had a very special visitor come to our classroom. This is a picture of Mrs Garlick. She went to Belmore South Public School when she was a little girl. She told us lots of interesting stories about what Belmore South used to be like. Did you know a cow used to live in the paddock which is now Area 7?
Mrs Garlick with 1Bird
We are learning about the weather. We made leaf artworks because it is now Autumn. We looked at leaves from our school playground and we copied them with crayon. Then we sponged paint around the outside of the leaves with yellow, blue, purple and orange paint. Our artworks look AMAZING!
One of 1Bird's amazing leaf artworks
n Friday the 5th March we were involved in Clean Up Belmore South Day!We put on gloves to protect our hands and went outside to clean up our school playground. We found lots of rubbish! Our class is going to try really hard to put all our rubbish straight in the rubbish bins!
On Friday the 5th March we were involved in Clean Up Belmore South Day!We put on gloves to protect our hands and went outside to clean up our school playground. We found lots of rubbish! Our class is going to try really hard to put all our rubbish straight in the rubbish bins!
Cleaning up the playground!
Clean Up Belmore South Day!
Stage 2 Flynn Assembly
Stage 2 Flynn Assembly from Gail Miller on Vimeo.
Did you miss your child’s assembly today? Sit back and enjoy these extracts.
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.
World Maths Day in S3 Clark
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Written by Farah, Angela and Kim
On Wednesday we had our own world maths day. On this day there were lots of maths stations set up around the room. These stations were:
– Computers: We logged onto Mathletics and competed in the World Maths Day Challenge. We were helping to break the world record.
– Hidden Symbols: where you draw a picture and you have to include as many maths symbols in it as you can so people can’t find it. Then you get someone to try and spot the symbols in your picture.
– Maths is all around us: we had to find anything to do with maths in the newspapers. We could also write and draw other things we new were to do with maths. We put these on 2 posters.
– Maths board games: there were lots of different maths games we could play.
– Problem solving: here there was lots of problem solving puzzles to do with number and time.
We had a lot of fun and want to do it again next year.
We’re all stars in S3 Clark
Written by Harry
On Friday we made ‘positive stars’. Each person had a coloured star. On them we wrote positive things about each other. First we made one side of the star colourful with colourful tissue paper. We stuck it down with a PVA glue and water mixture. While they were drying we sat in a big circle and when Miss McIntosh blew the whistle we passed a star on and wrote a nice comment on the star we had in front of us. We kept passing them around the circle until everyone had written on everyone else’s star. We then had some time to read the comments. It made us feel really good inside reading what people wrote about us. They will be hung up in our room for the whole year so we can read them whenever we feel down or we just want to smile.
BIG MOUTH CLUB . . . debaters with a lot to say
Big Mouth Club auditions for the 2010 Belmore South Public School debating team were held last Friday. Ms Mealing, Ms Kelly and Ms Sallis had the difficult task of selecting this year’s team.
Ms Mealing and Ms Kelly listened to each applicant’s speech, and judged their speeches based on aspects such as manner, clarity and content.
All three teachers are proud to announce the Big Mouth Club debating team for 2010. Congratulations to the following people – Diale, Maryam, Farah, Justin and Harry.
We look forward to working with such an enthusiastic and talented team of students!