Extending thinking in literacy groups

In Stage 3 reading groups with Miss Sallis, students voted to read the story ‘Girl Underground’ by Morris Gleitzman.

Students have been working very hard to develop their thinking through several activities. Here’s what the reading group had to say about these activities and their learning experiences:

Compass Points (By Ebaa, Katarina, Cindy, Gavin and Abudie)

Hey everyone,

In reading groups, we were working on Compass Points where you think about ‘N’ (need to know) ‘E’ (for excited) ‘S’ (for suggestions for moving forward) and ‘W’ (for worrisome ). The point/reason that we started participating in this activity is that in the novel, the main character Bridget comes to a point where she has to make a decision if she should tell her classmates about her family secret.

Everyone enjoyed participating in this activity because we all got to connect with each other and share our ideas as a supportive team.

Compass Points - to evaluate a decision in the story

Connections (By Irene, Elisa and Laura)

We worked in groups to connect parts of ‘Girl Underground’ to ourselves, to the world and to other texts. From this activity we have learnt that there are many similarities between the story ‘Girl Underground’ and ‘Boy Overboard’. It also helped us understand the emotions and actions in the story because we could think of a time when we have previously experienced those things in our life. We enjoyed this activity.

Connecting text to self, other texts and the world

New Words List (By Lamin, Michael, Hinok and Sarah)

In our reading groups, we have made a new words list. Words we see that we don’t understand, we write it down on our list. E.g. apprehending, turnip, striding, quizzically and gratitude.These are interesting words! This list is good because it helps our learning so we can understand new words.

Our new words list, where we record and research unfamiliar words as we read them

Story Responses: Boy Overboard

Stage 3 Reading Groups with Miss Sallis have been reading the fiction text ‘Boy Overboard’ by Morris Gleitzman.

It is an inspiring and moving story, and has really allowed our students to make connections to the world. Students are so engaged in this story that they have even been researching refugee stories in their own time, which shows such dedication and interest.

In order to reflect on the story, each student has written a book response. This was done over a series of lessons, where each part of the book response was discussed as a group, then brainstormed individually. Miss Sallis provided feedback on all drafts of the responses, so students could work on improving their final responses. Final responses were once again read by the teacher, who provided further feedback. This process was lengthy but ensured that all students were happy with their final piece of writing.

Students then hopped on the laptops to develop their word processing and formatting skills using Microsoft Word. Many features were explored, such as bold text, underline, italics, word art, page borders, importing images and varying font style/size/colour. Colour copies of these were printed off and shown to Ms Dyer who put great gold stickers on everyone’s work!

Have a read of an excerpt from Ebaa’s response…

The novel is set in Afghanistan. The main characters in the book are Jamal, Bibi, Mum, Dad, Yusuf, Yusuf’s grandfather, Rashida and Omar.

The narrator of this book is Jamal. The language used is informal and childish. The book also talks about war and uses war words like landmines and tanks. The story teaches us to never give up hope or never give up on something that you feel is a part of you.

The novel is enjoyable and fun and I think that the novel is suitable for adults and children, because the book has hard experiences and emotional bits in it. I would recommend this book to people who have been through tough times and are scared of something.

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!

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…

We walked away with the Easter Eggs!!

Sajar Nachar was an amazing photographer for the blog on Crazy Hat ‘n Hair Day.

Here are some more of her shots of individuals who won eggs on the day.

Just some of our Easter Eggs

Photographs by Sajar Nachar

Thanks to all our families we had 100’s of Easter eggs which we had to give as prizes in our Easter Competition.

We had well over 120 parents and family friends join us as we had fun today. The staff are to be thanked for their enthusiam and leadership in organising such a successful day.

Any money raised will go towards purchasing more books for our home reading READ IT! program.

Crowd shots on Crazy Hat’n Day

Photographer for the day: Sajar Nachar

Our school celebrates the Festival of Easter and Harmony Day in our own unique multicultural way.

Our school has families from over 50 different nationalities and a multitude of faiths.

Harmony Day is of significance to us all as we live in an amazing melting pot where respect for diversity is pivotal to our daily lives and welfare.

Orange is the colour of harmony so as well as having crazy hair styles and hats we wore orange mufti.

Many of our community recognise the significance of Easter and the rest just love chocolate.

Games based learning in 3 Baz

Our school uses digital games as part of our students’ learning programs. The Telegraph newspaper found out about this and wanted to include some information and photos about what we do in the paper, especially how we use the Wii as part of our PD / Health / PE program.

Here are some photos of the photo shoot in our school today.
3 Baz and Mrs Pericles showed the Newspaper photographer how they played Wii Tennis.

Ms Dyer and Mrs Pericles photographed the photographer. The audience and the players were enthusiastic and we all enjoyed sharing our expertise, experience and uniqueness.