Category Archives: Class Updates

BSPS Blog Comments

BSPS BLOG COMMENTS

In order to promote leaving comments on posts on the school blog, each comment left will contribute towards class of the year award.

Comments must be meaningful and relevant to the post to be counted

  • Examples include:
    • commenting on what you have learnt about from the post
    • what you liked about the post  and why
    • What you have been doing on the same topic or what further information you could add to the post
    • posing further questions if you would like to know more about the post

Comments can be jointly constructed as a class or part of a literacy group.  Students can leave individual replies but they must be checked by the teacher first.

Please  use first name only and leave class name so we know which class posted them.

Thanks Technology committee

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.

Taking a walk . . .

Engrossed in writing

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.

Teachers working together to benchmark our students’ writing

We have a regular writing task which is undertaken by our students once a month, 8 times a year. This is our WRITE IT! Program. it is designed to improve our students’ writing skills and develop consistency of judgement from stage to stage among our teachers.

The students are supported with scaffolded expectations and their field of knowledge is developed through exposure to a variety of visual stimulus pictures and discussion appropriate for each task set.

After the task is completed our teachers rank them in stages: top, middle and bottom. They are then ranked across stages.
The class teacher in consultation with colleagues then selects the best in their class.

The Best in Class is awarded a certificate and has their writing published on the School Blog for the world to see.

The students’ evaluate their own work using an adaptation of the NAPLAN rubric. Using this information they set their goals to ensure they improve their writing when they participate in the next writing task.

What has S3 Fred Hollows been doing this week?

Hello everyone! Have a read of what S3Fred has been doing this week!!

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.

Once we had decided on our name we could get down to real work!

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!!

We explored Bloom’s Taxonomy tasks, the levels are remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating! They are from low to high thinking skills.

bloomstaxonomy

Also we did our reading tasks, we picked a book to of which we had to read chapters 1 and 2 and then choose to do some 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!!

reading corner

S3Fred have been studying for NAPLAN. Last week we did a math test to see what things we need to learn and we set our goals from what we didn’t know. Miss York set us some work that matched our goals. We do worksheets and play Mathletics to help us achieve our goals.

mathletics

We have been negotiating and writing our narrative quality criteria. These are expectations that make a good narrative. Hers are some of our criteria: complex sentences, orientation, complication, resolution, who, what, where, when and why. We have also been learning about writing interesting 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. Thinking through our senses helps us write a better 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.

classword

Meet S2S who are now The Flynns

john flynn poster

We are a Stage 2 class at Belmore South Public School. We have been S2S but now we are S2-Flynn.

We chose John Flynn because:

  • He was helpful
  • He’s on the $20 note
  • He began the Royal Flying Doctor Service
  • He made a pedal powered radio to help people in the outback not be lonely as well as able to communicate with Doctors. This radio network later turned into the School of the Air.
  • He was a doctor and a Reverend who studied theology (about God)
  • He lived a long life (1880 – 1951)
  • He wrote the newsletter called “The Bushman’s Companion” and made a “Mailbag League” for people in the city to write to isolated people.

dragons

We have been making dragons with cardboard and paper chains for bodies. They were for Chinese New Year which just passed a week ago. Kevin and Reremoana have the longest dragons so far!

hands2

These hands have ways we are the same as each other, and ways we are special written on opposite sides.

name plates

These name plates are made using oil pastels, pencils and textas. It helped Miss S to memorise everybody’s names!

charlie and the chocolate factory

We are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.  Hopefully Miss S will let us watch the movie at the end of the book.

maths words

In maths, we have been learning about which words mean plus, minus, divide and times.

lining up

Last of all for this week, we got a special award from Mrs Dyer for our lining up – see how good we can be!

Latest information on Cybersafety

    What is she reading?

Would you let your child read an adults only book? Do you let your child use the internet unsupervised? Do you know what they are doing while online?

For the latest information on all things technological relevant to your children click on this link. Clicks.

It is important as parents of technologically aware children that you learn as much as you can about the worlds they access.

This site has some excellent information for you. Also if you scroll down the sidebar of this blog you will find further information about keeping your children safe in a cyberworld.

Cybersafety . . . some advice

Young people’s abuse of the web has hit the headlines on more than one occasion this week.

Unfortunately the technology and the ready access to it has come under fire.

The NSW Department of Education and Training has several very good sites, one and two which give parents advice about how they can support their children in the responsible and ethical use of the Internet and web 2.0 tools.

The Australian Federal Government also offers sound advice on how to use the internet as the positive and powerful tool it is. There is a great Internet Safety site for primary students called Cyberquoll.

There are also some fine international sites, especially from the UK, such as Thinkuknow.

Click on the links above to find out about how as parents you can support your child in the development of a responsible attitude towards the internet, web 2.0 tools and technology.