Federation for Stage 3

In Terms 3 and 4, to complement Stage 3 students’ class work in the areas of “Gold!” (Human society & its environment) and financial literacy (Priority Schools Program), the weekly library lessons will be providing field knowledge opportunities and Guided Inquiry research activities for the subsequent HSIE unit on Australian Federation.

By way of orientation, I have found these introductory Youtube clips:


A continent for a nation – Australian Federation.


Australia – A Federation in stamps.

This next clip is certainly both persuasive and irreverent in nature:


A brief history of Australia.

We are not sure what our final product might be, but these clips may well generate some discussion of the myriad of possibilities.

My great QR code adventure

About a year ago, I started hearing references to QR codes, and noticed the distinctive, square barcodes turning up on advertising posters, business cards and websites. I did a little further investigation when I received my upgraded iPhone4 in late 2011 – and even uploaded a recommended QR code app, I-nigma, from iTunes – but, apart from a few tests, I haven’t really done very much with this aspect of technology.

But it certainly seems to have some clever possibilities.

In preparation for my presentations at Friday’s MANTLE conference, I created QR codes for the websites I would be referencing in my talks. For example:

QRCodeBooked Inn blog

Blue

GoldQuest

QRCode
GoldQuest blog

Blue

Penrith PS Library wiki

QRCode
Penrith PS Library wiki

Blue

Penrth PS rappers and bloggers

QRCode
Penrith PS rappers & bloggers

Blue

PhotoPeach

QRCode
My PhotoPeach profile page

Blue

QRCode
PMBW TL professional learning group

QRCode
QR codes Kaywa generator

QRCode
NSW DEC CLIC raps and book raps

Blue

Endangered animals

QRCode
Stage 3’s Endangered animals: beyond the rainforest

Blue

Gold fever!

Gold nuggetIn Week 1 of this term, my Stage 3 students did a pre-test about bushrangers (they are studying “Gold” as an HSIE unit in class), writing down everything they thought we knew, or would like to find out, about bushrangers. We all realised they didn’t know very much. Yet.

Last week, the four classes had a brief look at a 2008 CBCA shortlisted information book, Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter (Black Dog, 2007) edited by Carole Wilkinson. Coincidentally, it was a book from our recent Book Fair! It will hopefully help us all to get to know the real Ned Kelly. The students were surprised that Ned Kelly felt he had rightful reasons to be a bushranger, and to be very angry with the police of the day.

This week, the students have been marking up an article with “PMIs” (“plus”, “minus” and “interesting”) to help them explore what they know about bushrangers and life on the historic goldfields of Australia. The chapter was “Law on the Goldfields” (pp 24-25) from Gold in Australia (Macmillan, 1996) by Bruce McClish.

Next week they will start entering data as blog entries at a new blog site, Gold quest started up yesterday by my teacher-librarian colleague, Jenny Scheffers, so we can share our information with the students at her school, through guided enquiry and WebQuests. It is sure to be a steep learning curve for both educators and students, but we are looking forward to it.  To be continued…