We also had a visit from author Bruce Pickworth, a former teacher at our school. He introduced his book The godwits to students in Class 23, and all of Stage 2 and Stage 3.
City Circle Loop signage, Museum Station, Sydney, NSW.
A Flickr slideshow about Museum Station, Sydney, is HERE. Stage 2 students are researching underground railway systems as part of their science and technology unit, Buildings and Bridges.
And on through the underground stations (and Circular Quay) of Sydney’s City Circle Loop:
In Term 3, our Stage 1 and Early Stage 1 students will be investigating the topic of Winter, and then moving on the Aboriginal Dreaming Stories.
I had promised to share a childhood favourite winter book from my own collection, Snow by Roy McKie & PD Eastman, which is a hard title to find, Down Under, in Dr Suess’s classic Cat in the Hat Beginner Books series. I bought this particular copy during my White Christmas 2012 trip to Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, where, way back in 1984, my penpal had taught me how to make snowmen and snow angels, just like in the book I’d read in 1966!
Next week, we will be comparing this book to the more recent, There was a cold lady who swallowed some snow! by Lucille Colandro & Jared Lee. The school library’s resident artifical snowman is actually a stage prop from my 2006 Stage 1’s assembly item performance of this book. This was also when I learned, via Wikipedia, about the inate and significant differences between British and American snowmen. (Count the bodyparts!)
Snowman built by Mr McLean and his penpal, Ann Arbor MI, USA, January 1984 (Three body parts)
Snowman built by Mr McLean and his class, November 1996 (Two body parts)
The artificial snowman finally experience a real hailstorm, Penrith NSW, December 2010
Penrith PS in December: a white Christmas?
Please click HERE if the music track doesn’t play.
Miniature snowman in Ann Arbor MI, USA, December 2012 (Three body parts)
Even artificial snowmen must do their research! Penrith NSW, December 2010
Our first Aboriginal Dreaming Story, in Week 3, will be about the Rainbow Serpent. Past Kindergarten students, now in Year 3, made some great artwork last cycle and it is preserved in a FlickrSLIDESHOW. We also made good use of a Youtube animation, located HERE.
Stage 3 students will be undertaking a Guided Inquiry exercise this term on the topic of Antarctica. For most classes, the science & technology aspects will be part of the work taught by Ms Stockton, the RFF (Release-from-Face-to-Face) teacher, so the library sessions will emphasise the achievement of HSIE (Human society & its environment) outcomes, and will complement the field knowledge being developed in S&T.
The following useful resources were invaluable the last time the curriculum cycle visited “Antarctica”.
As with last year’s Guided Inquiry units, the brief clips and links will be discussed and consolidated after considering the students’ “Plus, minus, interesting” matrices, which will continue to develop the students’ note-taking skills.
Congratulations to Class 3/4M for creating this colourful, three-dimensional display for the library on the Crichton Award nominated book, “The lighthouse kids of Maatsuyker Island: a true Tasmanian adventure”! This and other class displays are in my Flickr slideshow.
Our K-2 students are about to start investigating Chinese New Year, as a part of a HSIE unit, “Celebrations”. Libby Gleeson & Armin Greder’s “Big dog” will be a feature picture book, as will Di Wu & Kathy Huang’s “Are you a dragon?”
Rabbit float on display near Central Station, 2011.
Rabbit pennants in George St, Sydney, 2011.
Chinese dragon and lanterns, SCHM.
Chinese Zodiac animals, SCHM.
Chinese lanterns, SCHM.
Emperor Robbie Rules in 1/2S.
Chinese lantern in 1/2S.
2011 Chinese New Year pennant, George St, Sydney – notice
the numerals 2, 0, 1, 1, making the shape of a rabbit.
My photo (above) inspired a quick and easy craft activity for the students in our 2-6 hearing support unit yesterday:
Student comment: “I saw the Frog Prince and his golden ball in a bowl, but I think that is the same bowl Chook used last year when he was being an astronaut!”
Today, the students at my school had their first experiences in our newly built school library. I’ve spent three weeks unpacking the book stock (from long-term storage) and decorating with new and nostalgic elements. The students were full of questions, but I used Circle Time to maximise and equalise all the the talking and listening. It was a great day. The looks on their faces, as they explored (hands free) all the new nooks and crannies made all the planning and hard work worth while.
Our historic school milk bottles are now enshrined in a shadow box.
The quote from a framing store, to have the bottles placed into a customised shadow box was $200 but I did it for about $40, thanks to parts bought from Spotlight. The inside text reads: Penrith Public School’s library stands on the site of a portable library building, and before that a previous portable building. In 2010, workmen excavating the foundations found these “school milk” bottles buried deep in the rubble. One is embossed “1/3 PINT PASTEURISED MILK”. See the original blog entry of our archeological find HERE.
48 more photos of display elements ready for today’s opening are HERE.
Here is Stage 2’s latest “Book Week” video podcast, which works best with the latest version of Quicktime. Click HERE to view the podcast.
I was able to play this new trailer to a group of students who were contributors to a brainstorm, only a week earlier, for many of the sequences, character suggestions, dialogue snippets. But the final shot list and script had been developed by a different group. It was such fun watching individual faces light up when “their” suggestion was suddenly up on the screen, as part of the cohesive whole. The power of collaborative writing, producing a final work which is greater than the sum of all the already-great smaller parts.
If you have trouble viewing Quicktime podcasts, please try the Flickr slideshow instead. When the slideshow opens, click “Show info” to read the captions.
Bear and Chook’s space adventure: fun with Kindergarten book rappers in the school library today, as part of the Bear and Chook books rap. During Circle Time, the students created three new adventures for Bear and Chook and we uploaded the photos as a Flickr slideshow:
I also created a more involved PowerPoint presentation, in preparation for an ASLA professional development on Saturday at my school. It’s going to be a little strange showing slides of the shoestring makeover of a wall – on the actual wall that was made over!