Mrs Bryan’s Bright Bunch

We are all getting very excited about our camp, especially since it is now less than 2 weeks away!!

Last week you should have recieved 3 notes: a consent form, a health form, and a list of what to bring. If you didn’t receive these please check your child’s bag or book tray, failing that see me or Bev for replacements. It is important that we get these back promptly so that we can let the campsite know of any relevant information.

Thankyou to the many families that have already paid. If you have not already paid please do so promptly as payment is now due. If you are having problems paying please see me or Sue in the front office as we can usually sort something out, and we’d hate for anyone to miss out on the experience of camp.

Some of the activities that we will be doing are: visiting the Whale Centre; Granite Island Penguin Tour; visiting Urrimbirra Wildlife Sanctuary; exploring wind power through kite making and flying (this of course links to our current Unit of Inquiry – Energy).

Over the last few weeks groups opf students have been working with our librarian on topics related to My Body, My Job. They have been identifying key words in text, then using these to compose brief oral reports to the class. On Thursday the last of the students presented theirs to the class. All students did a really good job, and it is great to see their growth in this area over the year. We’ve come a long way from morning talks that involve bringing a toy from home!

We are now starting our new Unit of Inquiry into Energy. See the outline and the links on the new page in this blog called ‘Energy’.

As you know I was absent last week as I was looking after my daughter after her oral surgery. She is now much, much better and I thank all of you for your good wishes.
On my return to school on Thursday I received an email from the Education Department’s Curriculum Manager in Science, inviting me to be part of the Primary Mathematics and Science Strategy. This entails training from Monday to Wednesday during week 7 and will be based on Primary Connections Facilitator Training. This Strategy is very new and will roll out next year, extending to 2013. This is a great opportunity for someone from our school to be involved and after much discussion with Chris, (mainly over the lousy timing of the course,) I have accepted.
I have put a little information below, but if you would like to find out more then head to this link:
http://www.scimas.sa.edu.au/scimas/pages/PSMS/Intro/?reFlag=1

“The Primary Mathematics and Science Strategy aims to achieve sustainable, system-wide improvement, in student learning of mathematics and science, from Reception to Year 7 in South Australian public schools.”

What a busy time we’ve had!!
In the last couple of weeks we have been lucky enough to have 3 guest speakers. The first was L’s Mum, a doctor, who talked to us all about the digestive system. We all had a turn at listening to our heart, lungs and stomachs with the stethoscopes that she brought. The second was Bev’s daughter, a physiotherapist, who spoke to us about the skeletal and muscular system. Last week we had R’s Dad, a dentist, who talked to us about what dentists do, food that is good for teeth and what to avoid, and cleaning our teeth.
Thank you so much to those people who gave up their time to come and share their knowledge with us. We’ve certainly learnt a lot!
Small groups of children have been working with Mrs Robertson in the library, learning all about key words and research. They then do a mini oral presentation to the class about what they have found out over the 3 lessons. So far they are proving to be of a high standard. Well done!

Last Thursday the ladies from Grab 5 visited again. This time we made apple pancakes (which tied in really well with German Day the next day). They were delicious and those of us who were open minded and risk takers tried them with natural Greek yoghurt and honey. YUMMMM
On Friday we had German Day. The children did a fabulous job with their performance based on the Very Hungry Caterpillar. After recess we made paper mache ‘luftballoon’ lanterns to celebrate St Martin’s Day, a German celebration in early November on which our Coro traditional Christmas lantern march is based. Hopefully at least some of them will work out
Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Welcome back.

Our vegetable patch is beginning to take shape. Hopefully we will be ready to begin planting early next week.

In maths we have been looking at symmetry and division. The children have made a variety of symmetrical patterns as well as trying some tricky symmetry problems and in writing we are currently experimenting with writing a puppet play.

On Thursday we were visited by the people from the Grab 5 program. They talked to us about the 4 things that we need for a healthy body – healthy food, exercise, sleep and water. The children then sorted foods into the 5 food groups and made a healthy eating poster. This program will run for 5 weeks, culminating in a cooking activity. The cost for this program is $5 which will be deducted from the excursion fund. Look for the slideshow of their work in this blog. Also, don’t forget to check out the online activites for My body, My job. I have put a heap of links on the relevant page in this blog.

Coming up in a couple of weeks is the visit from Music is Fun Band. They have been visiting our school for several years and the children always really enjoy their performances. I’m not sure of the cost yet, or whether there is enough left in the excursion fund to cover it, but will let you know when I know.

Don’t forget that we are having an ICT sharing evening on Tuesdayat 6pm, where your children will be sharing their e-portfolios with you. This is a collection of their work throughout the year, mainly PYP, that they have put into a webpage format. Many thanks to Jonathan for his help in computing throughout this year   Please bring along a USB if you would like to keep a copy of their work.

I hope you are able to enjoy at least some time off with your children these holidays We are certainly having some lovely weather at the moment, which gives us lots more options for things to do!

Bev and I went down to Victor Harbour on Monday to check out our camp site and meet with the manager. The camp itself looks very well organised and exceptionally clean. Their facilities will be great for kite making, with a big indoor area to make as well as a huge open space outside to fly them!!

On the first day of next term we are hoping that the equipment for our class Veggie Patch will arrive. Hopefully it will be ready for planting on the first Wednesday back. If you would like to help out by donating a punnet of fast growing veggies or herbs (lettuce varieties, carrots, parsley, tomatoes etc) we would love to hear from you We hope to use some of the vegetables in our next unit of inquiry ‘My body, my job’.

If your children are bored why not encourage them to visit some of the links on our blog? There are many links for our units of inquiry, as well as lots of games. I have recently added a page on our next Unit of Inquiry – My body, my job. Of course, I recommend that you visit these with your child, at least initially so that you know exactly what the sites that they are visiting have on them.

Don’t forget that the first Monday back is a student free day as all teachers are participating in a training day on ‘Inquiry’.

Enjoy the rest of your holidays…see you on Tuesday week

Thanks to all the wonderful parents who helped out today. We certainly learnt a lot!
We found things like bananas, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla at the Botanic Gardens, and loads and loads of different grains, beans and rices at the Central Market. One group managed to find 8 different types of Moon Cakes too.
When we got back to school we shared the lists we made of the things we saw and then wrote and drew about our day. The children did some really great work on this
Check out the photos that our budding photographers took.

Don’t forget that this Wednesday we are going to the Botanic Gardens and Central Market as part of our inquiry into Field to Table. Thank you to the many parents who have offered to come and help us at the market. See you there

Also on Thursday it is our Jump off Day. Please remind your child to wear comfy clothes and shoes for this.

What a week we’ve had!

The children really did themselves proud last night when they shared their knowledge about their country with you. It was great to hear all the positive comments! As parents you all did a wonderful job of helping your child through the process of an oral presentation, prompting them with questions – some of them quite tricky!! I believe this is an important part of PYP, and a skill that your children will certainly develop and become comfortable with over time.

Our next Unit of Inquiry is ‘ Field to Table’. I have added a page down the left sidebar under the PYP page. It has lots of web resources as well as all the information you need about the unit. We will be starting this unit next week and hope to begin our Veggie Patch next Thursday. I’m ordering the stuff that we need tonight Thanks Mr Bayly for helping to fund this…and for helping to organise the preparation of the site!

The children really enjoyed all of the science activities they were involved in this afternoon, and most had some interesting things to take home. Thanks to H’s Mum who came and helped me run the 4 activities in my room. I would have loved to share photos with you – but I was a bit busy to take photos

Next Tuesday is Bee Safe on Bikes. Children will need to bring their bikes to school in the morning. We will park them under the verandah outside our room.

Next Friday is Grandparents Day for Book Week -  the theme is Book Safari and we are encouraging all children to dress up to celebrate. They can dress up as any book character (or movie if you get stuck!) but we discourage Superheroes as the children can get a bit too excited and silly.

Currently I have 3 helpers for the trip to the market – the yellow note that went home on Wednesday night. I would love to have at least 1 more so that we can form groups of 5. Ideally I would like to have 2 or 3 more volunteers to form groups of 4.

Thankyou all for returning your notes so promptly – I know that it has been a really busy time lately and it certainly helps me a lot if I don’t have to chase notes!!

I will be out on Monday morning (Janita will be taking the class) but I will be in at 12.

Well, we’ve had a busy start to the week with cooking on both days so far!

Yesterday we made fruit skewers and pancakes. The children particularly enjoyed the fruit skewers, with one child who rarely eats fruit telling me that he really liked it!!!…a breakthrough perhaps?

Today we had a true science experiment moment when we tried to bake bread. The dough hook came apart from the mixer, consequently the first loaf did not bake at all well!! However we persisted and problem solved what went wrong and the second loaf worked out very well We also made butter to spread on the bread…the photos show the amount of effort the children put into the shaking of the jar!

Yesterday we experimented with shadows and light. You migh still be able to see our recording on the netball court! We also investigated how to make a shadow disappear. We did this inside using torches.

Today we began planning the Vegetable Garden that we are going to make outside our classroom. This links with our next 2 units of inquiry ‘ Field to table’ and ‘My body, My job’. On that, we are looking for a milking cow close to the school that we could visit to see it being milked. If you know of anyone who could help us with this please let me know.

We will be practicing presenting our country information at our Country Expo tomorrow ready for tomorrow (Wednesday) night. I look forward to seeing you there.

On Monday Bev and I went along to the second day of the SACSA (SA curriculum) peer moderation project. The purpose of this is to  ensure consistency in teacher judgement across the state. For this day our task was to gather work samples in the area of SOSE (Studies of Society and Environment) and assess them as to whether they indicated the student was working at the standard required in year 2, below or above it. We provided collections of evidence for 5 students (which was 1 more than was required). We were very pleased that 100% of our judgements were supported by the Peer Moderation team.This was particularly positive as we not only use the SACSA documents to plan, but also the IBPYP documents.  We also moderated 4 collections of evidence from another SA school. During the next day, in November, we will be moderating random collections of evidence from around the state.

Last night we visited Bellevue Heights school for a cluster team meeting in IB. It was a really interesting evening. We gained many ideas in terms of planning for our Pre- authorisation phase, due to occur early next year, as well as affirming our current practice. To capitalise on the things we learnt at that meeting, and on Monday, Bev and I will be planning the next 3 Units of Inquiry tomorrow.

Later last night I attended an information session on the new SACE (South Australian Certificate of Education). This replaces the existing model which was introduced in 1992. Based on this I expect that the new SACE will be relevant for your children when they reach year 11 and 12. It sounds like the best parts of the old SACE have been retained, whilst catering for a wider range of interests and career paths. If you would like more information on this either chat to me (although I’m by no means an expert!), or contact Blackwood High School.