Week 6 and Week 7 Term 1

Hi Families,

It is hard to believe that the end of term is firmly in sight!!  Our block of Immersion under the banner of Inventive Thinking has come to a close and five project based learning groups have emerged as a result.  Please look out for emails home as we ask for your help and expertise as well as any contacts you may have to assist us in our projects.

• The Town Planners
• Chemical Reactions
• Inventing Recipes
• The Outside Area
• Wearable Art

What else have we been up to over the past couple of weeks?????

Literacy in Action!!

Following our passions!  Zoe's research and clay plane based around her reading on Amelia Earhart.

Focussed, targeted follow up reading activities.

Independent reading of our Immersion resources.

Meaningful spelling activities set to challenge!

Maths in Action!!

Continuing on with our work in Statistics, we have been creating bar graphs as a way of presenting data that we have collected.

We have investigated probability by flipping a counter with different coloured sides and rolling a dice.

A fun game of Uno with our friends.  Great for collaboration and maths skills!

Working on word problems.  We wrote on a post it note how we got the answer to show that problems can be solved in different ways.

Art

We have persevered with our close observational drawing over the past few weeks with some amazing results.  I think a beautiful bunch of flowers helped!

What do we do on a Thursday??

Here we are working with Anna during our Art session.  We are so lucky that she brings in amazing resources for us to work with really helping us to get our creative juices flowing!!

Sharing our Treasures

 Thank you to all of you who have brought in your treasures to share with us.  This is always a busy and popular space in the common.  Freya and Kaylana did some great research on Friday, identifying some of the rocks and crystals that we have on display.

Our Trip to the Secondary School

Our interest in Rocks has continued so we went to the secondary school to visit Danielle who is a rock expert!!!  We carried out three different experiments-

• Creating a solution with calcium carbonate and hydrochloric acid
• Testing the porousness of different types of rocks
• The streak test-looking at hard and soft rocks

The absolute highlight was making a crystal out of a copper sulphate and water solution that has been saturated and heated.  See the last photo!!  The children can still hardly believe it!!!!  

Following on from our day with Carole Dweck, Guy Claxton and Jamie Fitzgerald, we have created a 'Quote Wall' as a way of sharing what we learnt with the children.  There is a range of contributors, including Miss Layla Marnewick!!!  I saw this at the secondary school and thought it was worth adding!!

And finally....... a photo of us on Animal Dress Up Day!

Have a great week everyone!

Week 5 Term 1

Hi Families,

We are already more than half way through our first term together in LC2!

Another busy week of learning.  Take a look at what has been on top for us........

Imaginary Friends and their Houses!

The creations are coming thick and fast!  Not only have the imaginary friends generated some great descriptive writing and narratives, we are also seeing some great collaboration as we work together to create a variety of homes. With all the different resources and materials at hand, it really has been a test as to whether we can manage our resources well and keep our working space organised and tidy.

Using our Outside Space

It has been great to be able to use our outside space this week.  We have been doing close observational drawings using pencil and pastel of the flowers we planted.

Rocks

Our interest in rocks is still growing strong, with lots of you bringing in your treasures.  Thanks to Kate who today brought in an assortment of very special treasures including a large crystal from Europe and a selection of rocks from Africa.  Our rock table is a popular spot and it was great to see some of you pouring over the new resources and books this week.  Some of you also chose to spend time drawing some of the rocks.  Let's meet up this week and talk about where you would like to go next.

Descriptive Writing

We have been working really hard on our descriptive writing.  This week some of us focussed on setting descriptions with Kerry and others developed their descriptions into narratives with Sharyn. We used success criteria to ensure we were including all the elements we needed.  We worked through the editing process together and we also spent time with a critical friend, sharing and discussing ways to improve our pieces of writing.

Here are a couple of examples of setting descriptions based around the following photo-

It was the morning.  The sun shone on the magical hill.  The river was blue and sparkled in the sunlight.  The castle was made out of rubies, sapphires and gold. The trees were green and tall as towers.  All of a sudden the sky turned grey. There was a storm coming.  Sofia

The clouds in the sky hung low in the evening.  When all of a sudden a war started.  There were bombs flying all over the place.  Then the war ended as quickly as it had started.  There were big holes everywhere.  Out of nowhere an enchanted castle appeared.  The river next to it was sparkling.  The enchanted castle was close to the little cottage.  The little cottage was close to a big tree. In the big tree there was a beautiful bird.  It had a lot of babies in it's nest.  The nest was made out of diamonds and gold.  And that bird that could make a nest out of diamonds and gold was the reason for the war.  Antos

It was a foggy day.  The clouds were grey.  The trees were blowing with the breeze.  All of a sudden the breeze got stronger.  It turned into a fierce wind. And the castle that was made out of diamonds, rubies and gold was under attack.  Zachariah

In the quiet breeze the sun shone down.  The forest trees waved in the wind as the castle glazed in sunlight.  Below the grand castle was a tiny village.  It was the first day of Spring.  The beautiful flowers growing in the fields swayed in the wind.  The river glimmered as the air was getting hotter.  Lauren

Our Immersion Journey

This week some of us got to make terrariums with Lisa.  This experience continued to spark an interest in planting for some of us and a desire to develop our outside space.

We had the opportunity to cook with Daniel, baking scones and adding different flavours.

It was good to see some of us access some great books that we have out in our learning space.  Again a good way to spark an interest.

Together we brainstormed and recorded our journey so far.  Our interests seemed to fall into Scientific Experiments, Design Technology, Food Technology, Fabric, Outside Space.  We went with our gut and chose an area to brainstorm further.  Some of us moved to other groups when we started to share our ideas. We will keep adding to this brainstorm as we start to make decisions about our Project Based Learning.

Student Led Workshops

Some of us have been eagerly planning Student Led Workshops and we got the opportunity to run them this week. All the participants were very keen and enjoyed the experiences.  The content and leadership of the workshops varied so we will spend next week reflecting so that we can continue to improve them.

Leila and I at Luca's Spanish workshop

James and Andre running their drawing trucks workshop

Layla running her drawing colourful birds workshop

Issy running her drawing dinosaurs workshop

Yara running her workshop to create insect art for our outside space

Zachariah, Rico, Justin, Aaren and Mikelis running their soccer workshop down in the gym

And finally!!!  Just in case you forgot what we all looked like.....here we are in all our glory!!!

Serious......

.....and silly!!!

Week 4 Term 1

Hi Families,

It has been another busy week full of exciting learning opportunities.  The children are managing their time well and there is a nice, settled environment in LC2.  It has also been great to observe new friendships forming across the common.

What has been going on this week?

We have really enjoyed our fitness programme this week.  Increasing our fitness levels whilst enjoying playing games together and developing new skills.

Statistics

We are continuing to focus on gathering, presenting and analysing data.  We enjoyed asking each other a suitable question and then entering the data on a tally chart and creating a pictograph which we then analysed.  We have also looked at repeated addition and multiplication.

Editing

We have been looking at sentence structure whilst writing our descriptions.  We had a go at adding full stops and capital letters to form correct sentences.

As part of our focus on the Descriptive Writing genre, we have also been looking at common nouns, proper nouns, adjectives and adverbs.  Challenge your child to come up with examples of each!!

Week 3 Term 1

Hi Families,

This week we have been busy participating in our Ignition Days for Immersion. All the workshops have been linked to our overarching theme, Inventive Thinking.  The skills that run alongside Inventive Thinking are - 

• Adaptability and managing complexity
• Self-direction
• Curiosity, creativity and risk taking
• Higher order thinking and sound reasoning

Check out these photos to see the different workshops.

Design Challenge with Reid

The children were challenged to create with boxes!  It was wonderful to see the range of ideas they came up with and their ability to collaborate successfully with others.

Colour Experiments with Rosie

The children explored different experiments, all involving colour.  They looked at what happens when you introduce washing up liquid to milk and food colouring, how dye and water mix and how to make a colour explosion using baking soda, vinegar and food colouring.

Mask Making with Anna

The children looked at different examples of masks and were presented with a range of materials to create their own.

Design Challenge with Ann

The children were given a range of materials like toothpicks and pipe cleaners and challenged to come up with an invention.  They were also given a piece of A4 paper with one line and a squiggle drawn on it.  They then had to base their picture around them.

Goop with Kerry

We explored solids, liquids and gases, brainstorming examples and using each other to illustrate the movement of molecules and atoms in each!!  We then followed instructions to make goop, a non-newtonian fluid as it acts like a liquid when poured but acts as a solid when force is acting on it.  What fun we had getting really messy!

Sandwich Making with Amy

The children enjoyed experimenting with and tasting different flavour combinations to put in their sandwiches.  It was great to see them willing to taste new things.

The children really enjoyed the workshops and upon reflection generated some really great questions and wonderings some of which are below.  Take a look at our Immersion Journey Wall to see some more reflections and wonderings and watch this space as we begin to enter into our Project Based Learning Phase.

I wonder how when you have a jar of water and you put the food colouring in it makes it look like octopus legs.  I wonder what makes it spread out?  Caitlyn

I want to know what is it in the soap that makes the food colouring do that.  Aaren

I wonder how the colours exploded into a big star.  I think it might be that everything mixes together and creates a reaction.  Lucy

I wonder why the goop felt hard but slowly the particles let go and slipped through your fingers.  Layla

Can I add a motor to my cardboard car.  How?  William