Purple Dragons Class News

We’ve had another lovely week in the Purple Dragons. Mothers’ day has been in everyone’s minds and we’ve enjoyed reading The Trouble with Mum and My Mum in class.
In maths we’ve started exploring 3 dimensional shapes and learning the differences between edges, faces and corners (vertices). Our set of wooden shapes is very popular and today we had fun working out which combinations can be stacked and which are a bit unstable…
A highlight of literacy groups this week has been silly sentences. The students working on other activities are always keen to join the silly sentence table at the end of the session.
At Thursday’s meeting we discussed the fact that families can be busy and homework can be just one more thing to cram into the day. I’m very happy for homework to be handed in on Monday if that’s easier, and if sometimes it doesn’t happen it’s not a problem. I also have to apologise for the confusion over the procedure sheet that went home. It is meant to be an optional activity to reinforce the classwork we’re doing on procedures. It can be completed at any stage during the term.
Thanks to everyone who came along to Thursday’s meet the teacher evening. It was great to meet parents I hadn’t had a chance to speak with, and nice to see some familiar faces as well.
Happy Mothers’ Day to all mothers and have a great weekend.
Regards,
Winona Lukabyo

This week has flown and the students are getting into the swing of the term. We had our first buddy groups session, which went extremely well. It will be exciting to see the children working together for our upcoming project day later in the term.

We read the story Samson’s Titanic Journey, and the students wondered how the ship’s captain could have missed seeing an iceberg big enough to sink his ship! As part of our science lesson on Wednesday, we made and floated some “icebergs” of our own and realised how little of the ice is visible above the water.

The hands on investigations are proving very popular and we’ll be doing lots more in the context of our term’s text type, procedures.

I hope to see lots of you on Thursday at 6 for meet the teacher.

Kind regards,

Winona Lukabyo.

A great start to term 2:
I’m delighted to be the Year 1 Purple Dragons’ teacher for the rest of 2012. I was lucky to be able to spend some time getting to know the class before the holidays, so we’ve had a lovely smooth start to the term.
Thanks to all the parents who have made me feel so welcome and offered their help in the classroom. Reading groups will begin again next week along the same schedule as in term 1. I’ll set a date for a “meet the teacher” as soon as possible as I’m keen to get to know everyone and answer any questions you may have about my plans for the class.

Week 1:
It’s been an odd first week with Anzac Day in the middle, but we’ve managed to get plenty done nevertheless. A highlight was today’s science experiment on floating and sinking. The students predicted and tested the buoyancy of three different spheres and a lot of us were surprised at the result! We’re looking forward to more discoveries as the unit progresses.

Please feel free to say hello and introduce yourself any afternoon in the playground. I’m looking forward to an exciting and productive year with the Purple Dragons.

Kind regards,
Winona Lukabyo

Grand-friend’s Day

What a great turn out we had for our annual Grand-friend’s Day celebration today! It was so lovely to be able to meet many of our children’s extended family and friends, and share our school day with them.

I hope everyone enjoyed the special assembly as much as I did! The Stringbeans, which many of our Purple Dragons are a part of, did a fantastic job  – even with a somewhat “un-seasoned” conductor in toe (me!).

I was really proud of our whole class performance of the song “Secret Agent”. Despite being in the somewhat scary position of being the first class on stage, I think we handled our tummy – butterflies quite well! Some children really turned on their inner-performers, ” hamming it up” and taking their secret agent persona’s very seriously indeed (with extremely comedic results!). I was torn between laughter and tears, as I’m sure many of our parents and Grand-friend’s were.

In our class we showed our Grand-friends some of the work we have been doing both at home (our family tree leaves displayed in or reading corner) and at school. We also showed them how to use the “Active Board” and demonstrated the application of some of what we have learnt in our Science Unit “What’s for Lunch” through a game called “Farm to Plate Challenge”. In this game, the children need to drag and drop 3 pictures in sequence that represent some steps of how something they may eat for a meal at home transformed from it’s original state of plant or animal.

In preparation for Grand-friend’s day, I used the “Active Board”  as a concrete example  to discuss as a class how different classrooms were in the past for our teachers and parents, and even more so for our Grand-friends. I also shared my experiences as a child sometimes having family at a school event, and other times not, and what I did in both situations. I was really proud to see our children putting what we had discussed in action – some initiating  joining in with other families, and others inviting their friends to join them when they could see they were on their own.

The day has also given cause for me to reflect on my family history and connection with the school. My own Grandmother, and some of her siblings and cousins, were amongst the first children to have attended Australia Street School in the early 1900s. My grandmother’s uncle was one of the key councillors involved in the original establishment of the school itself. Looking at the photo displayed in the hallway of a class around that time, I can’t help but be somewhat haunted by a child that looks very much like my mother did at school sitting amongst the rows of small children… Could it be my grandmother?  How different was school for her? If she were alive today, what would she say about me being a teacher here, and what could she share about the past?

Saying “goodbye”

As many of you know by now, my last week of being the Purple Dragons class teacher is fast upon us. I am moving on for a number of reasons, both personal and professional, and my decision has not been without due consideration, care (and subsequently many sleeplesss nights!). Days like today, where I have felt so proud of our class, and so privelledged to be apart of such a lovely community of families, makes it very hard to say goodbye…

Those of you I have already spoken to know that I have already began the process of transition for the children by trying to frame the situation in a positive and exciting way. We have began to talk about having a “brand-new class teacher” and wondering about what they will be like - will it be someone we already know, or a big surprise? Will they be a man or a woman? What special new things will they bring to our class? We have also discussed how we could welcome our new teacher, show them where things are, and make them feel at home. We were able to talk about how we welcomed a new student to our class this year, and asked her what it was like to settle in.

I am pleased to say that already the beautiful “Purple Dragons” have already shown that they are taking this responsibility very seriously! I was out of class today for a short while to help the Stringbeans with their performance rehearsal and Ms Lykabyo stepped in to replace me. She reported back that not only were they “flawless”, but that they had taken special care to explain things about their class, the “rockstar”  system, and generally orient her to the room.

They really are a lovely group -  I’m going to have a  very hard time keeping my emotions intact over the following week!

Thanks again for reading

Vanessa Gentle

Grand-friends Day

Grand-friends day is now only a week away… we had our first whole school rehearsal of  special assembly items today, and the event looks sure to get some toes tapping!

Please encourage your Grand-friends to come along and join the fun – not only is it an opportunity for them to be a part of one of our most important fundraising events of the year, it gives the children a chance to reflect on the value and significance  of  the older people in their lives. As the name suggests, it doesn’t have to be a grand-parent that attends, as many of our community have family that live a long way away.  If your family has an older person in their lives befitting the title “grand-friend”, please  make them feel welcome to be part of the celebrations!

Tabloid Sports Day

What a great event – a big “thanks” goes out to Miss Richardson for booking and coordinating such a well organised and fun-filled day…

My activity was “ball fling” where children either worked alone or in a pair to use a special net, pulled taut,  to launch their ball or bean bag into the air. Once we got the method for launch sorted out, the next challenges were getting it as high as we could, and then (even trickier still) catching it!

Supervising a station meant that I couldn’t see all of the activities in action, but judging by the happy faces I saw, and the photos after the event, each activity was as fun as the next. If my levels of enjoyment and exhaustion are anything to go by, I imagine that the children slept rather well last Thursday night!

Maths

Work on graphing has continued, and late last week we were able to apply this skill to our investigations in our Science topic, What’s for Lunch? After being part of some Year Two surveys (favourite colour and favourite toys) we were ready to practice what we had learnt about voting, and our skills in graphing to our own survey – What is your favourite fruit? We have even already learnt how to manipulate results (scary!) to make a more interesting graph, some children even giving their vote to some of the less popular fruits in a gesture of sympathy when they found that their actual favourite fruit was not represented in the 5 choices offered! We discussed the results and were able to identify and compare factors like most popular and least popular.

The children really seem to be consolidating this skill, and I was absolutely stoked when a parent shared with me an insight into how her son was applying what we were learning at school in the home context. She showed me a photo of a LEGO construction he had made. When she had asked him what he was making he answered “a column graph” – and indeed it was! They then discussed what he had represented further, and she was delighted to see that he was able to communicate what the brick columns represented (most popular, least popular, numbers, etc).

I feel so privileged that a parent thought to share this with me – moments like these really make being an educator feel really worthwhile!

Thanks again for reading!

Vanessa Gentle

Irish dancing with Miss Mc Ginty

In celebration of St Patrick’s Day (and our new Year Two Teacher’s cultural heritage) the children will be doing an Irish Dance performance this week at our special Friday afternoon assembly! They have picked up the dance amazingly quickly, and are super excited about performing for their families – and really, who doesn’t enjoy a good old fashioned jig?!

Come along and join the fun at our special assembly this Friday at 2:30pm.

Literacy

Literary recount writing

We have continued work on our Literary recounts this week, using the same framework as last week applied to a new story, “Dear Dragon”. This time instead of mapping out the whole recount on the board as a group, we discussed the elements and specific story events we needed to cover instead, then tried to do the writing independently. This “radical” move by the teacher was met with some small amounts of anxiety and initial protest , but I am proud to say the Purple Dragons got in and “had a go” nonetheless. The children seem to be picking up this more formalised style of recount quite well so far, and I’m sure with continued practice will become more confident with the process.

Home Readers

From  next week I will be trialling a new approach to home reading and shifting some children’s home reader levels in response to; my observations in Literacy Groups, parent feedback about home readers and home work, and completion of individual bench marking assessment. Please check your child’s red note bag on Monday as I will be distributing individual slips with information about your child’s home reader level, areas to concentrate on, and frequency of rotation of text. Let’s concentrate on quality, not quantity!

Science – What’s for Lunch?

This week we reviewed the 5 food groups, their impact on the body, and the amounts we need to maintain good health. We then worked in pairs to create food pyramids, using magazines to cut out pictures of food to paste in the appropriate sections of our template.I was really impressed both by the children’s level of engagement, and the way they were able to work cooperatively with a classmate on the project.

The dialogue surrounding the activity was fantastic – the classroom a healthy buzz of conversation, enquiry, and problem solving. Some of the interesting questions posed were;

• “is ham a meat or a fat?”
• “where do we put honey?”
• “are coconuts nuts or fruit?”
• “do we put beans with vegetables, or with the other beans (legumes etc)?”
• “where do we put wine?”
  
• “why are eggs with meat and fish?”

Mathematics – FROG RACE!

What do you get when you cross origami, cutting, colouring, measurement, graphing and pure skill? An awesome maths session!

• First we prepared our “racing frogs”  – a mini version of our “leap year frogs” customised with racing stripes, numbers or names.
• Next, we practiced flicking our frog’s tails to get them to leap along a table (very, very tricky)
• Then, we raced! (some groups chose to blow their frogs using one breath rather than flick using three flicks – child initiated)
• We measured how far our frogs went using matchsticks, and recorded the figures on a worksheet (we found our graphs were not designed for the more efficient “blow method”, and so Mrs Gentle had to customize our column graphs to suit, ie, units in twos or threes per square)
• Finally, we graphed our results for analysis in a “column graph”

The children were so busy having fun, they barely noticed the challenges of working in small groups – woo hoo!

Thanks for reading!

Vanessa Gentle

Reminder – TABLOID SPORTS CARNIVAL is on next Thursday!

and now, what we’ve been up to this week…

Literary Recount Writing

We have so far looked at recount text type skills primarily through our “weekend adventure” writing, news and our comic strip recount of growing the “magic eggs”. This week however, we have started to move beyond just factual recounts, and tried out “Literary Recounts”. We used a template to guide us in how to re-tell the story “The dragon who couldn’t do dragony things”, which helped us organise our recount in a more formal and structured way. We were able to separate our recount into distinct parts; the beginning (when/where/who), the middle (what happened? In what order did the events take place?) and the end (what happened last?).

Our first attempts were quite impressive! Many children were keen to “have a go” on their own, while some children preferred to stick to the group’s guidelines from the board while they were learning this new skill.  We will continue to practice over the next few weeks to ensure everyone can approach this task with confidence.

Mathematics

We have continued work on TIME, playing lots of active board games on clocks. The children are quite good at digital o’clock and half-past, but have found half past on analogue a little more tricky. After experiencing some confusion when playing part of the game where we move the hands to match the time, we closely examined the workings of our class wall clock (analogue) to see the relationship of the big hand and little hand in terms of speed of rotation.  After this discussion, manipulating the hands and their interdependence seemed to make a lot more sense, and children began to experiment with different ways to get to the answer (rotating the minute hand again and again, or moving the hour hand first, and fine tuning with the minute hand).We will continue our work on clocks over the next few weeks.

Work on DATA and GRAPHING continues, with children practicing their skills in using tally marks, counting, and recording data using a column graph.

Creative Cats

Our artists got busy with collage this week. The children cut small pieces of coloured paper, and glued them onto fruit shapes (linking our art to our science topic, “What’s for Lunch“). Some stuck to traditional colours and neat fill, while others took a more abstract approach, using a variety of colours or making patterns with their collage pieces.

Some of our fruits aren’t quite ready for display yet, but be on the lookout for an enormous fruit salad collage in the following week or so.

Finally – a big thank you to all of the families who have sent in smocks and t-shirts for art – needless to say, our collage was not nearly so messy as last week’s black paint extravaganza, but it’s good to know we have the smocks on hand in the classroom “just in case”!

Thanks again for reading!

Vanessa Gentle

It’s been another busy week in Year One Purple Dragons…

Literacy Groups

We have had our first two days of parent helpers in for reading groups! For the children it is quite exciting to see their parents in the class, but can also be a little bit challenging when they have to share Mum or Dad with others or have to say “good bye” twice in one day. Overall though, they have adjusted quite well – especially given that as a class we were still finding our feet with the activities and transitions anyway! Hopefully we will refine all of this over the next few weeks, and by the end of Term have Literacy Groups “running like a well oiled machine”.

Mathematics

We have been reviewing 2D and some 3D shapes over the last few weeks, mainly through fun interactive games on the active board. Probably our favourite is Boot-Camp II on Maths Lab2, where the aim is to get as many soldiers through a series of shape based challenges as possible to create your graduating class. The challenges were shape/shape name matching, and a slide/flip/turn exercise. Each time we played as a group our score increased, proving to us that practice really “makes perfect”.

One of our favourite maths activities was making 2D Shape Robots. The children were able to combine their fine motor skills (colouring, cutting and pasting), 2D shape knowledge and creative flair to design and make their robots, with some fantastic results! We will be putting the wonderful designs on display later this week.

The class have began work on data and graphing by re-visiting a maths lesson we had on months of the year and our birthdays late in week 4. After revising our horizontal “smile” graph and numerical representation of the months (which we were initially a tad confused about) we were able to transfer the data onto a new graph type of graph – a column graph. We discussed the reason it may be called this and were able to compare the shape and direction of our data mapping to a column on a building. We worked as a class to create the column graph on the activeboard, and recorded the results on our own worksheets. After, we analysed the data, and discovered that representing the results in this format made “at a glance comparison” much easier. We will continue looking at data and graphing over the next few weeks.

Creative Cats!

It’s become apparent that we are quite a creative bunch here in Year One Purple Dragons. However, unlike cats, we aren’t so good at staying very clean while engrossed in our creative pursuits! My many apologies for the state of the children’s clothes after this week’s “Magic Fireworks” paintings.

To remedy this, and allow the children stress free creativity, I am asking parents to please provide an art smock or old shirt for painting activities. If it can please be a spare one that can be left at school, I’d be really appreciative!

Thanks again for reading!

Vanessa Gentle

We have a new class mascot!

Joining forces with our rock-bears “Sheena” and “Roger” is a purple dragon from Wales called “Dwynwen”. The children were very excited with the new addition, who is the “face” of  our  new “Friend of the Week” award. She can be a bit forgetful, and a little ditsy, but she has “a heart of gold” and is always kind to her friends. Like the bears, each week someone will get to take her home for the weekend and record their adventures together in her diary.

Magical Dragon Eggs – an example of integrated curriculum in practice

This was probably the highlight of our week, and provided many opportunities for different types of learners to apply a variety of different knowledge and skills to a common topic…

On Monday, we found two tiny letters – one for Ruby (who was our first friend of the week) and one for the whole class. When we opened it, we found that Dwynwen had left us an example letter and gift that she would be giving each “Friend of the Week”. The gift was a tiny packet of things that looked like seed beads, but we were soon to discover that they were magical eggs! They had special care instructions… They needed; 1 litre or 4 cups of pure water, magic words and kind thoughts. We followed the instructions, placing them in a container, and pouring in the water while saying “A Purple Dragon has a heart of gold, and is kind to others, young and old” . We then thought kind thoughts about our friends, and the things we do to help them be happy at school. The magic began immediately! At first, the seeds seemed “fuzzy” in the water, but soon we realised they were growing! We checked on them hourly, taking photos for later comparison and reflection, and they continued to grow bigger throughout the day.

We left them overnight, and by Tuesday lunch time, they were huge (in comparison to how they started) many the size of marbles, but some even bigger! They were many beautiful colours and patterns as well. Following the instructions in our letter, we carefully drained the water out and placed them in a bowl. After we all washed our hands,  Mrs Gentle read the class a dragon story. The bowl was passed around for everyone to look at and feel the eggs. Some children tried to estimate there number, but found it quite difficult due to their transparency, bouncy quality, and housing.   At the end of the story, we discussed the look and feel of the mysterious eggs, using some fantastic adjectives to communicate our individual observations and feelings.

Following this, the children used cray-pastels to draw our impressions of the eggs, and wrote words to describe them underneath or around our pictures. The number and variety of  adjectives the group came up with was quite  amazing! We noticed many of them were “S” words, like soft, slimy, squishy, and  smooth to name but a few. The pictures were very colourful.

The following day the children did recounts of what had happened from the discovery of the letter, until feeling them and drawing them. But these weren’t your traditional recount, these were comic strip recounts! There were six picture boxes with lines underneath for text. Everybody had the same number one box, showing a photo of the small envelope, and a starter sentence underneath – it was then up to the children to tell the rest of the tale! It took a bit of explaining, comparisons to known comics like Asterix and Tin-Tin, and some examples of how to plan the recount on the board, but once the children grasped the concept, the individual results were  very impressive!

Through this experience, the children concurrently explored a variety of concepts and curriculum areas including;

• Mathematics – number, time, size, comparison, estimation, volume and capacity
• Science  (or was it magic??) – change of state, absorption/hydration/osmosis (we didn’t delve to deeply into this, as I was trying to maintain an air of mystery/magic about the eggs!)
• Literacy – Talking and Listening, rhyming verse, modelled reading, recount writing, discussion/exposure to comic strips/graphic novels,  spelling  and adjectives
• Art – cray-pastel drawing, and pencil drawn comic strips
• Technology – digital photographs as a time log.

The children’s artworks and comics will be hung up for display next week.

I hope you have enjoyed this week’s late but lengthy blog!

Vanessa Gentle

Parent Information Evening

Wow – what a turn out! It was really great to see so many people able to make it along to our parent information evening last night. I know a few of you were out of town or busy, so I will be sending home a handout explaining our class ”Rock Star” system with the homework next Monday. The Stage One Parent Information Handbook that was given out can be found at: http://www.australiastreetschool.com/downloads/  –  follow the link to school publications.

Literacy Groups are up and running!

We are almost through our first week of Literacy group rotations! It’s a little “slow going” at the moment, but the children are picking up what is required in each activity pretty quickly, and I’m confident that everything will be running smoothly with a bit more practice. Overall, I’ve been really pleased with how the children have handled this addition to their program this week!

Parent Helpers needed!

Thank you to the many parents who popped their names down for reading and literacy groups last night. For anyone that missed the meeting and would like to volunteer, our schedule is as follows;

LITERACY GROUPS (starting week 6)

• TUES & WED 11:40am -12:20pm
• THURS & FRI 10:00am-10:40

NUMERACY GROUPS (start week TBA… once Lit groups are running smoothly!!)

• MON 11:40 – 12:20
• THURS 11:40 – 12:20

Please email your availability if interested – I will aim to get the timetable out mid next week.

Tabloid Sports Day

Our tabloid sports day will be held on Thursday 15th March, 9am -11am in CamperdownMemorial Rest Park. Please email me if you are able to help out on the day, supervising children (or assisting with supervision)  at one of the activities.

What’s for Lunch?

We have started this term’s science topic “What’s for Lunch?” this week. So far we have looked at what humans need to survive, as well as the 5 food groups (their names, types of food in them, how they help or hinder our bodies, and how often we should eat them). If your child has suddenly come out with tid-bits of information concerning  fats, sugars, calcium, proteins or carbohydrates, you’ll know where it has come from!

We won Lionel!

I’m very pleased to announced that the golden ear “Lionel” has taken up residence with Year One Purple Dragons this week! We have been practicing the way we move in our lines the past few days (as there has been a lot of squabbling on the stairwell of late) and our listening skills in class, and it seems to have paid off -  we won the assembly award…woo-hoo!!

Thanks again for reading!

Vanessa Gentle