Jess and Susan’s Class: Term 3 Week 6
Dear parents,
Our book parade on Monday morning was a cracker of a way to kick off book week! This was followed up on Tuesday with a visit to Lane Cove Library to listen to author and illustrator Serena Geddes. It was wonderful to hear about her creative journey – from loving drawing at school, to working on animated movies at Disney and illustrating other people’s books, and eventually to writing and illustrating her own children’s books and graphic novels. Serena is also looking at running some after-school workshops at Lane Cove Gallery in the coming months, which may be of interest to children who are missing Comic Club.
In English this week, we explored some of the formal structures of poetry. Staying with our focus on Planet Protectors, the children learnt to write Haikus. There’s more to the Haikus poetic form than being a three-line poem following a 5-7-5 syllable pattern.
Traditionally, Haikus capture a moment of insight, draw on observations of nature and the seasons (Kigo), and often include a cutting word or contrast (Kireji). The children wrote some lovely examples which are now proudly displayed on our classroom wall.
Next week, we’ll explore other poetry structures, including writing in stanzas and experimenting with different rhyming patterns. On Wednesday, we will participate in an online poetry-writing workshop led by poet Fox Phelan, with support from Red Room Poetry.
The workshop has been developed especially for primary school children, and encourages children to listen deeply – not just to nature, but to the rhythms and voices within themselves and their communities.
On Thursday, we read about and discussed the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to reduce poverty, improve health and education, protect wildlife and the environment, and tackle climate change. We also revisited and wrapped up our work on the features of 2D shapes.
In Maths we’ve continued to pause on solving equations where missing numbers appear in unexpected places. It has been important to revisit the meaning of the equals sign as representing balance, as well as to explore how fact families can be utilised and how addition and subtraction are inversions of each other.
The Bake Sale for Colombia was a huge success!
Thank you to everyone who contributed all sorts of delicious baked goods for the cause – not just families from our class, but from across the school as well. A special thank you to Marie for all your preparation of the Boba tea the night before, and to Carolina for your contributions with the flavours.
Thank you also to Frida for bringing the idea to the class, and, most importantly, to the children for getting behind it so enthusiastically. They gave up their lunchtime to serve and then worked throughout the afternoon to clean up and pack away.
We haven’t quite finished counting the money yet, but at first glance, it looks like we have raised over $600! What an incredible effort from everyone involved. Thank you!
Our week finished with another celebration for ‘Wear it Purple Day’ in recognition and diversity and of those in the LGBTQIA+ community.
Our class photo is scheduled for next Tuesday morning. If everyone could please make a big effort to be in attendance, that would be wonderful.
Warm wishes,
Jess and Susan