Jess and Susan’s Class: Term 3 Week 7
Dear parents,
We’ve had a gorgeous week of writing poetry. Our workshop with Red Room Poetry was very inspiring, and many of the children have followed up by creating some wonderful pieces of prose. Red Room Poetry is running a competition called Poem Forest for children who would like to participate but as we are a non-competitive school, entering is, of course, entirely optional. I’ve explained to the children that reframing the competition as an opportunity to share a piece of work they feel proud of can be a more positive and productive way to approach it. There is also a lovely added incentive: for every entry they receive, Red Room Poetry will plant a tree! Given our focus on sustainability and our connection with nature, this feels like a wonderful alignment with our values. There will be a little time in class, but mostly on Fridays, for children to develop their poems if they would like to enter. Entries are due by 25 September. With the children’s permission, I’ll publish some of the poems in the newsletter in the coming weeks.
In Maths, we’ve had a lot of fun working with money. We’ve been adding and subtracting amounts in cash and rounding to the nearest 5 cents. On Monday, the children were given an amount with which they had to buy craft materials from me (the banker) to make items to sell to each other. It was a lot of fun and the children learnt to calculate in dollars and cents very quickly! Apparently we have a little group of budding entrepreneurs…
In English we’ve been focusing on sentence structure as well as developing understandings of the conventions of poetry such as stanzas and rhyming patterns.
Next week, the children will have the opportunity to continue poetry writing, but our main focus will shift into the science space as we begin a short unit called The Secret Life of Particles which will provide some foundational learning prior to our excursion to Frida’s fathers workplace Hydgene Renewables. Thank you Peter, for allowing Currambena to visit!
I hope everyone has enjoyed the early sunny spring weather this weekend.
Warm wishes
Jess and Susan