Sarah’s Class Term 3 Week 3

Hi everybody,

I’d first like to start our blog by welcoming and introducing (teacher) James. He will be with the group every Wednesday until the end of term. From James: I am originally from the UK and have called Sydney home for 10 years. I entered the world of teaching to explore my passion for promoting inclusive education and cooperative learning. I’m also a huge fan of sports and music.

We’ve had another busy week with a few spontaneous things popping up! My apologies for the mistake regarding Lane Cove Library last week. It is definitely our turn this coming Monday – tomorrow, by the time you read this. Last Monday, we started with our ‘block walk’ and got straight into our Soundwaves spelling unit. For our Maths, we focused on measuring a partner’s body part using tape measures and then compared lengths of arms, legs, and height etc. etc. We discovered, after recording the data that the tallest person doesn’t necessarily mean they will have the longest foot. Measurements were recorded in cm and mm.

We completed some lovely Haiku and Acrostic poems and painted a canvas for Lane Cove council to display in the plaza. In the afternoon on Tuesday, we played Pickleball and had a brief, but good discussion on winning and losing and what we can learn from being on either side at the end of a match. James said he survived his first day and there was some lovely feedback from the group “We had FUN – with James!” They did some Science – focusing on grouping items into the categories of solids, liquids and gases. For Maths – they started talking about Position and focussed on directions on a map (North, East, South, West). They started by playing an online game as a class where you have to follow the directions given – “2 steps south, 1 step east, 4 steps west” – and decide where the character ends up on the map. They then created a map of either Currambena or their own school design and challenged each other by giving directions and seeing if their partner could figure out where they were on the map i.e. “1 step east, 2 steps north” etc again.

The group all got together in Spanish to chop and cook vegetables for soup which was served up at the Philosophy night on Wednesday. The soup was yummy and so was the discussion! Thank you to the small contingent who came.

We continued with our coding on Thursday, where I handed out cards with specific instructions to follow. In the end, everybody said they learnt something new. It is challenging for some, who may not spend a large amount of their time playing online games. But an important skill to learn, programming, and navigating through steps and blocks to create something. Next week is Science Week, so we will have a few things to go on with which will hopefully make the week Sizzle and Fizzle!

That’s us for this one.

Love, Sarah.