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We have a very exciting term planned with many interesting activities and excursions to happen in the next 8 weeks.
"Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.
Don't put limitations on yourself.
Others will do that for you."
James Cameron
Sports Day
What an awesome start to the term we have had with our annual Athletics carnival and Field Event days held in the first week. This was a great way to start the term and we want to congratulate all those that participated.
Our kids tried so hard for their houses and showed great sportsmanship throughout the two days. We have some very talented athletes who showed off their talents on the two days. Big congratulations to Claire Glazer, Jett Allen and Bailey Hobbs who were our age champions and Deegan Grace who received a best effort award.
Good luck to Sage, Claire, Ahlia, Julia, Deegan, Felix, Bailey, Braidyn M, Jett and Izak who will represent Woombye at the District Sports at the University on the 7th August.
Term Focus : Water World
This will all culminate in a final day out where we will join the Bilai team again to explore Shelly Beach at Caloundra. During the term the children will complete an information report on an underwater creature, a mini report on explorer and a persuasive text about protecting our ocean. Keep watching the Ed Studio for details of activities and assessments.
Reading
By guiding students through the story 'Island of the Blue Dolphin' and completing activities that focus on Inferential Comprehension we hope to see some real gains in this area.
We would also encourage the kids to be doing more of Reading Eggs Online as this is a fabulous resource which really targets all of the reading strategies and has great results.
“How was school today?” by Lee Emerson
Like Jekyll and Hyde, a student can be two different people at home and school. Mummy’s “little darling” at home, can turn to the “dark-side” and become a little monster at school! More bafflingly, the situation can also be reversed, with the teacher talking in glowing terms about a child with the same name as the one who makes your life at home a nightmare. In both of these scenarios the child in question likes to keep their “double lives” separate to each other.
However, for parents whose children who are not a Jekyll and Hyde type, it still seems as if there is a “barrier” between school life and home life – your question of - “So how was school today?” is met with a Neanderthal grunt or a monosyllabic “Good”. In other words – our conversation has ended.
With the way we work in 5AB, it is so easy to get a real conversation going about the learning that your child is being involved in at school. Simply replace the question, “So how was school today?” with, “So let’s look at the 5AB Portal to see what you’ve been doing lately”. If your child has a device, you can then check out exactly how they are responding to the learning challenges we provide.
Doing this even once a fortnight will give you an idea of how your child is travelling “learning-wise” and will spark lots of conversation between you and your child. Not only might you be able to help your child with their learning, but you might also be able to extend it with your own knowledge and skills.
The Role of Creativity in Investigative Learning.
When you learn something for yourself, you assimilate the knowledge “internally”. Think back to your own learning. How do you learn best? In 5AB, we like to provide our children with learning challenges that lead to concept “discoveries”. Teaching a child pedantically, that you find the area of a rectangle by remembering the formula A = L X B might work as a “quick fix” with a calculator, but it won’t help kids understand the concept of area measurement.
Have a look at the various tasks that we give your child to do in our 5AB Learning Portal. In most cases you will see that not only do our students need to learn to access information from the web, but they also need to be able to create strategies to solve challenges that will lead to real learning. This is the basis of Inquiry (or investigative) Learning.
The role of creativity in learning is hugely important. Sitting, listening to a teacher droning on about a topic is NOT conducive to learning at all and if anything, will turn children off learning forever. Being creative in our thinking connects our brain neurons in such a way that allows us to apply learned strategies to various new problem solving situations.
Sir Ken Robinson talks about this topic so much better than I can in his TED presentation DO Schools Kill Creativity? Keep in mind that this video is nearly eleven years old!
Questacon Science Circus
Shelly Beach Caloundra - August 23rd
As part of our “Water World” learning unit, our classes will be going on a Field Trip to Shelly Beach, Caloundra to study the rock-pools intertidal zone.
We will be working in conjunction with the Sunshine Coast Environmental Centre (Team Bilai). The students will be working on four different aspects of ocean study. This is excursion is well supervised and comes highly recommended. The coach will be leaving the school at 9:00am and returning to the school at around 2:30pm. Look out for the invoice that will be sent home soon.
Important Events this Term
August 3rd - Arts Gala Night
August 6th - August 17th - Mr E on long service leave.
August 17th - Science Questacon
August 16th - Last Day for Payment for Shelly Beach
August 18th - Family Fun Day
August 23rd - Shelly Beach Excursion
August 31st / September 7th / September 14th - Interschool Sport year 5/6
September 7th - Kids in Action
September 21st - Cross Country
Main Assessments- All details on the Ed Studio
Information Report - Underwater Creature
Persuasive Text - Protect our Ocean
Island of the Blue Dolphin - Learning Log
"Floating Cities our Future?" - An exercise in Critical Thinking
Please ask your children to show you what they need to do. There are many links and videos and scaffolding on the Ed Studio to help them. We are also available at lunch times for extra guidance through the activities.
FAMILY FUN DAY
We will be needing our kids and parents to help bake items such as biscuits, slices, muffins, cakes, savoury items etc, to help make our stall a success.
Important - Ingredients must be listed!
Also please label your baking with name/class to enter the Creative Baking Comp!
$5 Snack Shack voucher for Year Level winners!
Send into the School Hall by Friday noon 17 Aug 2018!
I am also looking for helpers for the stall on the day. Please try and spare 30 minutes to an hour to help us out. Unfortunately, this is also a big day in the community with local sport finals so many of us have other commitments. Please fill out the attached form regarding times you could possibly help out. I will email out a final copy once we have enough helpers.
A Plastic Ocean
This term as part of Our Water World Unit students will watch the documentary A Plastic Ocean. A Plastic Ocean is a documentary film directed by the Australian journalist Craig Leeson. It dives into and investigates the devastating impacts that plastic has caused to our environment, especially our marine life.
We would encourage parents to also watch the documentary as this will change the way you think about plastic for life! It is currently available on Netflix.
We found that in the past some children found the images a little confronting however we would encourage you to take a look at the trailer and decide if you would like your child to see it. We believe it is so important for our children to have a deep understanding of the terrible effect plastic is having on our environment.
We will also be doing a Nude Food Challenge for the term to help reduce the amount of plastic we are using each day.
Regards,
Jodie and Lee