Achieving Together Fun in Grade 4 at Meredith PS in 2012 

Yes, it’s Melbourne Cup time again and we have organised a number of great activities that will focus on the Melbourne Cup Carnival. Don’t forget we have a Crazy Hair Day on Tuesday (Melbourne Cup Day). I’ve also got my tub of jockey silks ready to go for those who’d like to try one on! The silks were donated to me by Mary, partner of the late George Hanlon who was a triple Melbourne Cup winning horse trainer. Do a Google search to find out a bit more about him!

During iLearning we have set up a matrix full of activities to choose from. If you want to, have a look over the weekend and see if there are any you would like to do or need to bring extra supplies for.

Melbourne Cup iLearning Matrix

Hopefully it will open for you!

We also welcome two 2nd year student teachers into our classroom next week. They come from Ballarat Uni and will be with us for 2 weeks. Be sure to make Miss Jessica Cox and Mr Cameron Marchbank welcome in our classroom!

One last reminder – camp is coming up in 2 weeks!! Make sure to ask any questions if you have them. We’ll be doing some preparation work for camp soon.

Have a great weekend everyone.

PS. There is a new homework task on the Homework page!

This term we are working together on being more responsible and accountable for our learning. This means that there are certain things you (students) will be expected to do for school. One of those is to bring your diary to school, making sure it has been signed by an adult, and to also write in your reading conference meeting days.

Another requirement will be to complete some homework tasks that will be set out and placed under the homework heading on our blog. Click on that heading now to have a go at this weeks homework.

You have all been very busy this week, learning about nutrition, how to use protractors and investigating news reports.

What other things would you like to learn this term?

Comment below and tell me what you’d like to learn (don’t forget to put your name on it)!

Miss P

Can you believe that term 4 is already here?!

And that the calendar is filling very quickly. Term 4 is traditionally a very busy month with reports, camps, concerts and Christmas.

It’s good to see everyone back safe and sound from their holiday break. We only have 3 Hawthorn hearts to console, but they seem to be pretty good

This morning we have jumped right into our work and iLearning activities. Our first focus is on Health and Nutrition. We have groups using Pinterest to find great, healthy, nude food lunchboxes, researching the importance of health and nutrition on our lives and creating artwork based on the Rainbow Plate concept.  We will be on the look out for good examples of nude food lunchboxes over the coming weeks.

Our Book Fair also starts this week so make sure you pop in for a look.

A final reminder that hats are required to be worn when playing or working outside, so please find them and bring them to school! If you need a new one, you can buy them from Mrs Cations at the office.

Here’s to an exciting term 4!

Winter Sports by Seamus and Nicholas (aka ‘Chicka’)

Seamus and I go to Meredith P.S. Well, we have been having an exciting time at school with a lot of things going on. But Seamus and I thought that Winter Sport was the best day of them all. We play sports such as Aussie rules football, netball and soccer. Seamus and I played Aussie rules football. We kicked six goals each in the last round and we had a terrific time! Each and every round Seamus and I have been on the same team. In soccer some people from Meredith PS played it. We had some terrific goal kickers like Josh who kicked one and Tom, now he played perfectly! He kicked 5!

Art with Mandy by Brendan and Josh

Over the last four weeks Mandy has been coming in during iLearning and we have been making necklaces, flags, cards and sigils. Sigils are were you have letters of your name, your house or just something you like. Then you cross out the first word and you cross out double letters too. Then you draw the letters in your book and you have to make the letter so you can’t see the letters. Each week about 8 people (4 from grade 3, 4 from grade 4) get picked to go and work with Mandy and it’s been fun.

Olympics at School by Tom and James.

In grade 4 while the Olympics was happening, of course we did activities based on the Olympics! So we are going to tell you what was happening at M.P.S during this time. Here are some of the activities we could do. We had to write a letter to the athletes, make a mascot for the Olympics on the Internet, we also have been making Olympic collages, we had to research an Olympian then present it on a poster to the class, we had to choose a research topic on the Olympics. James did a shooting play made out of Lego. He did it with 3 boys whose names were Daniel, Fergus and Lachlan. There were TVs set up showing the Olympics and we were allowed to watch them. Miss Pritchard also connected the iPad to the whiteboard so we could watch too. By Tom and James

More to come tomorrow!

Would you believe we are in the final few weeks of term 3! We have had a super busy term, (particularly with the Olympics, and the Paralympics coming up!), so look out for a very special post tomorrow written by everyone in the Grade 4 class, filling you all in on what we’ve been up to. Sorry we haven’t updated for a while, time just gets away from you sometimes!

We’ve been making some changes around the school and in the classroom over the past few weeks and the Grade 4s seem to be really enjoying it!

We have also been doing a unit on music which has been very popular – we have had children playing keyboards, piano, percussion and exploring different sounds and samples using Garage Band on the iPads. The kids have been introduced to some basic notation as well as sheet music. The basis of the unit has been using the Thinkers Keys to promote alternative thinking. One group of boys have experimented with the light boxes to create lighting for a stage.

During Literacy, the students have started to take some responsibility for their own learning by taking on a planning role. They plan 4 activities a day that include reading, writing, spelling, word work, a special project, handwriting, and conferencing with a teacher (at least once a week, sometimes more). They have really enjoyed having this responsibility and as time goes on their planning will become more refined and specific to their own learning needs. It involves them being quite organised, and also able to stay to a strict time limit – which is proving a little tricky for some! But, we’ll get there.

There will also be some exciting changes next term that will aim to take our learning to a whole new level. I know the teachers are pretty excited, so I hope the students will be too! Let me just say, that this blog will be a bit of a feature next term, so kids, make sure you are checking it every now and then!

What kinds of things would you like to do or learn about next term? Let us know by commenting below.

Over the past few weeks we have completed our latest iLearning projects. We have had some great presentations and lots of interesting work has been completed. We had books, posters, speeches (with props) and a number of students participating in the Student Conference Series. This is a project that has been set up by Mr G and allows the kids to connect with others over Australia and the world. The student make a presentation that is then presented online to all who are logged in on that day. I have been very proud of the students who have taken up this option with no fear, and to date, all presentations have been wonderful!

If you would like to view the presentations of Lach (motorbikes) and Fergus (WWII) please click here.

If you would like to view the presentations by Harmony (China Anne McLain) or Angus (The Ice Age), please click here.

Tom, Nicholas and Seamus will be presenting online next week.

The Student Conference Series blog can be found here.

Here are some pics of our presenters and some of Brendan doing his Titanic presentation with artefacts!

Thanks to everyone who has been checking in on our blog. We are fascinated with the Cluster Map and love to see where our readers come from. Feel free to comment and let us know where you are visiting from, we’d love to hear your story!

This morning the Grade 3 and 4s are learning how to use our blog. We have looked through old blog posts and enjoyed looking at the photos. It is pretty cool that we can use this at home and leave comments on the posts. We hope some people comment on this post and will check in next week to see who has been reading! What kinds of things would you like to see on our blog? Please let us know!

We have to go now, we have dinosaur trading cards to make!!

Bye!

Grade 3 and Grade 4

It’s been a busy start to Term 2 – so much has happened so far!

We started the term looking at the 100th Anniversary of the Sinking of Titanic. We used our literacy time to explore some of the stories of Titanic, maths to look at the numbers relating to the ship and its voyage and writing to discuss whether the Titanic should be raised or left where it is. It is certainly an interesting topic that keeps us thinking.

We also did work on ANZAC Day and had some great discussions about the meaning of the day, and Australia’s involvement in conflict around the world. It was great to see how interested the kids were in a subject that is so important for them to know about. We are reading Once by Morris Gleitzman which has proven to be quite the cliffhanger – we are reading 2 chapters per day instead of the usual 1! For some, I still don’t think that’s enough.

During our iLearning time, we have been working with the Grade 3s on Dinosaurs, but have also chosen our own iLearning project topics. I have been encouraging the students to think about how they are going to present their project (rather than just a poster) and I am pleased to see some have been game enough to sign up for the Student Conference Series which is run by Mr G as well as speeches, drama, videos and Powerpoint presentations. We have also learnt about writing interesting information and how we need to look beyond the initial answer to a research question to make it more interesting for our audience. Some great topics have been chosen – I’ll put the list up tomorrow as I’ve left it at school.

Watching Jack (gr 6) present his online Student Conference - this is what some of the Grade 4s have chosen to do for their iLearning projects.

Drawing upside down!

Mrs Gargan worked on some interesting art techniques over the holidays and taught us how to draw using an upside down picture. It encourages our brain to work harder and instead of trying to draw the picture we see when it is the right way up, we tend to focus more on the lines. It was very Mr Squiggle (‘Upside down Miss Jane.’) but loads of fun too!

Lach concentrated for the whole hour and produced a great picture!

Drawing upside down!

We have had the Alpha performance of The Little Mermaid, the Cross Country, Buddies, and are looking forward to the Mother’s Day Pamper Evening tomorrow night.

Our cross country reps at the representative cross country

All that in the first 3 weeks of Term 2! Wow….

On a side note, Aaron was lucky enough to receive a parcel from America that contained some horse books and letters from the lovely team at Destination Safe Haven Horse Rescue & Retirement in Marengo, Illinois. They rescue horses who are neglected, abandoned, abused, sick or just old and give them the life they deserve. As many of you know, Aaron is quite the horse lover. I had posted a request on Twitter for the titles of some horse books for Aaron to read, and was put in contact with Tiffany from Destination Safe Haven who said she had one that she’d love to send to Aaron. The book, plus another book and letters from the staff arrived at school on Monday. Aaron, and the rest of the class were very excited to receive these, so in the near future we’ll be replying to our new friends to tell them a bit about our horses or horses we know and love!

Aaron with his books from Destination Safe Haven

Hi Guys,

I hope you are all ready to come back to school tomorrow Grade 4! I’ve just got to get through the Geelong v North Melbourne game, then I’ll be right!

Today marks 100 years since the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. It hit the iceberg at 8.40am Australian time, so as I write, they would have been filling life boats and trying to get help from nearby ships. There have been some great shows on TV over the holidays and I have learnt a lot about the ship and it’s passengers. I have been following Titanic Real Time on Twitter, and they have been sending out updates of that day in ‘real time’. You can read them here  https://twitter.com/#!/TitanicRealTime

We will spend some time this week in reading and writing learning about the grand ‘unsinkable’ Titanic. If you have any information or books at home that you would like to bring along, please feel free!

I’ve also updated the Footy Tipping results from last week. Sorry Chicka, there is one there you got really wrong….;)

See you all tomorrow! Enjoy the last day of holidays.

Miss P

PS. George Horlin-Smith who visited us last term with Stevie J from the Geelong Football Club will make his senior debut in today’s game against North Melbourne. He is the first Geelong VFL/AFL player ever to have a hyphen in his name! Good luck George!

George meets George