Earthkeeper's Camp 2014

What an absolutely wonderful camp! We all had a great time while we were away and learnt so much about the environment, the connections in nature and what we can do to lessen our impact on our world. In between learning and eating (Oh - did we do a lot of eating!!) we had lots of fun and participated in many new activities many of us hadn't done before.

Below is the camp in photos...

Week 3

Week 3 was a busy week as we continue to practice our concert item and had an open classroom evening in amongst our learning. We have continued to read Alison Lester's book, 'Are We There Yet' and discover significant sites and places of interest around Australia. We then transferred these to our map of Australia using compass directions such as north-west and south-east. We had to describe the direction of these cities and place names in relation to other places. During library research we used atlases to help find the oceans that surround Australia and the countries that are our nearest neighbours. Using atlases is a lot of fun! 

As we read our class book we have been looking for vocabulary that we don't know the meaning of. We've found words such as: gorge, plain, range, tapestry, telegraph. We've learnt about alliteration and have found more phrases using alliteration in the text as well as similes, such as busy as a bee. We used pictures from the book, 'Are We There Yet?' by Alison Lester and described them using similes, alliteration and as many descriptive phrases as we could to try and build a picture in the audience's mind. To check our work we had to underline nouns and check that we had used adjectives to describe most of the nouns. Some of us even looked at the verbs we had used and tried to add adverbs to our writing to describe the verbs. Our wonderfully descriptive paragraphs are almost at the point of being ready to publish. We've shared many of our best sentences with our peers and are in the process of editing our work to make it the best it can be. We should be able to share some of these with you shortly!

In maths we have continued to work on our tables and learn more about time to the minute as well as some early algebra and problem solving. It has been great to make connections with our learning in maths. Some of us recognise that a clock is broken up into equal parts like fractions are. There are also the words like half past and quarter to and quarter past that make us think of fractions. Making connections with our learning helps to make the concepts we learn stick! 

We learnt about main ideas in reading groups this week and got to practice finding the main idea of articles we read, a behind the news segment we watched and some stories we read. We used the idea of a table to help us find the main idea and then used the four legs of the table to show that the supporting details are there to hold the table top up or the main idea. We also used a hand outline to help us find the main idea. The palm of the hand was where we wrote the main idea and the fingers were where we wrote the supporting details of the text we had read.

Our beautiful underwater artwork is slowly coming together. We have learnt about the Great Barrier Reef as part of our look at significant sites around Australia. We had to draw tropical fish that you would find in the Great Barrier Reef and stick that on a painted background. We're now including coral in our painting and have Sienna bringing along some real coral for us to look at. We are so lucky!

The posters we are creating in our computer lessons are almost ready to print! We have had to research a significant land form and find out interesting facts about it, the way it was formed and a dreamtime story related to it if there was one. I love the three sisters dreamtime story! I look forward to sharing these great pieces of work with you all soon.

What a great week of learning!

Week 2 in pictures

Where is the year going?

Term 3 and right back into the swing of it! After a quick catch up in the morning we got straight into work!  As part of our HSIE unit 'Australia You're Standing In It' we are looking at literature from Australian author's that focus on our wonderful country. We found out what the class knows about Australia before we start Alison Lester's beautiful book, 'Are We There Yet?' which takes us on a journey around Australia. The book is illustrated with rich, colourful pictures that add more meaning to the text and give us a chance to not only look at a range of figurative language in the book but also at visual literacy and the meaning of the pictures.

We also started our class novel by Emily Rodda, titled, 'Bunga Witta'. This is a story about a small outback community of 12 who are living through a drought and their journey to bring money to their town. They decide to create a festival to encourage tourists to come to the town and bring their tourist dollars with them which should hopefully stop the town from dying. We discussed many experiences in the book and without students realising they had made many connections to the text and themselves. A perfect opportunity to remind students about the different types of connections you can make with a book which helps with comprehension.

Luckily the rain held off and we had recess outside. Everyone was so happy to be catching up with friends! We came in and it was time for computers and some poetry writing! We used a poetry intereactive site which helped us think of phrases and then put these together to write a poem that fit into a shape. We had lots of soccer balls, netballs, trees, clouds and hearts. Here is a link to go and check it out:

www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/theme_poems/

As it was the first day back we weren't rushed out of the computer room which gave us a chance to finish our poems and print them out. Back to the classroom we went to cut out our shape poem, decorate it and then stick it onto orange card. They look fabulous!

After lunch we gave out the Earthkeeper's Camp Note and then the newsletter before beginning our maths lesson on numbers, the meaning of expanded notation and a discussion about the biggest numbers we knew. We got to a trillion! What a big number that is! It's not even one we can imagine!!

What a great first day back!

A ship made out of a shoebox?

A last First Fleet project made out of a shoebox. Wow!!

The First Fleet

Yesterday we found out the names of all the ships in the first fleet. They were:

Sirius 

Alexander

Charlotte

Scarborough

Friendship

Supply

Fishburn

Borrowdale

Lady Penrhyn

Prince of Wales

Golden Grove

There were 2 navy ships, six convict transports and three supply ships. There were a total of 1420 people that got on the ships in Portsmouth in England and after 8 months, 1373 people landed safely at Sydney Cove.

A few days ago we had a message from a class in England who visited the Captain Cook museum in Great Ayton in North Yorkshire in England. Today we're going to think about our favourite Captain Cook fact so that we can share them with Class 2 and Mrs Monaghan in the UK.

Hi Miss Taylor's Class!
I was interested to read that you are doing some work on Captain Cook - last term, our class visited the Captain Cook museum in Great Ayton, and found his family gravestone in the churchyard there. We enjoyed finding out about his voyages, and even posted on our blog about our learning. I hope you enjoy finding out about his voyages as much as we did! You can see some of our work athttp://aroomwithaview.edublogs.org (Autumn 2013). What is your favourite Captain Cook fact?
I love the way you put your photos on your blog - what do you use to make your photo collages?
Mrs Monaghan
A Room with a View, Class 2 - UK 

Using an Atlas to find the places Captain Cook visited...

What we thought of our excursion...

Sienna (3)

Yesterday we went to the Endeavour. My favourite part was when we went down the rope and saw the hammock, tables and chairs. Punishments was the cat of nine tails. We saw that too. The Maritime Museum had some scary stuff.

Prue

Yesterday I went to the Endeavour. I went with my class. We went on two ships. The boats were called the Vampire and the second boat was called the Endeavour. Secondly I saw a lot of things. I saw a boat made out of cans.

Oliver (3)

I liked the Endeavour because they used to sleep in hammocks.

Medina

THe best part of the day was when I went on the boat. It was so fun when we went there. The boat's name was the Endeavour and the Vampire and the Vampire is real and it was cool.

Sheridan

I think the best part of the day was going on the Endeavour ship because it was really big and I think it was very interseting. I also liked the cat's job because it had to chase all the mice out and it freaked me out. Then when I saw the seats and I was told that they were also used as chests. I was...amazed!

Jemma

Yesterday 3/4T and 4S went to the Australian National Maritime Museum. We went on the Endeavour (the ship Captain Cook found Australia on), the Vampire (an old war ship) and we went inside the museum to see a bit about the first fleet and Australia. My favourite acitivity of the day was when we went on the Endeavour. I liked it because it made us travel through time.

Edward

The very best part of the Endeavour excursion was the Endeavour because it was amazing. I got to hear all about what people did in the times that no one knew about vitamins A, B, C and D so people got scuvy because they didn't have enough vitamins.

Navigator and Endeavour Excursion

The excursion on Tuesday was a great success! We had 100% attendance and were so glad that no broken bones or colds kept anyone away. I must say a huge thank you to the lovely parent volunteers that gave up their day to come along with us. It means so much to have great parent and school partnerships where we are all looking out for our children. This was especially evident with the excursion where we walked your feet off and still had you smiling at the end of the day!

The bendy bus was so long and warm with all our bodies in there that we almost mistook it for a travelling sauna. Thank goodness for open windows while driving which helped to cool us down. The trip there was so exciting, especially when the bendy bus went around a corner. 

We arrived a few minutes early and managed another toilet break before being met by Joe and the other teacher guides. Everyone, including the parent volunteers and teachers had to wear two stickers which would let us come and go from the museum. One was bright pink and the other bright green. Joe then talked to us about staying safe while we were at the Maritime Museum. We were a great audience and keen to know what we could do. There was quite a long list of museum rules we learnt about, like, 'no eating or drinking in the museum or on the ships', 'no running' and 'no touching unless you're told you can'. We did like the rule, 'you can take photos of everything!'

Bags, hats, drawing pads and pencils were squeezed into the bag containers outside the entrance of the museum. We got to use the large white bag containers that were numbered, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in large black numbers. The rest of the containers were being used by another school group who arrived just before we did.

After splitting into class groups and then again into groups of 10, we headed off to the Endeavour. What a beautiful ship. There was a slight breeze which made the ship lightly rock against the wharf. This was enough for some of our more sensitive tummies to feel a bit queasy. Mrs Taylor got to spend a bit of time walking those students back up on deck and then finally onto the wharf while we waited for everyone to finish. Lucikly a drink and something to eat seemed to settle everyone down.

We then had some time looking at the 'Navigators' section of the museum on dry land before heading off for a lunch break. This was time to catch up with friends for a chat, eat lunch and draw fabulous pictures of the ship, city and more.

The afternoon was spent looking at the Aurora Aboriginal artefact section where Joe guided us through some of the bark paintings and then onto the HMAS Vampire (an old navy ship) for a quick tour.

It was suddenly 2:30 in the afternoon and time to head back to school. We met back at the entrance to the museum to grab our bags and have our names marked off the roll before walking to the bus stop where we were being picked up. We were rather subdued on the trip back and I'm sure would have all slept well that night. We made great timing arriving back at school 2 minutes after the bell. What a wondeful day! 

Endeavour Excursion Part 1 on PhotoPeach
Endeavour Excursion Part 2 on PhotoPeach
Endeavour Excursion Part 3 on PhotoPeach

More Terrific Projects and Presentations

The Aboriginal Artefact presentations have taught us so much about Aboriginal culture. We have listened to Dreamtime stories, seen Aboriginal art and dot paintings, had intricately painted spears, clap sticks and more shared with us, and even ended up with a canoe and bark humpy in our classroom.

The presentations have been intereseting and 3/4T have made a great audience. Eyes have been opened wide while some of the presentations have been on and even a few 'oohs' and 'aahs' have escaped our lips. We have really enjoyed finding out facts we didn't know and also how to make some of these amazing objects. I hear that mums and dads have been helping out. So thank you. These projects have been well received and mean so much to all of us!

More Great Aboriginal Artefact Presentations

Thursday's Projects Organisation

Today we've continued with our Aboriginal Artefact presentations. We are all learning so much. Well done 3/4T!

Homework Projects

Homework projects have begun to come in this week. All of them have been absolutely fabulous! We've had the opportunity to learn about Aborigine humpies and a gunyah. We found out about Aboriginal art and their use of symbols when painting. We even had a dreamtime story and a museum curator visit with an interesting accent who told us all about hunting spears. I can't wait to see the rest as they come in over the next week.

Holly's Post

Yesterday and this morning we had reading groups and we were reading our books for ten minutes and then we did an activity. Today we learnt about summarising. With whiteboards we had to approximate or guess how long a centimetre was, 5cm and 10cm and draw them without a ruler. Then we had to write everything we knew about measurement. First I copied off of Mrs Taylor and then I did two by myself. Then we listened to our class novel, 'The Goat Who Sailed The World'. After that we had library. We got into our groups and we had to try and find everything we could about one explorer. For example, Dampier. Then we packed up and had a story.

Jake's Post

Today we started the day with reading groups. We first talked about how to make connections with a book when we're reading it. Then we got split into our reading groups and read a book and we had to make connections with the book and ourselves. We then had to write it in our reading group books. After reading groups we came back to our class and did some grammar and finished ofg our 100WC. Then we had recess. After recess we went to computers and typed our 100WC and then we went back to class and talked about the European explorers like Torres, Dampier and Dartog. We listened to a rap of these explorers that was on our class blog. Then we worked in groups to read some more information about the explorers and make some notes. Then it was lunch. After lunch we finished of our European explorers and had to share something that we found out about them with the class. After that we played a game where we either had to multiply two numbers together or add two numbers together. Then we got our own dice and had to roll them to make 2, 3 or 4 digit numbers to add. Then we went home.

European Explorers Rap

Here is a great youtube clip about some of the early Australian explorers in a rap.

Edith's Post

This morning my mum was rushing for breakfast and the bus was late when I got to school. I didn't have to get a late note Yeah! =D  I learned things like nouns and writing sentences with adjectives in them and also did some of our 100 Word Challenge. Then I had recess. After that I had Mrs Shannon and we learnt a rap and then Mrs Simon taught us about bus safety. This afternoon we listened to more of our class novel and also had to do some HSIE. Then we went home.

Zac's Blog Post

In the morning we went to the computer room and finished off our power points we have been making about ourselves. Next we looked at our blog buddies on the internet. After that we watched BTN (Behind the News) which was about the first fleet of ships that came to Australia in 1788. Then it was recess. Yummy! Yummy! Yummy! After recess we had Mr Payne while Mrs Taylor did some other work (he is a casual teacher) like handwriting, reading our class novel and a little bit of maths before we made Valentines day cards with him because it is Valentines day. Later on we had lunch. Yummy, yummy in my tummy. After lunch some people went to PSSA, swimming or to studio fitness and everyone else went to home sport with Mrs Taylor.

Sienna's (3) Blog Post

We are learning about European explorers. Today we went to the library and looked at a map of where Europe, England, Indonesia and Australia are. We had to say where the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were and we needed to find the equator. I knew where the equator was because I have a globe at home and I have seen the line that says equator. We found out that the British wanted to make other countries their own so that they were more important.

Kate and Jemma's Blog Post

Today we did History about the First Fleet. Then we went to the computer lab and we created a slideshow about us for Mrs Taylor. After recess we went back to class and we finished off some previous work.