June 12

Camp Illawonga 2017

We were busy packing on the weekend. There was a lot to bring to school!

Mickey courtesy of Tumblr

Week six had finally arrived. The day we had been waiting for since we started in grade three.

We were going …. Camping!

Yay.

Most of Mrs Woolford’s year 3/4 class would be joining our excited campers. We left our families for three days and two nights. Would they survive without us? They would just have to be brave. But it was okay if some parents needed extra hugs good-bye.

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We had a long two hour journey to get to Camp Illawonga in Swan Reach, which would be our new home for the next few days. Thankfully the coach had comfortable seats and seatbelts.

Map from Illawonga home page

The road trip was fabulous, but travelling made us hungry, so we stopped to stretch our legs, have a bite to eat and of course have a little playtime. Angaston was the perfect place.

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Another short ride, well sort of …… and we were soon settled into our dormitories at camp. Our class was on lunch duty so it was straight to work. Yum … Tacos.

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Mark, the Camp Leader, gave us a lot of information and instructions about being safe for our stay and expectations around the camp site. Soon it was back on another bus for a short ride. We were crossing the Murray River on the punt to visit The Murray Aquaculture Centre. This was an interesting place where we learnt about almond farming and yabbies.

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That was fun because we also had a challenge  to see which team would catch the most yabbies. Yabby catching sounded simple enough, but there were some tricks to learn…… patience.

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The girls were Yabby catching heroes, how did they do it!

The sun was going down, and it was getting cooler, but there was still so much to do… more duty groups for tea.

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After our delicious meal, we went into the gym for some outrageously exciting fun. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring the still camera!… But trust us, we worked up an appetite for a yummy supper with twisting and jumping, turning and rolling, hanging and falling…… before it was time to hit the sack. We had a huge day planned so we needed our beauty sleep.

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Some of us slept soundly. Poor little Scarlett.

Up and at em, the next morning was quite eerie. A mysterious fog crept in, it threatened to hide the sun… but we found it.

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Lucky the Sun burnt off the fog by the time we were ready for our river cruise. We needed our floatation devices before we could walk down to the boat.

While we went on the cruise, the other groups went on a caving expedition and a Safari ride. We would all rotate activities throughout the camp. Once again, I left the still camera behind for the cruise… but I remembered it for the ride to the caves.

Those hard hats were fabulous protection, without them I think we would all be a little shorter!

After that adventure we had a short bushwalking to a HUGE river red gum. That tree was so big we just fit around it! We had enormous fun building Tepees with all the twigs and sticks lying around.

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Each time we visited the river, it meant a short but steep 400m walk down a gravel path… naturally we had to walk back up too. That was tiring, luckily Ellen makes us do fitness each week so it was a piece of cake.

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We needed to get back to camp quickly, as we had to get ready for an exciting adventure at Sunny Dale sheep farm.

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What a whip cracking great time we had. We really earned our tea that night. In fact some us sang after supper! Karaoke was so much fun, we have stars in the making. Stay tuned for the videos.

It was a perfect night for a camp fire.. but oh,we forgot to sing a Letter from Camp! Still the planets were smiling for us in the night sky. Then of course the marshmallows needed toasting… yum.

Time for bed, it was a big day indeed and it isn’t over, there’s more to come. To bed!

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Getting up wasn’t that easy, lots to pack and clean up before breakfast and be ready for our last activities. I missed the Safari ride, but I did managed to check out archery. We had some bullseyes. Bravo.

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All too soon we needed to pack the bus and say our goodbyes to Mark and the team. Camp was the best. Three cheers for Illawonga.

We reckon it was sad to leave, but we were glad to get back home to our loving families too. Thanks to our brave Dad, Shane Brow who gave up his time to help with the boys and group C.

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Dear Families,

Apart from a few sore tummies, there were no problems just loads of fun and learning. Thank you so much for allowing me to borrow your precious ones for those few days, we have some wonderful memories. Stay tuned for some great videos the kids will be working on. I might have a go too.

Warm regards, Ellen

Category: Health, History, Integrated Tasks, Literacy, Maths/Numeracy, Science, Team work, Technology | 6 Comments on Camp Illawonga 2017
April 1

Classifying living things

As scientists, our job is to record our observations. So before we began investigating our topic for this term, we brushed up on our scientific drawing skills. Ellen gave us an interesting specimen to look at closely and we had a go at drawing the object with as much detail as we could. We added labels another helpful notes.

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Our Topic for investigation this term has been

Feather, Fur or Leaves. 

We began by checking out a scientists journal entry. Were things living or not?  Was it an insect? Was it an animal or plant? How could we tell? Did we agree with the observations and recordings? Why? Why not? Questions, questions…?scientists should always questions. That also makes them think of answers, so we should be able to give an explanation of why we think what we do too.

We shared and recorded our ideas of these journal entries in different groups according to our understanding.

 We thought our explanations were quite thoughtful, given the limited information.

 

We got excited by the different specimens that we compared, so we set up our own nature table.

Phoebe’s Grandmother bought her a Venus fly trap to observe, Phoebe kindly added it to our collection.

 

Taxonomy anyone?

So what do you call it when a scientist sorts out stuff? We sorted lots of living things into two groups plants and animals. There seemed to be a lot of animals, they couldn’t all belong to one group, could they?

We were given some animals cards and in groups we stared looking at similar features. We made a list of features we could use to separate animals into groups.

We shared our thinking with the class.

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It is hard to be a complete expert and remember everything, so having tools to help makes our life easier. We were introduced to a branching key. That unlocked the door to any problems we had.

By answering yes no questions, we could slowly refine our search until we had the exact group. For example.. Start at the first question…

This animal, Does it have bones in its body. No Does it have a hard body. Yes Does it have antennae. Yes Does it have more than two antennae? No Does it have six legs? No -its a Myriapod

We had a go using more animal cards. It was quite challenging. How do you know the answers, sometimes we went down the wrong path?

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Time to collect some real animals and put the table into action. We set up an investigation. Searching for animals groups in the leaf litter at Grange School. To get us on track, we predicted what we thought we might see. To be fully prepared, we read our procedure carefully, making sure we had everything we needed. For a successful investigation we all needed to know our jobs, so it was time to negotiate.

 

But wait, field work can be hazardous. So we armed ourselves with eye protection and wore gloves in case of any bites. We were ready to go out and collect a couple of scoops of leaf litter to see what animals we would find.

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Back in the laboratory, or the classroom as we usually refer to it, we looked closely at our leaf litter and checked out what specimens we could identify. Then we needed to work out which animal group it belonged to.

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We found a variety of things living under the leaf litter such as:- millipedes, ants, spiders, worms, bugs, moths, caterpillars. Each team recorded their own….eg.

Using the branching key we discovered that there were only four animal groups. We made a table to record this information and the total animals found in each group..

Making a Claim – stating a case

Tables are useful tools to help sort out information. From this we have evidence and can make a claim.

We claim that there are many different animal groups found in the leaf litter at Grange Primary School. We also claim that it is highly likely that you would find myriapods such as millipedes and slaters, as well as insects such as ants and beetles. We know this because in our total samples there were more myriapods and insects, compared to the small amounts of annelids and arachnids found.

We also thought that there were variables (things that might change our results) such as rain, time of day and time of year might effect which animal groups we would find.

 

What did you think of our unit?

Questions for you to answer and let me know how you felt about science this term.

What did you like most about this unit?

What didn’t you like?

What questions do you still have?

How could you solve some of the team issues you experienced in the research?

Which scientists do you believe would need to investigate in the field or use tools such as a branching key or table?

 

 

 

 

Category: Integrated Tasks, Literacy, Science, Team work, Technology | 2 Comments on Classifying living things
February 25

Learning how to say, read and write Big numbers

Reading numbers like this  830 150 753 is a challenge, so where do we start?

Well knowing place value helps. That is looking at the value of a digit and knowing what it is worth by the position in the number.

We have been having a lot of fun learning how to better understand place value. We have learnt the first four places – Thousand Hundred Ten One then we played a game using playing cards. In pairs each player would flip a card and place it in one of those positions. The aim was to make the highest number. The winner was the one who could win five times.

I love it when they explain their mathematical strategies while they are playing, it helps us with our thinking. I reckon sharing how you do work is very helpful to others and ourselves.

This was a great warm up place value activity, then it came to writing these big numbers. First thing we did was to make our own set of arrow cards. These were colour coded for each place value. It took a while to cut everything, but it was worth it.

Go team one

Love the concentration team five

Way to go team three great modelling for others

Once that job was done we could make lots of four digit numbers. So randomly choosing one of each colour, we made 4 digit numbers.

But that’s not all.. No, we learnt that there were three ways you could record a number.  Check this out..

Anita has built the number 7762 with the cards she randomly chose, she can write it 3 ways

  1. Standard Form 7762
  2. Expanded Form 7000 + 700 + 60 + 2
  3. Written Form seven thousand seven hundred and sixty two

Look at them go..

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Using the arrow cards made a lot of sense to us. We could clearly see where the numerals needed to go to make the standard form and when it came to expanding the number, it was easy to read. Once we could read it, it was easy to write what we said… but we had to check our spelling for accuracy.

We’re not experts yet, but we have a made a great start to becoming one.

Something to think about.

What did you think of the place value card game?

What could you do to try to win the game?

Is it better to go first or second?

How do you feel about place value after using the arrow cards?

What confuses you with big numbers?

What do you still need to learn?

Category: Integrated Tasks, Maths/Numeracy, Team work | 61 Comments on Learning how to say, read and write Big numbers
November 25

Respect, Friendship, Enjoyment, Diversity, Identity

These are the values that are at the core of what we do here at Grange Primary School. fb_img_1479645417651

Cricket Australia will be promoting the Australia Day Match soon and they will be using this picture.

The two girls proudly holding the Australian flag are Jorja and Jordan both of whom attend Grange Primary School. Jorja is a student in our class, Jordan works in our Games Day Buddy class.

Both great friends and who, in a moment of time, have captured the essence not only of what our school values, but indeed what Australia does. I think this picture speaks volumes.

Thank you Jorja for sharing this with us, now we will share it with the world.

If you could put a slogan under this picture what would you write? Let us know.

Category: History, Integrated Tasks, Literacy, Team work, Uncategorized | 23 Comments on Respect, Friendship, Enjoyment, Diversity, Identity
September 13

Who were these strange people in our class while I was away?

Hey, did you all have to come to school at night?

You were not working that slow were you!

You are all in you’re pyjamas. Did you all sleep in extra long?

What’s the story?

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Of course, it was the onesy fund raiser, silly me, I forgot. I think you all look like you need a hot cup of cocoa. Don’t you look cute. Looks like our class donated well, thanks team.

Wait a minute you were back out of dress code again. I think this is becoming a habit, was it dress up term?

Book Week 2016

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Which characters can you recognise?

How wonderful you all look in your Book Week Parade Costumes. I thought you all did well designing your characters. I was sorry to miss it, so I am glad Ms Belle took these pictures. Almost didn’t recognise some of you.

What fun you must have had.

What did you get up to?

How did you feel as your new character?

What do you like about dressing up?

Which character did you choose and why?

Who will you plan to come as next year?

Category: Arts, Integrated Tasks, Literacy, Team work | 10 Comments on Who were these strange people in our class while I was away?