Last year Tara Taylor and Tania Dorney from the Learning Pod obtained some funding for Broulee Public School to run Aboriginal projects within the school. We called this project Storylines. As a part of this program Rod Slockee, local Aboriginal Community Liason Officer, visited the school and shared both local Aboriginal stories and his own personal stories with targeted indigenous and non-indigenous students. Students then spent time with Tara creating artwork about their own personal stories and local Aboriginal stories. The local stories Rod shared are currently being made into e-books with art done by our students which will be made into a resource that everyone in the school can use. Last week Rod visited the school and some students helped him to put a border around one of Rod's painting's, which he has kindly donated to the school. Here are some photos of Rod and students painting his artwork. It will be hung proudly in our school. A big thank-you to Rod for his donation to our school.
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Our Learning Pod students have been busy improving their literacy and numeracy skills (and having some fun along the way) by baking. Firstly, the students created a cooking dictionary so they would understand all the terms used in cooking. Then they are given a recipe and are responsible to complete their baking task without assistance from the teacher. Students are responsible for getting out ingredients, reading the recipe and following the instructions, all measuring, putting their baking in the oven and waiting for it to cook and, of course, cleaning up afterwards. Their first baking task was jam drops. Here are some pictures of our students cooking and their creations. Well done, we are very proud of you! You will also find a recipe for jam drops that Liam Howlett has written. Now you can cook jam drops at home. Elephant's toothpaste is the name of a popular science experiment where hydrogen peroxide and dishwashing detergent, mixed with yeast and warm water quickly turns into foam. The students not only enjoyed this fun experiment, but it is great to see them reading and following instructions independently. We have some photos of Nicholas Jessop making elephant's toothpaste and William Delahey has written some instructions for you to follow. Hi. We are back with a post about making Lava Lamps. I was very proud of the students who all read and followed the instructions without any help at all. Better still, the lava lamps looked great and were fantastic fun. Thanks to Liam Howlett, who has written the procedure below, you will be able to make these yourself at home. We are back with our next exciting edition. This time the students have made balloon rockets. This time many of us found the instructions a bit tricky. A few of the students managed to thread the straw through string before tying the string to the poles, but most of them missed it. Never mind, as it gave us an opportunity to re-read the instructions and start again. Besides, who has ever managed to read instructions and follow them all without a bit of frustration (not me!). Here we have a short video of William demonstrating the balloon rockets, and Denzel has written a clear and colourful set of instructions for us to follow. Hi we are back with another project we have completed. The students did really well reading quite a long list of instructions on how to make a catapult using pegs and paddle pop sticks. Not only were the students very motivated to build a catapult (what a surprise) and had tremendous fun launching marshmallows, it turned out to be a great science experiment. The students experimented with angles as they discovered that if they elevated the back of the catapult the marshmallows launched across the room rather than in the air and back down. We did manage to make some time to have a marshmallow launching competition and show off our catapults to our classmates. Scott Rigby has done a great job writing instructions on how to make a catapult. Here in the Learning Pod we have a group of boys who have been busy this year reading procedures on how to make things and then using those instructions to make a small project. Our first project was very simple, cutting cardboard into strips, cutting slits in it and then making cardboard constructions out of those strips of cardboard. Here we have some pictures of the cardboard constructions the students made, and also Nicholas Jessop has been kind enough to write a procedure for you all to follow so you can have some fun making these at home. This year we give a big welcome to Pauline Pay as a part of the Learning Pod. Pauline is teaching MiniLit now that Tara Leigh-Taylor is pursuing a career as a teacher. Sharon Hanks is also teaching MiniLit, Cherie Enright is still with us teaching Reading Recovery and Michelle Minehan, Mel Tuan and Tim McDonald are MiniLit tutors. As the Learning Support Teacher, I, Tania Dorney am teaching targeted children reading skills through the Learning Support Program. This year we have a big emphasis on making reading fun! We look forward to giving you regular updates throughout the year with some of our projects including a book report on the Tom Gates novels and various make-and-do activities including science experiments and building projects.
Well couldn't let the year end without using the new pizza oven. A big thank-you to Tim who got up very early to get the oven all ready to go for the afternoon party. Also to all the Learning Pod staff who all bought in something and helped out with pizza making. The kids were very lucky, it's not every day you have your teachers acting as chefs and waiters. We couldn't believe how many pizzas the kids ate. It was safe to say we sent them home full.
In the Learning Pod we work with students on both literacy and numeracy. I wanted to share a couple of videos that Kobe Jenkins has made. He has been learning about groups of and sharing. The apps we used were Shadow Puppets and Puppet Pals. |
AuthorAuthors are Tania Dorney (Learning and Support Teacher) and Cherie Enright (Reading Recovery Teacher). Archives
August 2016
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