Adventures in the Library
Premiers Reading Challenge
The Premier’s Reading Challenge has finished for this year. All students involved in the programme will receive their awards by the end of the school year.
You may remember the article in our last newsletter regarding the F-5 students’ involvement in the Premier’s Reading Challenge: STEM Reading and Design Challenge. This involved them responding to one of the STEM books we read together in our Library lessons. The F-2 students designed and painted a picture based on the book, One Less Fish by Kim Michelle Toft.
Over the whole state, 1,259 entries were received by the Premier’s Reading Challenge office. The work that both the F-2 and the 3-5 students completed was a part of this. Prizes are awarded to best and runner up entrants along with recognition of outstanding school participation. Recently, we received notification that one of our students is to receive an award for her outstanding effort.
It is with pleasure that I announce that the winner in the R-2 group was Aylah McKenzie, who was a student in Amanda Hilder’s class during Term 2. Her winning entry is below.
Book Week 2020 Theme: Curious Creatures, Wild Minds
Book Week will be celebrated in Week 2 of Term 4, October 17 – 23. We plan to hold a dress up day on Wednesday October 21, with a parade at school around 11 a.m. It’s not long now, so get the thinking caps on and see what amazing outfits can be created with what you have around you.
Here are some ideas to help get the creative juices flowing…
The Curious Child: Look at books that have curious children in them such as Curious George, Alice in Wonderland, Ada Twist – Scientist, Rosie Revere – Engineer, Engineer books by Andrew King and children with great imaginations such as
When Henry Caught Imaginitis, Drac and the Gremlin, Hunting for Dragons, Where the Wild Things Are.
Curious Creatures – Real: Look at the many strange creatures in nature. Explore Your World: Weird, Wild and Amazing by Tim Flannery, The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals by Sami Bayley and Fauna: Australia’s Most Curious Creatures by Tania McCartney are all recently published books but check your own bookshelves for others.
Curious Creatures – Spiritual and Imagined
Myths and Legends and Folklore – Mermaids, dragons, yowie etc.
Fantasy books – such as The Gruffalo, The Hobbit, Ice Wolves
Speculative Fiction – such as Mechanica and other books by Lance Balchin
Aboriginal Spiritual Beings – The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek, The Quinkins (Percy Trezise and Dick Roughsey), The Binna Binna Man (Meme McDonald and Boori Pryor)
Scholastic Book Fair
The Scholastic Book Fair will be held in Week 3, Term 4 (the week after Book Week). More information regarding the Fair will come out early Term 4. It will run very similar to last year’s fair.
Commissioner's Digital Challenge
The F-5 students have been taking part in the Commissioner’s Digital Challenge: Space to Dream, which encourages students to learn how to be an effective and creative problem solver, to be bold thinkers and create out-of-the-box solutions. The brief for the students was to design a toy or gadget on the iPad app, Maker’s Empire, for a child of their age who is moving to Mars. I will be forwarding the students’ completed designs (not the 3D models) to Adelaide before the end of term. The most creative, useful and cool designs will feature in a public exhibition at MOD Museum of Discovery (which is on North Terrace Adelaide adjacent to the Morphett St Bridge) later in the year.
Mr Green has been working hard to get them all printed on the 3D printer in the library so that students can have their own 3D model. A design can take anywhere between 2-4 hours to print. Unfortunately, not all designs have been able to be printed yet as there have been a few issues with the 3D printer. When these are sorted, all students will get their own 3D printed design. Below, are some of the designs that have been printed as well as labelled pictures and explanations of some of the designs.
Visual Arts
This term, the F-5 students have been exploring colour with Miss Suzanne. This exploration has involved mixing the three primary colours of red, blue and yellow using their fingers, cardboard and paintbrushes to create backgrounds for their artwork. Following the instructions that Miss Suzanne gave, the students then drew a dragon (or dinosaur, depending on who you ask) and a unicorn (or horse or wolf). These were cut out and added to the background once it was dry. Even though the students followed the same set of instructions, each art piece is different. A sample of the work the students have been doing can be seen below.
The Year 6-9 students have completed their 6-week unit on creating a self-portrait using multimedia. Students needed to consider what they wanted to show others about themselves and how to draw the audience into their picture. Some of their pictures are included here.
