Inquiry Workshops

Today, we ran three elective inquiry workshops. One workshop examined the topography of potatoes, looking into the contour lines in topographical maps.  Another workshop also examined contourlines in maps and created mountains using plasticine, measured and marked each section and drew its topographical map.  The third workshop investigated air pressure through a series of experiments and explored how air pressure affects the weather. Here are some photos taken during these workshops.

Bazaar - Thank You!

As a Bazaar first timer, I was completely blown away by the amount of support from everyone in our community. Special thank you must go to all the parents, relatives and carers in our neighbourhood who gave up their time to help out with the organisation and running of the stalls. I visited all the stalls on the day of the Bazaar and I thought they were fantastic!

I was also very proud to see so many talented students in the Talent Quest. I thought that the standard of the acts were extremely high! Well done everyone!

Hip Hoppers at the BER Opening

You may have witnessed our outstanding Hip Hop Group at the Grade 34 Neighbourhood 1 assembly few weeks ago. Formed by Patrick this term, the group learnt some cool moves and grooves. The Hip Hop group will be performing their coolness again at the BER opening in the gym at 9AM this Wednesday (16th). All parents are invited to the opening of course and you will be able to see many other students from other neighbourhoods performing.

Inquiry Report

I wanted to share with you the wonderful variety of learning experiences our students are having during our current inquiry into geography. Our focus has been quite wide as students have demonstrated immense curiosity into the subject. Here are some photos to explain some of the things that are happening in our neighbourhood at the moment.

Some of our students are investigating rainfall. They have converted disposable drink bottles into rain gauges and placed them around the school. These students check their gauges frequently and are graphing their results.

Meanwhile, some of our students are investigating weather by keeping diaries. Some have created weather diaries, while some are researching cloud formations and their relationship to weather. Here is an example of a weather diary.

Another weather investigation takes the form of music. Here students express different kinds of weather phenomena through the use of musical instruments or through digital music making software such as GarageBand.

Here is an example of a rock collection that a student has made. They are currently identifying the different rocks they have found around school, or brought from home, and are then classifying them into igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.

There are many more experiences occurring in our neighbourhood at the moment and hopefully, I will have the opportunity to share more with you soon.

Landmarks of the World

I would like to present to you a our World Map of Landmarks. We have only been working on this map for a couple of weeks so far in ICT and LA time in our neighbourhood but I thought it's a wonderful example of how we can use ICT to share knowledge within our learning community.

Our students researched some famous landmarks around the world, looking at their history, cultural significance as well as their physical attributes during our ICT sessions. We investigated ways of inserting our information in Google Maps to share this information with our colleagues.

It is still in work-in progress but here it is so far. You get a better experience by seeing it in FULL VIEW here.


View Earth Report Map 2011 in a larger map

- Click on a tab to see some information (blue = manmade landmarks, red = natural landmarks).
- Click on "more' to get the option of zooming into the landmark.

Inquiry learning term 4

Our focus for inquiry learning this term is in the humanities area of geography.  The children are working towards producing an Earth Report as a culmination of their inquiry into a range of geographical concepts. 

For further details, please refer to the Student Learning section of our blog.

Afternoon tea with Patrick

We were very sad to have to say goodbye to Patrick earlier this week. Patrick has been with our neighbourhood since the beginning of the year as a part of his Masters of Teaching course at Melbourne University and have thoroughly become a member of the neighbourhood team. He has built up wonderful relationships with our students though his enthusiastic style of teaching.

We would therefore like to celebrate Patrick's achievements by having an afternoon tea this coming Monday (31st) at 2:30 pm. We invite all students to bring a dish of choice which we can share amongst our neighbourhood.