Students are currently making glovehooters, exotic rooster-like hooters which sound a lot like foghorns! Students had to study parts of an instructional text and had to organise it so it had a logical sequence and then make their very own hooter. Some have actually made two. We have enough variety of pure notes and off-notes to compose something recognisable as well as something whacky. The band will perform at the final assembly of this term. The students decorated cylinders of varying lengths and diameters. They are currently learning the techniques to get the best sounds. It's a fun unit with quite a few variables. Here are a few of them:
The following words have been collected throughout the first two terms and were the twenty most mispelt words in the classroom. These are up on the wall and students need to heed them!
For the past weeks students have been looking at the Gallipoli campaign. They each have a small exercise book to track their journey into history.
We also looked at The Australian War Memorial and its significance to the Australian people.
Last week students worked on pre- film activities so that they can more fully understand this iconic Australian film. Students worked on some of the dialogues that occur in the film, colloquial language and the concept of the British Empire. Each pair had an element to explore and present to their classmates. For some students this involved a small amount of research on topics such as The Light Horse Brigade, the British Empire, the money of the day, the Ladies Patriotic Auxilliary, whilst others had to present a dialogue and explain what it meant.
The following lesson each student was given a still from the movie and had to predict and discuss what they could see in the photo.
August Thursday 7th students viewed the first two parts of the film. Then today Tuesday the 11th, they watched the third segment which focused on the landing at Gallipoli.
When they had finished their paired work they had to find the other group who had the same set of descriptions and share their outcomes. Each group of 4 or 5 then presented their work to the class. This was a reading, and a vocabulary building activity. All eight groups' work is up on display in the art area. Next job is presenting a character study; and the finished product can take a number of forms. Students drew their character out of a hat. On Wednesday we will focus on how to write up/present a detailed character description with direct reference to the film. I negotiated with students the different form that their character presentations could take. This is a snapshot of our brainstorm session. Products are due next Wednesday 27th. Character
Study (Using product and process
differentiation)
The purpose of this is for
students to showcase their knowledge of either Frank or Archy, making specific
reference to the film. Students drew their character out of the crocodile-banded hat. The presentation can be done by way of one of the
following products:
1. an in depth written
text using paragraphs or an essay
2. photostory OR
powerpoint
3. an interview using fat
and skinny questions
4. portrait with some
extra information verbal or in text or a mix/information poster
5. a radio interview
6. a diorama
7. an animation
8. a series of comic strips
showing major happenings in the film
Example of a statement made about a character with direct reference to the film:
Archy is
very patriotic and this is shown by his enthusiasm to go to war. He is desperate
to join up and tries twice to enlist, having success on his second attempt with
some help from Frank.
Students will be viewing the following DVD in three parts and using keywords to take notes. Keywords have been a major focus across the grade 5/6 units this year to aid students in note taking and to avoid plagarism.
All the posters and brochures about the pluses, minuses and interesting facts about "federation " are in and being assessed. Well done! Next activity in the learning sequence is to create your own ICT product, PhotoStory, Power Point or animation about one of the historical figures listed below or you may negotiate one of your own as longs as you can show their links to the process of federation. On Thursday students will be shown how to make a PhotoStory. Students will also make a placemat plan looking at their chosen person in terms of the Keys to Success: persistence, resilience, getting along, confidence and organisation and will construct a timeline. The placemat is due in Monday the 30th June. Then the ICT aspect will become the major focus.
Henry Lawson: Australian writer
- Henry Lawson's life and background. From Australian GovernmentHenry Lawson (1867-1922)
- simple overview of Lawson's life. From Australian Broadcasting Corporation Henry Lawson
- biography and includes poem 'Sez you' and copies of his birth and death certificates. From NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages
Louisa (Albury) Lawson
- Australian poet, journalist and publisher - instrumental in helping Australian women to get the vote. From AlldownunderLouisa Lawson
- background information and influence on women's rights. From Australian Workers Heritage Centre Louisa Lawson
- short biography from Education Services Australia
Edith Cowan
Sir William McMillan
Edith Cowan (1861-1932)
- simple overview of Lawson's life. From Australian Broadcasting CorporationEdith Cowan
- background information from Australia on Net Edith Cowan
- short biography from Education Services Australia
Who was Sir John Quick?
- background and influence on Australian Federation. From La Trobe UniversitySir John Quick
- Member of the First Parliament. From Parliament of Australia Quick, Sir John (1852-1932)
- biography and image. From Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition
We watched this today and are going to use this as the inspiration to write our own class play about Federation for presentation in a school assembly. A big thank you to K for sourcing the transcript and printing off; a great starting point.
A PMI is a pluses, minuses and interesting investigation. Last week students were each given a booklet on Federation, and we have discussed how to pick out the keywords. They really need to read the information thoroughly (more than once) and look up any words they are unfamiliar with. Many of the students have had a turn reading to me so I can gauge their understanding of the two texts, but any support at home would be greatly appreciated, as there are 27 students in the class. The information should be housed in their Useful Folder. The Federation unit is a tough requirement of the history curriculum and will require persistence and organisation. Students will be receiving a significant amount of help scaffolding the assignment. They have been asked to produce a PMI poster which will be a mixture of written text and visual text to show their understanding of the topic. This is the first task. Today students also received a second source of information, two pages on Federation from a book levelled at upper primary students. Tomorrow I will be showing some film clips, sharing some music and also a Big Book which simplifies the topic somewhat more. To date three-four hours has been given in class on this topic. Tuesday the students will have a mini computers for an hour each to find a third and/or fourth source to help them with this assignment. . Tonight they were asked to finish reading the information given and to make a plan in their Writer's Notebooks.
Yesterday, May 3rd I and some brave volunteers read the big book Australians All to the class. It is the easiest to understand resource I have so far discovered about Federation. I photocopied the most relevant pages to Federation in colour and then laminated them. Four randomly chosen students put these up as a display in the quiet room as a resource.
This second term we will be focusing on Federation, looking closely at what it involved, the plusses, the minuses, the interesting aspects, and of course the aboriginal perspective. This painting was created in May 1901 to commemorate Federation and the opening of the first Parliament of Australia. The painting was done by Tom Roberts and it was such an arduous job that it nearly killed him. His friends nick-named it "the big machine" and it took him over two years to complete.
Below you can see the Duke of Cornwall and York speaking in front of thousands of people. Robert was of course very excited to be officially commissioned to create such an important painting.
The painting is way bigger than most people imagine it to be, I was surprised at its impressive dimensions on a recent trip to Canberra parliament house where it now hangs. It hasn't been hanging here all the time you know! Where could it have been? Wouldn't it be interesting to know about the private lives of all those depicted? Who were they all? Bet they weren't all squeaky clean...no-one is. And of course the aboriginal perspective is often missing from this stage of the Australian story.
This week for our art lesson the students drew bears and toys. I brought in a box of bears and a few students brought in their own favourite toy to sketch. They are experinenting with different ways to draw fur. We also looked at a Steiff bear, the first company to make the teddy bear. The lesson will continue next Thursday after the Naplan testing is finished.
At the end of term one students were lucky enough to have Barry Geard to come in and talk to them about his grandfather Private Herbert Walter Chaffey who fought in World War I on the Western Front. Barry had brought with his an original roll honour board and his grandfather's medals. He talked to the students about th e huge death toll of WWI and also showed them an excerpt from the film All Quiet on the Western Front. Barry talked mainly about trench warfare and the conditions in the trenches. Barry focused on the heart wrenching social consequences on the home front as well.He is going to come back this second term to focus more specifically on the Gallipoli campaign. In class we will be doing a film study on the groundbreaking Australian film Gallipoli made in 1981 with a focus on the main characters of Frank and Archie. The students really enjoyed the session and I was proud of them for the huge amount of respect they showed and for their good manners.
A big thanks to Amanda who arranged for her daughter Thalia to come into the classroom to talk about her experience on My Kitchen Rules. The kids had lots of questions to ask and Thalia diplomatically addressed everyone of them. Students learnt about media bias and had a chance to talk individually to Thalia.I took a class shot and will get each student a copy. I was just excited as they were. Thalia we loved you and wish you all the best.
We have done reading on this in English and in French, thanks to our lovely student from Madagascar, as well as watched the above animation. We looked at the idea of visual narratives and this one is truly amazing. We are attempting to recreate the tapestry through pencils, water colours and mapping pens on cartridge paper. Each student will do two panels each over the next three weeks. I saw this magnificent 70 metre tapestry when I visited France some three years ago. It is the most famous tapestry in the world.
Photography wasn't permitted but we were lucky enough to see another amazing tapestry in Catle Pirou which created in more modern times but in the same style called Tapisseria de Pirou which was created by Therese Ozenne (from 1976-1992) which tells a part of this Norman history: the coming of the Vikings and Sicily's conquest.
Students are nearing the completion of this art experience and here a few of the finished products...more to come early term II. The Keys to Success which were promoted in this lessons were: organisation, confidence and perseverance. I am very proud of the work they are producing. It is a very high standard for students of this age. Well done everyone. It pieced together quite well and we shared it in a buddy assembly as a small narrative-driven play with a few interesting and comical actions. Who dropped the horse? It is currently on display in our quiet room and will be available for viewing for a few weeks over the parent/teacher interview period. Lots of detail! The longer you look at it, the more you see.
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