Digital Microscopes

During Science investigations with Mrs Nelson our class used digital microscopes to continue our research about looking at materials and objects very closely.

Mrs Nelson had a set of digital microscopes that clip onto our iPads. We’ve been using them each week that she worked in our classroom. We really loved the predictions, investigations and checking of our results – we needed to think and work like Scientists. We investigated man made objects and materials and then ventured outside to look at nature.

Here we are learning outdoors – investigating nature.

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Then we came back inside the classroom and shared our best nature images via the IWB.

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The next learning task was to examine fabric and then test how waterproof specific materials were. We set up our material strips on plastic containers and then used syringes of water to test their ‘waterproofness’.

 

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We continued our testing and started to record our findings.

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Our final stage was to record our findings and we discussed what we’d discovered. We also need to explain our findings, giving reasons for our answers.

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We LOVED using the digital microscopes and hope to use them again in the future.

Can you tell us why you liked using the microscopes?

Mother’s Day

Today is a very special day for all of the Mums in our class and around the world! It’s Mother’s Day.

We would like to wish each of our Mums and Grandmas a very Happy Mother’s Day.

We hope you enjoyed our cards and presents that we made and that you get spoilt today!

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Police Visit

As a part of our inquiry into Community Workers  we had a visit by Officer Jackson from the South Australian Police Force. It was great to learn about how the Police work to keep us safe in our community.

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Mini Microscope Investigations

On Tuesday we did some very special investigations with Mrs Nelson.

The class used the iPads and iPods and clipped a mini microscope onto the edge of the device. As we were working inside we needed to switch the light on so that we could see items under the microscopes more clearly. We all had a partner to work with and share ideas.

This weeks  challenge was to explore ‘man-made’ in and around the classroom. After exploring the classroom and finding items to magnify the pairs then looked thru their pictures and chose one each to share for a ‘What do you think this is?’ whole class culminating activity.

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What did you discover under your microscope?

Daily 5 Reading Menu

As we continue to develop our reading skills we added 4 more strategies to our Daily 5 Cafe board.

We are using these skills really well every time we read:

  • Make a mental picture or images.
  • Use the pictures. Do the words and pictures match.
  • Back up and reread.
  • Predict what will happen next, use the text to confirm.

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Then we added 4 new skills that we’ll be developing in whole class reading sessions, read to self, partner reading and listening to reading activities.

Community Worker Visitors

As a part of our Inquiry about our people who live and work in our community we had 2 visitors this week.

We had a lady from the RSPCA who talked to us about how they save and help animals. It was interesting to hear about all of the different ways that the RSPCA works in our community.IMG_4131

Today we heard from Bev from Minton Farm.  It was great to hear about how Bev and her husband have over 300 animals living on their Coromandel Valley farm at the moment. Their work at Minton Farm centres around rescuing sick or injured animals, helping them back to good health and then releasing them back into their natural community if it is possible.  Sometimes animals can’t be released to live on their own so Bev keeps them on her farm to make sure they live a long and happy life. Minton Farm is quite close to school and a part of people in our community.

Bev brought twin possums along for us to see and learn about- they had been abandoned in the recent bushfires in the Adelaide Hills.

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Narrative Stories

A fictional narrative is a made up story.

Over the next week we will be “immersing” ourselves in fictional narratives to investigate the key elements of a well written narrative.

We will look at:

  • The structure of a fictional narrative
  • Developing ideas to form a quality narrative
  • Character development

Narratives can be structured in different ways, but we identified the typical organisation of a fictional narrative:

  • Beginning (introduce the main character/s, describe the setting)
  • Middle – part one (complication)
  • Middle – part two (series of events that occur as a result of the complication)
  • Ending (complication is resolved).

We’ll be using lots of different picture books to analyse the narrative story – looking at the setting, characters and how the story develops.

We’ll be using some YouTube clips from the Storyline online  site to look at different stories and also to help us our reading aloud skills. We’re having a bug focus on reading with expression and these YouTube clips are a great example of this skill.

Stay tuned for our recorded readings of narrative stories and our written narratives in the coming weeks.

Can you think of any narrative story titles that we could use?

Welcome to Term 2


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We’ve started Term 2 – I’d love you to post a comment about something you’d like to do this term…..It could be a specific activity, visitors to invite in, an excursion that relates to our classroom activities, something you’d like to investigate.

Please let me know what you’re interested in doing – I can’t wait to read your ideas and suggestions.

Genius Hour

On the last day of term (yesterday) we had our first ‘creative maker’ session.

We’ve been discussing Genius Hour sessions – what they are, how they can look, how to plan for using your time effectively, where to get your ideas, what materials you might need….it’s been a fantastic discussion within our class.

We discussed things that we LOVE and ideas we’d be really keen to investigate further next term.

This is a new idea for our Year 2 students but we’re lucky because Miss Sporn, our teacher, ran Genius Hour sessions with her Year 2/3 class last year.

We’ve watched Caine’s Arcade clips via YouTube- he’s been a great inspiration.

We’ve looked at ideas on Pinterest – it gave us lots of ideas and taught us how to search for ideas we’re interested in.

For our first session Miss Sporn created the ‘paper bag challenge’. Everyone was given similar items and we  were challenged to create ‘something’ with it.

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Some of the items were:

  • a paper bag
  • pipe cleaners
  • feathers
  • string
  • a cork or two
  • a cup
  • patty pans
  • match sticks
  • pop sticks

We needed to use most of the items and could recycle our unused materials into tubs in the middle of the room – we could add or take items from these tubs.

We could use textas, recycled paper, low melt glue guns, cardboard, etc as needed.

We had lots of interesting and different creations – it was really interesting to see how each of our students thought about their ideas, started their making, made changes and then finally finished their creations.

Checkout our entire session via our slideshow.

What do you like to create during Genius Hour?

What would you like to try next time?