Last week our year one assembly highlighted the learning that has taken place in the neighbourhood during the past term. The students did an amazing job and we extend a huge thanks to the effort that families put into the beautiful costumes the children wore. A huge thanks also to Deb for the brilliant scenery. Any photos would be most welcome as we were too busy to take any!
Here is the story of the learning journey that led to this wonderful performance…
Through our inquiry ‘What lives at Princes Hill’ we discovered that rainbow lorikeets live at Princes Hill and we know this because they are very, very loud! Keith recorded the sounds and we imagined what the birds might be saying to each other. Students created images of the birds using paint, collage and Plasticine.
We read a traditional indigenous story, “How the Birds got their colours”. The students then wrote their own stories about how they imagined the rainbow lorikeets got their colours. One student’s idea was that the lorikeets got their colours by flying through a rainbow.
These initial stories lead to a literacy focus on narrative story writing. We learned that most narratives use the same structure and there is usually a problem and a solution. Elsie Hurst ran a story writing workshop with us and she shared her tips for writing narratives. Using ideas from the children in the neighbourhood she added more detail (using problems and solutions) to the original story.
Deb and Lisa then worked with students to turn the neighbourhood story into a play. Students learned how to create different sounds in order to create the music for the play. Students also worked with Deb to create the scenery for the play and the images the children created of the rainbow lorikeets feature in the backdrops. The final element was learning performing skills to share our learning with the rest of the school community.