Dear generous parents and supportive carers,
We have just returned to the Year 2 neighbourhood, stunned by the brilliance of the Parents and Carers Assembly and would now like to share our proud and reflective (Meredith) thoughts.
The reason our assembly went so incredibly well was the immense cooperative effort of the entire Year 2 neighbourhood.
Creating the posters required the writing of a draft. When the draft was finished we used a design website called Canva to create the poster. The posters were carefully checked for correct spelling and grammar. The poster was then downloaded and saved onto the desktop. We then had to sign into our Google Drive account and dragged the saved document into our account. Finally we had to share the PDF of the poster with our teachers by typing in their email addresses. This was quite a process.
Creating the slideshow was an enormous task. First, we had to log into our Google Drive and create a new slideshow. We had to copy down all the names of the excursions and incursions, plus any other events from this year. We then had to copy photos from the blog and insert them into the slideshow. We had to enlarge the photos and make sure they weren’t blurry. We then explored the different formatting options to create some dazzle.
How on earth did the beautiful flowers get created, you may be asking? First we went to the Prep courtyard to look at their new native garden for inspiration. This was Molly’s idea. We brought our books to do some sketching and labelling. When we came back to our neighbourhood we looked at our sketches to decide which ones to make. Hugh was a flower design god! We coloured in our drawings to help us know what coloured paper to use. On one bench in the Art Studio paper was arranged and ordered in a rainbow of colours so that we could easily choose the colours we wanted to work with. Then we cut out different sizes and shapes of petals and started constructing. Early on, Meredith had an epiphany linked to making paper snowflakes many years ago – using a circled piece of paper, we folded in it half three times and then we drew on a shape to help us cut it out. When the paper opened up, it looked like a real flower (Hugh). Owen found making the paper flowers easy because he has delicate, artistic fingers. Sammy thought it was really tricky to stick down the petals without getting glue onto your fingers. Jessica thought it was very hard to know where you had to fold the paper.
Now onto making the cards! The card makers drew a draft picture in their Inquiry Book before creating a good copy that was reduced (Lachlan) on the photocopier. The card makers also did a bit of writing (Ahilan) to say thank you to our parents and carers on the inside of the cards. Once the 48 cards were printed, we signed each one. It was very tiring but after awhile got easier as you got used to writing your name (Wesley). Seb E found it very hard! Hugo found it fun and he’s happy that all the parents will get to see his name on all of the cards! Lyla thought it was enjoyable because she loves writing her name!
Another option that some students chose was to plan and produce a video. Students who did this had a lot of fun making videos. First they created a plan in their Inquiry Book, thinking about the text that they would use, the people in the videos, and what they might say. Sunny, Franzi, and Scarlett each had different ideas that they were able to combine in their fabulous video. They built on what they had already learned from the last video they made for the Book Launch and learnt more about using the green screen, adding music and using titles that flashed across the screen. Thinking about timing was very important!
Lastly, the speech writers now get to talk about writing, practising, and presenting their speeches. First, the group talked about what each person would be writing about and divided up the roles. Next, students wrote a draft in their Writer’s Journal and then checked their work by editing it for spelling, punctuation, and thinking about adding more detail. After we finished editing our draft, we started to write it out onto another piece of paper. We took extra special care with our handwriting to make it easier for us to read when were presenting. Then we practised reading our speech aloud. Michael gave up a handy tip – he suggested to look at the wall and pretending that the wall was all of the people at assembly (Maggie). We also rehearsed the order of our speeches and then matched it to the timing of the slideshow.
We hope you enjoyed the whole assembly this morning, especially the Year 2 Neighbourhood presentation!
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts,
The Year 2 Neighbourhood