Week 4 – Term 2

As the days get shorter, the Year 2 neighbourhood only gets busier. Since our last update we’ve continued to explore our new provocations, integrating new artistic lenses through which to investigate the world around us. Our interlinked investigations have explored both the dilemma we will encounter in the not too distant future, and how to solve these dilemmas for problems that don’t even exist yet. At the same time we have started to slow down and really take notice of the natural world all around us at Princes Hill and how it is changing all the time. These twin investigations have really sparked the students imagination and allowed them to explore new possibilities.

We’ve also had our first assembly for the term where we showed our love and appreciation for our mothers and special carers through song, story telling, poems and even comic books! We also had our walkathon and we made the most of the skies miraculously parting just in time for the start.

 On a more personal note from myself, I have appreciated the warm welcome from the students, parents and the rest of the Year 2 Community at Princes Hill Primary. I already feel so welcome and can’t wait to see what we can accomplish together in 2022.

Nature

With such a jam packed schedule the Year 2 student’s have really embraced the opportunity to be able to slow down and take time to notice everything around them. As teachers we have embraced this by facilitating sensory poems outside in nature, still life drawings of leaves and whatever other approaches the students have taken to just see, smell, hear, feel and weirdly taste the world around them. To further support these noticings and wonderings we are beginning to explore different ways and different things to measure with. from week to week all the way down to hour by hour.

Some of the noticings we’ve had have included:

‘At the start of autumn I noticed bees coming to school everyday, as we get closer to winter I don’t see them anymore’ Yien

‘Earlier in the year I noticed lots of slaters and millipedes, lately I’ve noticed more spiders.’ ‘Spider’ Sebastian 

‘I’m painting ways to look after the environment at school; composting and recycling more. So we can look after the earth like the woi-wurrung people’ – Sienna

‘I have noticed it gets really misty in the morning. Then it gets cloudy but never rains’ – Finn

Future Dilemmas

We have continued to explore and develop our thinking around the dilemmas that might face us in the future. The Year 2 students have even started brainstorming their own dilemmas and solutions for future scenarios in projects and provocations as well as writer’s notebook. This has allowed students to explore deep ethical thinking through collaborative learning as they investigate the problems with their future scenarios and come up with solutions.

“We’re exploring the underwater city and we’re focused on sustainable solutions we could create from underwater materials; such as seaweed and sand. Sometimes we have to go through multiple solutions to find the right one” Jet & Frankie

Measurement

Building on top of our exploration of nature and the changes that are happening around us. The Year 2 neighbourhood is beginning to investigate measurement. This has included discussions led by students about not just how we measure, but what we can measure, and why we would measure it. In turn some really interesting dialectic opportunities for students to justify why they chose to order certain objects by attributes and how they arrived at those conclusions have arisen. 

‘Just because something is bigger, doesn’t mean it is heavier’ – Sakura

‘We’re measuring our drawing to scale, just in case we need to make it in real life!’ – Noah and Seb

Performing Sentences

The performance space has been reinvorgiated over the past weeks, with a focus on shorter, more focused performances from our Year 2 ensemble. This has developed into shorter improvisational performances that are drawn from a hat. The students came up with a new batch of ever evolving nouns, verbs and adjectives that construct sentences out of and then perform. This has been great in supporting the students’ writing development, by playing with sentence structure.

‘I love not knowing what I’m going to perform’ – Billie

‘I’m excited to show my moves’ – Jet 

Edit It

In the year 2 neighbourhood we have been working on our editing and writing skills as a team as we begin our narrative unit. This has involved students collectively summarising the Year 2 Neighbourhood’s week as a recount on the board and then editing and revising their writing. The students have then been able to use these editing skills across the curriculum in all their other wonderful writing.