Term 3 Week 2 – Welcome back to school! 

We are excited to be back at school for Term 3, and have picked up where we left off from the end of Term 2.  Students have been working in homegroups to focus on their writing, reading, and maths goals through target teaching.  Goals have been set by the students and they will be able to track and monitor their own progress, documenting and sharing their learning with families on SeeSaw.  The students are also engaging in workshops for our inquiry, Writing Worlds, and the momentum and engagement for the creation of their worlds has been great to see.  The students have been introduced to a range of provocations this week too, which they have been using to deepen their understanding of the elements of stories. 

Inquiry – Writing Worlds 

Our worlds shape the creatures that live in them, and in turn these creatures shape the world.  Creatures have unique properties that define them, but these properties have trade offs, otherwise one species would dominate the world. 

And that would make a boring story!

Through our workshops for our inquiry we have so far created a physical world, looked at what constraints our world would have, created creatures that inhabit our world, designed the culture of the world, and have begun to design the characters.  They have explored the different ways that authors introduce characters, and they were able to share these in extremely creative ways!  The students have been making connections to texts they’ve read and moving images they’ve viewed, with the Harry Potter books being a common connection for them to draw from.  They are loving the journey, and are looking forward to moving into plot design next! 

Owen – I like doing the activities for writing worlds because I like writing stories, and it shows how a real author makes a world for a book.  

Ike – I like the writing worlds, we can be open-minded and creative and use whatever we want to make the world sound better and more interesting.  

Miles – I like the writing worlds workshops because they are really engaging and the templates are really clear to follow that helps us to build our world.  

Jeremy – The writing worlds has helped me to start with something that is more interesting and a great way to generate ideas. 

River – We are making all these parts of the story, and we will put them all together to make a story.  

Harry – It has helped me to work on my writing goal.  

NAIDOC – Indigenous Changemakers 

The students were provoked with the research questions:

• Who are indigenous changemakers and leaders within our communities?  What are their stories?
• How are we and our stories alike and different to Indigenous changemakers and leaders, and their stories?
• What can we learn from Indigenous changemakers and leaders?

The students made connections to the learning and research they have done this year around writing their Acknowledgements of Country, the 1967 Referendum, National Apology to the Stolen Generations, and Indigenous leaders in Australia.  This set them up well for making connections to NAIDOC week’s “Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up!” theme for 2022.  Homegroups worked together to collaborate and choose one Indigenous changemaker to profile for the assembly.  These people are: Eddie Betts, Linda Burney, and Sam Kerr.  

The students found out key information relating to the research questions and from there created questions that could be put to students on the panel.  Students researching Eddie Betts summarised their information as:

Eddie Betts

• Ex AFL player, Crows, Blues 
• He has 5 children 
• Won 4 goals 
• Founded two literacy foundations – Indigenous Literacy Foundation, Read with Seed 
• Comes from a challenging home environment where he was exposed to being able to access cigarettes and alcohol from an early age 
• Didn’t go to school, his family were poor 
• Memorable in the community 
• He hit rock bottom when he got into serious trouble with the law, that was the turning point of his life 

The questions they created for the panel are:

• What are some of the things that Eddie has done for the Aboriginal community?
• What is the name of the foundation he founded?  
• Why did he make the Indigenous Literacy Foundation?
• What is the end goal for Eddie Betts?
• What inspired Eddie Betts to turn his life around?
• What is Eddie Betts most memorable moment from his AFL career?
• What is the biggest thing that Eddie Betts has done to be a changemaker? 

There were a lot of reflections and wow moments while the students uncovered some of the trials and tribulations that Eddie Betts went through as a young man to get to where he is today.  They firmly believe that he turned his life around and is a changemaker for future Indigenous Australians.  

SMART Goals – Agency in Learning 

Students engaged in a workshop where they explored and unpacked the SMART Goal acronym. 

SMART stands for: 

• S – Specific 
• M – Measurable 
• A – Attainable 
• R – Relevant  
• T – Time based 

Through writing these goals for reading, writing, and maths, students have been able to reflect on their learning and growth from Semester 1, and set realistic goals that are succinct and achievable throughout the coming weeks.  The focus is on having goals that are based over a shorter period of time, so students can set more goals and show more growth in areas of their learning.  The students have shared these to SeeSaw and are looking forward to collecting evidence towards them as they work towards achieving their goals.