What an exciting fortnight Neighbourhood 1 has experienced! We went on our first excursion to the Beinart Gallery to see the new Sean Tan – On My Way to Paradise exhibition (thank you to everyone who volunteered to assist!) and used his works as inspiration for our own ideas about change and how animals and nature are represented in art. We have begun to move on from our inquiry about change and are now wondering all about nature and its connections to us at PHPS, after lots of student interest in campaigning for more grass, plants, trees and flowers at school. This week’s nature walk around school helped us to collect data on what is already present at PHPS and prompted thinking about what we would like to see more of.
Mathematical Thinking
In Neighbourhood 1 we have continued exploring addition and subtraction, applying our knowledge, skills and strategies to worded problems and real life situations. We now understand that there are different strategies that can be used to solve problems and are starting to think about which might be the most efficient. In line with our new inquiry, we went on a nature walk around the school and collected data on trees, plants, animals and other forms of nature already found within the school. We then represented that data on a graph and are intending on using this information to incorporate more nature at Princes Hill Primary School.
Persuasive Communication and Note Taking
To celebrate our mothers and special carers, we spent time in literacy exploring the book My Mum by Anthony Browne. We then used our skills in persuasion to write sentences about our mothers and special carers, convincing others that they are the best at something. As we gather information about nature for our new inquiry, we have been learning to take notes. We have used different texts – books and documentaries – to learn about topics such as plant growth and photosynthesis, and learnt that note-taking involves taking important information and putting it into our own words.
Zooming in on change at school
This fortnight has seen the end of one inquiry and the start of another. We concluded our exploration of change by campaigning for changes that we would like to see in the world. The students created plans for school robot labs, made posters that encourage people to put their rubbish in the bin and wrote persuasive letters to Esme asking for more plants and trees at school. We also took inspiration from the Sean Tan – On My Way to Paradise exhibition to complete these tasks. This week, we explored the question “What is nature?” through art experiences like leaf rubbing and still life drawing as well as researching and examining natural resources under a microscope. We now have a good understanding of what nature is and look forward to exploring our own personal connections with nature, Indigenous connections with Country and the importance of nature in our world.