We are the learning legends from Pt Lonsdale Primary School. We are 52 grade 3/4s with our teachers Mrs Murphy and Mr Ahearn. We will be using this space to share our learning with our community and the world! The learning legends love comments, so please feel free to leave us one!
On Tuesday the 3rd of may the 3/4′s started a bike ed program.
Tuesday was a success and split off into six groups with approx. 8-10 people in each. We learned skills such as slow riding, breaking, scanning, straight line riding, riding position and sharp turns. However, the next day was wet and rainy. We attempted a few activities but they didn’t turn out particularly well. Thursday was sheeting with rain and again Bike Ed was cancelled. The following week was much better and we managed our finish our bike ed program. We all enjoyed bike ed and thank all teachers and parents for coming along and helping out with Bike Ed.
On Monday the 7th of May, the grade 3/4′s were visited by an environmentalist called Sue.
She told us about creepers, weeds that don’t belong in Australia and they’re from South Africa. They are destroying our plants, and have the advantage of no predators. Sue has brought in leaf hoppers. (Insects that eat the creepers) she has given the 3/4′s her leaf hoppers to look after them for 5 weeks and then release them in the local area to help control the bridal creepers. This process is called a biological control. She told us lots of information about leaf hoppers and creepers. We all had a very good time, and enjoyed it all. She gave us the leaf hoppers in a big glass cage, you can hardly see them but the eggs are microscopic. We have the responsibility of changing their food and looking after them.
How long do you think it will take before we start seeing adult leaf hoppers?
What kind of difference do you think the release will make in our local area?
The 3.30 home bell goes, yet there are still at least 10 students hanging around looking at the Whiteboard in the Learning Common. These dedicated little people are waiting to skype with a Mystery class somewhere in the world. We learned about Mystery Skyping from Mrs Yollis and Mrs Tosliano here.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the world it is 6.30am and our Skype buddies are in their pyjamas answering all of our questions.
Mystery Skype with Room with a View on PhotoPeach
We all had jobs:
Question Keepers: Jessica, Sophie and Anna
Inquirers: Freya and Jo
Map Readers & Google Mappers: Cody T, Bethany, Josie, and Eleanor
Photographers: Lucy and Bronte
Despite some technical difficulties, we all had so much fun uncovering the mystery of our Skype buddies. We had to listen attentively to put together all the clues. Once we did, we were delighted to finally meet our blogging buddy, Mrs Monaghan and her students from a Room with a view. There is also some speculation that we may be one of the first classes to Skype with England due to the difficulty finding school hours that coincide with our time zones.
Thank you again to Mrs Monaghan and Room with a View students as well as our group of after school skyping specialiasts. Please read some of the questions we asked an answered here.
What do you think the best part of the mystery Skype was?
Who else do you think we should try to Mystery Skype with?
3/4A & B have begun the term with an exciting new Literacy program. Although 3/4B started The Cafe and Daily 5 last term, it has extended our learning even more to now have both classes now working on the Daily 5 and CAFE. The CAFE and Daily 5 programs have been designed by 2 teachers (who are sisters) Gail Bouchy and Joan Moser.
Mr Ahearn, Mrs Murphy and Mrs V have been very impressed by the enthusiasm and dedication of the students to put their personal best into this new program. We have been learning each component of the CAFE and the Daily 5 so far this term, and starting this week we will be really exploring how it will help us in our reading and writing.
Some things we do in the CAFE are:
- Learning new reading strategies with Mrs V
- Exploring our class blog
- Learning how to comment on blogs
- Practice writing our persuasive texts in our books and on computers
- Participating in small writing clinics
Some things we do in our DAILY 5 are:
- Reading to Self
- Reading to Someone
- Listening to Someone Read
- Working on Writing- commenting on our blog
- Word Work- comprehension with Mrs V
- Finding Good Fit Books
- Conferencing with Mrs Murphy or Mr Ahearn
- Small reading groups working on strategies
What part of the CAFE do you enjoy the most? Why?
What part of the Daily 5 is helping you with your reading goal? Why?
Before we said goodbye to our Arizona Flat Friends, we wanted to play one last game! After a class vote, Hide and Seek was what we went with. Here is a video of our Hide and Seek afternoon.
Music Credit: U2, I still haven’t found what I am looking for, U218 Singles
Will you miss our Arizona Flat Friends?
Are you excited to see who our new Flat Friends will be?
In the last week before our school holidays, our flat friends from Arizona traveled around the school with us. We showed them around and taught them everything we could. We also took them on a surprise trip to the beach? We thought perhaps there were some students in your class who had never been to the beach in Mrs Fraher’s Class. We look forward to more adventures with our flat friends over the holidays.
What are you planning on doing with your flat friend? What do you think your flat friends would LOVE to see?
On Tuesday March 14th, all the three/fours went on camp called Camp Wilkin. They had many different things there like a playgroud, basketball court, a volleyball set, kitchen and a games room. Wow I was surprised of what the camp looked like. It was so much fun.
They had some very special activities there like a rope course, flying fox, and a climbing wall which was just made. We had surf lessons with Go Ride a Waveand that was great fun, but it was cold. The people from Go Ride a Wave were good because they helped us with some skills of surfing. We all had a great time at the beach. We had a BBQ which was very tasty. Then went for a nightwalk, came back and went to bed.
The next day we went on a fossil safari and made our own fossils out of plaster of paris. We got back to school and went home.
This was the best camp ever!
What are your favourite memories of Camp Wilkin? What are your favourite memories of camp?
Guest Blog Post by Josie and Robbie:
On Monday March 19th. some preps, ones, threes and fours, Skyped with Mrs Murphy’s friends in Ireland. There names were Aaliah, Ameera and Abdullah. Abdullah is in Grade 2, Ameera is in Grade 3, and Aaliah is in Grade 5 outside of Dublin.
We spoke about how there school was and how it was to live in Ireland. We asked them questions and they asked us questions. The questions were very interesting. In Ireland it was St. Patrick’s Day weekend. St. Patrick’s Day is the most famous day in Ireland. They say that a person drove all the snakes out of Ireland. I learned that finding a four leaf clover in Ireland means good luck will come to you for the rest of the day. Ameera sang us a song in Irish and we sang them our national anthem.
It was great fun and everyone loved it!
We had to listen very well during our Skype session, because we had a big job to do after the Skype. We had to write a persuasive text agreeing or disagreeing with this statement: School in Australia is better than school in Ireland. Here are Lilly, Daniel and Eddie’s persuasive texts.
Mrs Murphy is very lucky to have some students in her class and in the school who are Irish as well, which makes her feel at home on St Patrick’s Day. Finn has been to Ireland many times so check out his dance moves in this video… (along with his fantastic back up dancers!)
After two weeks of reading a fantastic book called Flat Stanley, we have begun our global project working with 5 other schools from America, England and Australia. We made Flat-Selves and thought it would be great if we could send them to another country since a flat self is much cheaper to post then a massive self. We are all jealous that we can’t fit inside the parcel.
Our Flat selves’ first leg of they journey around the world will bring them to Arizona and Mrs Fraher’s class at Peralta Trail Elementary. Their school is nestled in the Gold Canyon in Arizona. They have 22 students and we can’t wait to meet their Flat Selves soon. We posted our Flat Selves to them on Thursday and eagerly await ANY news.
Where do you think our Flat Selves are right now? How do you think they are entertaining themselves on that long flight? What are you looking forward to the most with our American flat friends coming?
