Mary's and Edith's class

2006 Term 3
9th August 2006

With the arrival of some of the materials - many thanks to the Potter family for the donation - some of us have started building our billycarts. The challenge of transferring our cardboard and wire prototypes to real life sized billycarts from wood takes quite a lot of thinking through and problem solving. Sometimes our designs need to be modified to ensure sound construction. Any adults with some building experience who are available to come and help would be very welcome. Yes...the race will still happen....eventually! :)

Sustainability has also been a class focus. We are brainstorming our chosen field of investigation to ensure that we look at most important aspects. We are making signs with slogans and creating advertisements to draw attention to ways in which we can reduce our impact on our environment. Questions are being posed -

With left over lemons we are making lemonade - YUM.

19th July 2006
Yes, Billy-cart building is still on the agenda for our group AND we are doing lots of other things as well. Village is one of 40 schools in the area to be accepted into the 'Sustainables Challenge' which is run by the Dept of Sustainability and involves us in thinking about what 'sustainability' is, what it has to do with us as individuals, us as families and us as a school. Students in our group have, as individuals or in pairs, taken on a 'Sustainables Challenge' involving studies on such things as 'Green Power', the use of water, efficiency of appliances, packaging, pollution and the advantages of indigenous plants. Our findings will be presented to our group and - as far as we have got by then - to the Whole School Meeting now to be held on Tuesday 15th August. Parents will find that students are carrying on their investigations at home and whilst out shopping. It is our group's turn to do games as our sporting event on Wednesday afternoons, and we are all involved, in some way, in the Junior Rock Eisteddfod which takes place next Thursday.
2006 Term 2
3 May 2006
We are very close to starting our real billy carts (and are looking forward to having assistance from some parents with this process - thanks to Haydn and Steve for offering already.) Sooooo ... what have we learned from the process so far???

» Cooperation
» Planning
» Time management
» Measuring - in millimeters, centimeters and metres
» Comparing
» Proportion
» Terminology
» Necessary components of a safe billy cart - brakes, steering, roll bar, push bar, seat, seat belt
» Spatial awareness - visualizing a 3D object from all angles and accurately drawing those images in detail for our designs
» Thinking through mechanism functioning - the physics of cause and effect - especially for steering and braking systems, but also for overall design
» Some children showed great imagination and lateral thinking in their designs. This made prototype creation quite challenging.
» Materials choice for prototype components so that mechanisms work
» Problem solving - sometimes things didn't work as expected and needed redesigning
» Fine motor skill development with prototype creation.
» Identifying places to get necessary products for construction of real billycarts from and researching (yellow pages) - hardware stores mostly
» Thinking logically
» Using Melways to find local suburbs
» Writing of a business letter. How to set it out; what to say and how to say it to achieve the desired outcome of donations.
» Editing from a rough copy
» Spelling
» Use of dictionary and thesaurus as we research speed and measuring words
» Wordart and formatting of text on the computer
» Road rules/safety and meaning of road signs
» Oral expression as we describe how our prototypes work - their good and bad points.
» Negotiation to determine elements of each pair's real billycart from individual designs
» Racing track parts and designs - researched on the internet
» Racing car drivers
.... and I‹m sure there is lots more!!
Obviously not all children have achieved ALL of these, however most have learned a great deal more than they realize and there has been noticeable personal growth with most of the group.
26 April 2006
This week we have the sad news of the death of our beloved mouse, Smokey. She bravely battled an abscess on the side of her face, but eventually succumbed to the infection. To keep our surviving mouse, Rusty, company Mary has purchased two new mice: a white one that the children have named Frankensteina and a black one, named with flair - Black Stuff! Frank has a sore spot but we trust that with the tender loving care of our class, she will recover and enjoy her life and companions in our class room. With most billycart prototypes now completed the children are rapidly moving towards the creation of the REAL THINGS. These will no doubt challenge them as much as their prototypes have, but they have a date by which they must be finished as our
12 April 2006

Most students in our group have finished their prototype models and they have made a fantastic job of them. Their steering systems work as do their braking systems. One or two had to modify their design in order to achieve this and all have tried really hard - now it's on to the real thing. All students are beginning to work on a story plan which will finish up as a Kahootz presentation. C.'s Great Uncle John comes along each week to work with the students on origami - this is wonderful for listening skills, learning to follow directions and the development of fine motor skills - one of the items made this week was a water bomb. We had a worrying time with Smokey, our little grey mouse. She developed a large lump on the side of her neck and we feared the worst, however, with the expert care of Ros and Peter, (thank you very much) she seems to have made a good recovery.

2006 Term 1
8 March 2006

Students in our group have been progressing with their Billy-cart designs and most are now building their prototypes. We have been hampered in some way as many students had not seen a Billy-cart previously. It was wonderful of Beth's son, D., to bring along one which had been made by his brother. This allowed our students to play with steering and braking mechanisms and consolidate their ideas for their own designs. We have had help with this from H., M.'s dad and J., C.'s great uncle who has also being doing some origami with our group. Priscilla, has been helping us with cooking recipes from Commonwealth countries - watch out for our cook book, and Jacqui, has been helping us with art. Many thanks to all those helpers. [Ed note: Available now. see on right]
As well as all of the above, our students have been exploring Kahootz with Edith, reading, spelling etc, etc.

15 February 2006

The changes this year have given me the exciting opportunity to spend time teaching the children some of the new computer programs that the school has purchased. Initially I will focus on Kahootz, an amazing 3D-animation program that has been developed by the Australian Children's Television Foundation. The possible uses for this program within the curriculum are only limited by our imagination and the time available. Imagine being able to choose a 3D world, navigate around it in every direction, place objects and people within this world, change the way they look and create movement of these so that ultimately you have developed your own moving story, shown what you have learned about a topic, developed a quiz...Get the picture? This program is backed by a website that provides us with our own 'Kahootz' Home page. This allows us to upload the children's 'expressions' - their creations with this program. It may become a new avenue for bringing our school to the attention of others. We can also view some of the expressions created by children in other schools and download and explore updates and additions.

I will also be introducing a fun new typing program that gives the children the opportunity to learn to touch type.... a most desirable skill in this age of word processing and speed! When and if time permits, the children will also be given hints on how to fully utilise the many aspects of Microsoft Word. Of course I am also working with Mary in our class on their weekly programs during Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and taking Phys Ed and Maths Games in Charmaine's Group on Fridays.