Tanya's class

2006 Term 4
21 November 2006
Tanya's Group Has Gone to The Dogs!

They say every dog has his day, and today that was true for eleven dogs in Tanya's Group. Discussions were underway at the beginning of last term when it was first decided to run another Dog Day. Preparations were in full swing last week as some students shopped for ingredients and then baked homemade dog biscuits while the rest of the group designed medallions, participation certificates and award certificates for the different events, or in one case; a cryptic clues Canine Treasure Hunt! Now none of the dogs were able to work out the clues, but they were very happy to eat the biscuit when their owner cracked a clue. Other awards were for: Best Groomed Dog, Most Agile Dog, Cutest Dog in Show, Most Intelligent Dog, Most Obedient Dog and of course, Best In Show! Congratulations to J.'s dog Jasper for winning the golden bone trophy.

Many thanks to parent and vet Ros H. for her talk about dog health, and answering various questions from the dog owners. We had some interesting discussions about the reasons behind and the effects, of spaying and castrating dogs, as well as a lot of talk about various dog behaviours.

The dogs and their owners weathered the heat very well and Beth's group came out to watch the obstacle course event (after first trying out the course for themselves!). Students who did not have a dog took the roles of judges and events organisers so that every person was involved during the day. We had a visit from Andy, a photographer from the local press who thought it might be fun to have photos about dogs 'going to school', so it was off into the classroom with 11 dogs sitting on top of the desks as students supposedly got on with their work. You know what they say in the industry about working with kids and animals? Well it wasn't true in our case; all the animals behaved beautifully and I would swear that J.B.'s dog Archie was trying to learn to read!

Apart from the cooking, writing, planning, designing and creative thinking that went into the day, the children learnt a valuable lesson in responsibility. The dog was there all day to be minded, picked up after, watered and kept cool and happy. I'll bet I wasn't the only dog owner to breathe a sign of relief once I finally arrived home!

10th October 2006

On Thursday 5th of October I saw 'An Inconvenient Truth', a movie about global warming. The CO2 is thickening the atmosphere, and trapping more heat. I did not know that global warming has already affected so much, and is happening so quickly.

I was quite shocked when I found out that our country, had not signed the Kyoto Agreement. The Kyoto Agreement is a thing that countries sign agreeing that in a certain year they must have reduced the amount of CO2 that they emit. They have to do certain steps at a time. That does not mean that we will get rid of things that emit CO2, it means we will get more efficient man-made things that let out less CO2. Animals are moving north because of the heat and it is colder up north and a lot of the world will be underwater. The ice at the North and South Poles is melting so there are fewer places for the polar bears to rest. They have to swim further for land and many are drowning.

Helen

On Thursday the 5th Tanya's and Mary's group went to Eastland to see 'An Inconvenient Truth'. The movie taught me lots of things I didn't know like the polar bears are drowning because the ice caps are melting and they have to swim to find more ice to live on. I was shocked that we didn't sign the Kyoto agreement! The Kyoto agreement is an agreement to stop putting green house gasses in the atmosphere. I was amazed that the number of typhoons, hurricanes, cyclones and tornados has gone up by 10% in 30 years! And I was also amazed that if the polar caps land ice melted that the sea level will rise and the 9/11 Memorial Centre in New York City would be under water! The movie was so interesting! The movie message is to stop polluting the atmosphere.

By India

2006 Term 3
16th August 2006
India: The best thing was Gymnastics!!!
Sarah: the best time of the week was that my story is nearly finished!
Jaimee: I disliked doing my division… but I liked playing football (soccer for you) at lunch.
Emily: SPORT!!!
Cooper: The whole school meeting...And gym Bam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mariah: My fave part of the week was today, I no longer have to do quick Maths!
Gaby: My favorite part of the week was when we had meeting outside...
Richard: My favourite part of week was doing sustainable advert for the whole school meeting at 7.00 on Tuesday the 15th.
John: I enjoyed presenting our ads at whole school meeting and getting my Internet Sabotage story finished.
Marilla: My favourite part was presenting Jordan Lochie and my sustainable ad, because I often get a strange (and probably dangerous) euphoria when people laugh at/with me.
Kelsey: My favourite part of the week was hearing that my favourite horse Nelson is coming back from his long time away from Village.
Tanya: A lot of negotiation is starting to happen in my homegroup. It's not a true democracy, not like some of the schools we heard about in the video at the Whole School Meeting, but we're trying to work together to make our group more democratic without compromising the need to practice literacy and numeracy. One thing that has been negotiated is 15 minutes of physical movement after morning meeting. Provided we end on time.
9th August 2006
Marilla: My favorite part of the week was when I practiced the spoof report with Jordan and Lochie
Lochie: My favourite part of the week was the same as Rill's, our spoof-report; I can't wait to present it on Tuesday.
Gabrielle: My favorite part of the week was when I finally finished one of my short stories.
Mariah: The best thing that happened this week was watching Marilla, Lochie and Jordan's spoof report- it's awesome!
Jordan: The best thing that happened to me this week was showing Mariah and Tanya our spoof ad (Marilla, Lochie and me Jordan)
Sarah: The best thing that I did was all the water testing with Gaby, India, Alex, Lochie and Emily.
Cooper: Um...when...I finished ...my story nothing really... got bitten by Bull-ant and I'm allergic.
Alex:Well the best thing that happened this week is, well GYM.
Jaimee: Um... me? Ok… Gyms cool! And I finished my sustainable ad...LOL
Kelsey: My guinea pig died and that was not fun but seeing my friends and laughing was probably the most amazing part of my week.
Ellena: Well it was bad having to be chief ranger it's so different and seeing my friend Kelsey was the best part of my week.
Dan: Lunch!!!!
Michael: the best part of school is going to gym because some of the things are a challenge and I really enjoy the foam pit.
Richard: The idea of doing a sustainable advert was cool, but all the good ideas were taken, I still need to think about that. UPDATE: My ad is about over-packaging.
India: Um, okay, well I did a heap of maths, IT WAS SO FRUSTRATING!
Brooke: I was very frustrated when I was trying to cut out a shape and I kept getting it wrong.
Emily: I made up a skipping routine for the skippathon and I have been doing sustainable adverts and this.
John: 'I've really enjoyed the Hero project we’ve been doing this term and also being able to do a bit more writing has been cool.
26th July 2006
DID YOU EVER KNOW YOU WERE MY HERO?

What exactly is a hero?
Tanya's group mulled over that for about a week, choosing all sorts of popular culture and sporting heroes in the first week of term. In the second week the group brainstormed with Cathy and came up with the following qualities:

Looking at this list caused some to rethink their heroes and others to stick by their choices. When I returned from my conference we negotiated to accept the existence of both 'big H' and 'little h' heroes and some are doing projects on both of these. Some of the big H heroes are Fred Hollows, Joan of Arc and Leonardo Da Vinci. This term has many facets for the children in Tanya's group. There is a whole school focus on sustainability which we are part of and the heroes theme is more or less, a sidestep from that. As well we are exploring different ways of writing, particularly emphasizing the strength of the narrative rather than just constant dialogue, which so many children revert to these days because of the influence of television in particular. Another emphasis will be their own self development as the majority of the group will be moving on next year and issues about puberty, relationships etc are starting to surface. Maths continues to be driven by their own personal units and as well by an almost daily quick maths session which covers a lot of fractions, decimals, space and measurement.

Tanya
2006 Term 2
3 May 2006
A new keyboard for the music program has been overdue for about a year now and at last we have purchased one with the help of the fundraising committee and the generous support of fundraising from you, the parents. The new Roland, is a 'state of the art' purchase, much more solid, with a full range of keys (as many as a piano and with far better tones to use in performances. The only downside is that it is also much heavier, but that can’t be helped if we want the quality. We are also thanking Amanda Marshall in advance for the 'real' piano which will be stationed in the kitchen for piano lessons, as nothing, (not even a Roland) can fully simulate the action of an acoustic piano. Our old keyboard will still be in use in the drama room and be a welcome addition for student ensembles.
26 April 2006
As most of you know, the school performance becomes a curriculum focus for the children in Tanya's group. They have started off looking at tessellations in maths, which will eventually be part of the stage flats. They are also exploring shape by learning to construct equilateral and isosceles triangles, and later pentagons, hexagons and octagons using compasses. They are also designing 'mini-sets' so that they can possibly influence the final set design for the play. They have designed some costumes which will be handed to Pam, for ideas although not necessarily followed due to budget restrictions. They will be designing all the props they use, including scimitars, axes, lamps for Aladdin, pot shapes for Ali Baba and snake headbands for the Snake Queen. They will also design program covers, posters, ticket designs and some copy for the inside of the program, and some will also prepare a budget of expected expenses. Parallel to this play preparation, which of course includes acting, dancing and singing rehearsals, they are looking at the Middle East in general terms. They have produced an ancient and modern map of the Middle East and have now split into three religious groups, Jewish, Christian and Muslim in order to produce a group project. As you can imagine, it is very hard to fit all this in so times are set aside each week to continue quick maths, maths units and personal language tasks. It’s a very busy term!
2006 Term 1
28 Feb 2006

What's That Smell?

Actually, that's often a comment I get from parents who stick their noses into our room and I usually reply that's kid soup! However, we have been exploring some other smells this week, trying to see if our sense of smell is a good channel of communication. They all recognised coffee and vegemite very easily and quite a few were able to name the lavender smell and a couple confused this with the rosemary. Most knew the perfume and it reminded them of their mums - actually it was my perfume (Opium) and no-one said it reminded them of me! The hardest smell was pine needles. I imagined they'd evoke feelings of Xmas etc... but most couldn't identify it and the closest was 'some kind of plant'. We had a great workshop with Olivia on Monday, discussing how we read anger in others and looking at the three modes of behaviour: agro, weak and assertive. In the afternoon Joanne came and taught us some Auslan. We learnt the signs for the song "We Will Rock You" as well as some other miscellaneous animals and greetings etc. Cathy continues with the language group in the library four mornings a week and others are maintaining their spelling or language sheets and their own creative writing. Self Initiated Tasks continue and Jaimee gave us a Spanish lesson for her SIT last week. In fact there are a lot of languages being bandied around the room, as well as all doing Indonesian, a couple of the girls ask me for French homework and we converse 'en francais' from time to time. We are looking forward to Priscilla visiting us sometime this week to share a little Russian communication.

15 Feb 2006

The second week of term was focussed on the ear and we all role played being sound waves, or being parts of the human ear. It was amazing how many times we had to enact a sound source going into the human ear, hitting eardrum, hammer, anvil and stirrup before 'swimming' through the semi-circular canal and into the cochlea! It was very easily achieved as we had the drum, hammer and stirrup from the horse shed and the gong kindly played the part of the anvil. Back to back partner work using speech only as a way of getting someone to build a construction was a bit of a challenge as well. Most of the group are well into their own self-initiated tasks related to communication and some have even finished already! Quite a few people are interested in how different animals communicate with each other and in some cases with humans as well. Some of the topics are guide dogs, bees, rabbits, ants and lemurs. One person is learning Auslan and another is researching the telephone. There's even a project on miscommunication! Each child continues with their own individually planned mathematics and language program. Watch the space in the library as Jacqui is working with both Mary's group and my group to produce a Commonwealth Games display. My group gets to make the flags which will be used as a border and then we intend exploring communication through collage techniques with Jacqui. Priscilla has started her guitar group which will be on Monday afternoons and at least six people from my group have started with her. Some of us even managed to make a few pony tails for the Maroondah Festival which is happening this coming Sunday. The children are looking forward to this week because Emma becomes Tanya and Tanya becomes Emma (Tanya was of course looking forward to that as well!).

9 Feb 2006

If you've seen some people wandering around with blindfolds and sticks there is a logical explanation. This term Tanya's group is looking at communication through the different senses. Last week we started out with some exercises which involved signing rather than speaking. We role played being cavemen, and also tried to experience the world of Helen Keller by stuffing cottonwool in our ears and wearing blindfolds as well. The children are selecting areas that interest them within the theme of communication, which is just about endless! Tanya is focussing on the five senses and started the ball rolling with some deliciously fresh cows' eyeballs. After discovering just how tough the sclera and cornea were (which showed us just how well our eyes are protected) we were all able to locate and pop out the lens to see it magnify print. One student found an intact ciliary body and we all located the optic nerve. A bonus was finding out how spectacular the back of the retina was; it was turquoise and shone in the sun. Some of the children preferred to stay inside and look at a computer program about eye dissection instead (very briefly and with decided distaste!). For added interest there is a 'super sleuth' challenge each week which involves solving a code in order to discover the hidden treasure. Congratulations go to C., our first super sleuth! You may have noticed an unfamiliar but very pleasantly young and friendly face in our group. This is Emma who is doing a teaching round with us. She is a great hit with the children and she is also starting up the Village Yellow Pages as part of her requirements for her course. Hopefully this will provide both the teachers and the parent community with a helpful resource.