Tanya's class

2007 Term 2
7th June 2007
MONT DE LANCEY VISIT

On Friday the 25th of May Mary and Tanya’s group went on an excursion to Mont De Lancey which is an old time school. There was an old time classroom, a church, an old time home, the museum and the black smiths. We also did some sewing and we made some peg dolls. We also made some lemonade and we cooked damper on the fire. We made the lemonade with well lemons! We squeezed the lemons and put the juice into a cup. We then added sugar and stirred then……….. YUM!!! It tasted so nice you should try it. Now to the damper; flour water and fire that’s all you need. First add some water to a bowl and mix together. Then roll some into a little ball and put it on the end of a stick. Put it quite close to the ashes and leave it there for 5 to 7 minutes, then put what ever spreading you want on it then…………… EAT! And that’s how you make lemonade and damper like they did in the olden days. In the classroom I got in trouble for having clear nail polish on and Kate got in trouble for being left handed. (Thank goodness the lady was just putting on an act!!!) We did some hand writing with a dip pen and it was really fun! At the museum it was so cool to what clothing they wore and the instrument that they used at that time. All the paintings at the church were so detailed and some of them looked like they had taken more than a month to paint. To see all of the different cloaks that the priest wore was so cool. Every cloak meant something different, therefore he would wear them for different occasions. The old time home we went to, our tour guide lived there so she could tell us everything she knew about the house. The kitchen and laundry were different but the toilet, boy was that different! It was like a hole in a wooden box! At the black smiths we were lucky enough to see him making some things and he lat us take something he had made back to our classes. Sewing was really fun, (shhhh I didn’t know how to sew until then!) We made some really cool patterns too. I had fun making the peg dolls but I think we could have done without it, because I would have liked to have spent more time in the house. The day was still really fun and it was a great experience.
By M. (student)

28th May 2007

Our group is continuing studies about the Victorian Era; we are making a collective timeline of Queen Victoria’s life, noting some of the major events that occurred during her reign, such as voting reforms, her marriage, her Jubilees and building the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was particularly exciting to find an original newsreel on the net, showing the dramatic fire that burnt it down early last century. Our literacy activities are all around this Victorian theme; we have read about some disgusting jobs, an evil education system and some sad stories based on the lives of people in this era. Having explored the old technology of dip pen writing, the remainder of the term will be spent producing a PowerPoint presentation of some aspect of Victorian Life. The face of literacy learning is changing rapidly; many students in secondary school are now expected to present projects in a PowerPoint, slide show type presentation. Most of our children are familiar with the basic manipulation of PowerPoint to produce a slide show and now the challenge is on for them to use words and pictures and their own verbal input to produce some in depth information.

I also went to a workshop on another computer program called Kahootz, which has not only amazing pictorial possibilities but is an excellent way to produce story boards. Most of the group have had some experience with it and our present task is to see if we can generate a scene for our school play using this program. We’ll keep you posted!

Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen the photos of our own ‘Victorian’ Children and heard about their lives, come and have a look on the back wall of our room.

30th April 2007

This term we are anticipating starting rehearsals of our Sherlock Holmes play and so we are entering the Victorian Era, initially discovering what life was like for children our age in those times. Every child has a different "Victorian" identity, whether it be a crossing sweeper, domestic servant, stone picker, chimney sweep, coal truck hurrier, or in a couple of lucky cases the children of aristocrats and factory owners. We also are planning a trip to Mont de Lancy, to experience life in the past in Australia, later in the term. Thanks to Adeeba (H's and D's Mum) we had a great beginning to the term, learning the art of face painting and also getting some tips on the skills involved in graphic communication. Our group is continuing to work on ways of raising funds for our full sized horse ride. Check the barometer on our door for our current progress.

2007 Term 1
26th February 2007

Our trip to Box Hill Shopping Centre was a great success. The tasks were to shop for the fried rice and seafood that we had chosen to cook with Cathy and to also spend $3 buying some sort of food stuff that we didn’t recognize. The result is a very interesting display that is still outside our room (albeit a little the worse for wear with some of the vegetables, but a lovely example of how moulds form!). Strangely the star melon was the most elusive vegetable to find on the internet, and since the shop keeper was less than helpful with that one, we’d appreciate input from anyone who’s ever eaten or cooked it. Our “different” stories are starting to emerge on the display board. One of the tasks was to choose a different way of displaying it as well, because it’s been very tempting to turn every story into a booklet, since we discovered that feature on our photocopier. Our masks are also on show in the room and we start writing scripts for the characters of these masks at the end of this week. “What’s the Difference” is once again a popular maths game in our group. It turns the dreary process of subtraction into a sort of gambling and a logic game as well and it’s great to see the enthusiasm from the children whenever we play it. We draw six cards one at a time and enter a subtraction problem that has a specific aim e.g. to find the smallest or greatest difference, or to find an answer that is either odd or even. There are many other Box Car Maths games which we will incorporate into our program over the rest of the year. At the moment a student from Preshil in Kew is chatting with JB in our group, organizing a soccer match. We will probably need drivers for this as they are planning to share the hire of an indoor soccer court. We’ll keep you posted.

Tanya
12 February 2007
What's the Difference

Well just about everything in Tanya’s Group! For a start we are only half as big as last year (collectively, not individually) which gives us lots of scope for more individual attention, a bigger voice in the group and excursions, excursions excursions! However DIFFERENCE is also our topic for this term and already the discussions have branched out into very interesting areas. It didn’t take the group long to come to the conclusion that the world thrives on difference and in fact if there were no differences that perhaps we might be still back in the pre-technology stage. The children would like to explore their different reactions to various things and we’re going to start with a few interesting little tests which will then be documented in graph form. It’s a good chance to look at Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory which reinforces our differences in a very positive way. The challenge for our personal projects is to approach topics from the angle of “difference”. In some cases this may mean quite detailed comparative charts or perhaps a topic that is about being different or making a difference. Creative writing will also explore this theme by making the “difference” whatever it is. Be pivotal to the plot. Other things we explored were differences relating to disabilities, different cultures, beliefs, customs etc. and also the term, “making a difference”. And one thing everyone’s interested in is our first excursion which will probably be inner city to sample and buy some very different foods.

Tanya
19 February 2007
Auslan study

Wow! What’s so impressive is the forty solid minutes of total engagement! Our first lessons with Auslan have been very successful and so wonderfully quiet! I think Lisa spoke to explain something just once in our lesson and the rest of the time we were all watching and signing. Each group reported different words that they’d learnt because although Lisa planned a fairly uniform beginning the children’s reactions and questions took her in different directions and she was quick to adapt. It was interesting to see some children try some of their own ‘creative’ signing to Lisa in an attempt to communicate with her, which of course led to finding out the real sign. And of course someone in my group already knew the sign for “Can I have a lolly please?” which brought a big grin of surprise from Lisa. If any parents would like to sit in on a lesson they are held on Tuesday afternoons, please feel free to attend.