BUDDY ACTIVITY - EASTER

Room 17 were introduced to their buddy class today, the Year 1 children of Room 22. Together, the children participated in a number of activities but the major one was making Easter egg baskets ready for Sunday. It was wonderful to see the children working so well together and the Year 5's assisting the younger kids. Mrs Campbell-Court and I were very impressed.

I hope you all have a great long weekend. See you on Wednesday.

BIG WRITE

Well done to Room 17 for your great writing of late. I am forever impressed with the progress being made. Last week we wrote a narrative called 'The Toy.' Many of the children did a top job and a few were selected to visit Ms Roberts to share their work with her. They were very pleased to receive a certificate for their efforts. 

LITERACY PRO

Room 17 has had an amazing, breath-taking and miraculous journey with our Literacy Pro progress. As a class, we have read over 5,000,000 words with our record being a million words in the matter of only a couple of days. We are all pleased, thrilled and blown away with this terrific effort, and so is Mr Petch. Reading takes you in all different directions and is very beneficial. Here are a few book reviews and reading goals that our fellow classmates have made, so read on.

 By Pavitra and Aena

Cathy: My favourite book this year has been our class reading book, Skellig. The novel by David Almond is full of heart-warming events that are out of this world. The reader experiences events with magical metamorphoses and you are taken to a different dimension. Skellig will have you looking at the world in a whole new light. Wonderful similes, metaphors and personification really add to the book. I recommend everyone to read this book.

Tyriq: My reading goal is to achieve my first Lexile certificate next term.

Sebastian: The Unbelievable top-secret Diary of Pig by Emer Stamp is an outstanding read. I enjoyed this book a lot. I don’t want to give too much away but I loved the part when he rode in the ‘Trocket’ and, well, pretty much everything. Full of surprises, you are guaranteed to get a laugh out of every page. Full of humour, it is the type of book that you can’t put down. I give it 5/5 stars!

TEST BOOKS

Test Books will be sent home in Week 9. Please take the time to read through the work samples with your child and discuss their progress with them. Some children came back in Week 5 (when the test books were first sent home) with new learning goals and a great desire to achieve, which was wonderful to see. The children certainly work extremely hard and I am most proud of each and every one of them. If you haven’t already done so, there is a comment box on the first page for a parent/guardian to fill out. Please return the test books by the Friday of Week 9. Thank you.

HARMONY DAY

It is wonderful to see so many students of Room 17 dressed in national dress or Orange for Harmony Day. The ‘House of Harmony’ created by Miss Randall and all of the children at Wattle Grove was superb. Wattle Grove is a multi-cultural community and it is always wonderful to celebrate the diversity that makes up our school, community and nation. 

Later in the afternoon, we researched the places where everyone comes from in our class, and where their family is from. We then located these places on a world map. All up, Room 17 is made up from 16 different nationalities. 

SCIENCE

Science investigation - Do different varieties of beans grow at different rates?

What do you think?

We are trying to find out if this is true. Currently, we are observing, measuring and analysing the growth rates of three different varieties of beans in our class. The children are growing out a Dwarf bean (Green), a Butter bean (Yellow) and a Purple King (Purple of course). The popular hypothesis was that the Purple King would grow the largest but the children were stunned to discover that in fact, the Dwarf bean was the first to germinate and begin growing. All the other varieties have now germinated and it will be interesting to find out which one will be the largest after 10 days. 

Room 17 had to discuss all of the variables they would keep the same to ensure that they would be carrying out a fair test. We also found out that there haven’t always been different varieties of vegetables. New varieties are constantly being discovered. Originally there would have been only one or two types of beans but the varieties would have increased over thousands of generations as a result of natural selection and in more recent years, selective breeding on the part of humans. We found out that the Pink Lady apple was developed in Western Australia in the 1970s and is one of the most popular apples in our class.

 

The next part is to think about why some beans grow at faster rates than others??? Could it have something to do with climate? Or soil type? Growing conditions or selective breeding? We’ll have to find out. There is one thing for sure, there’s lots of science to be discovered from the humble vegetable patch.

MERIT CERTIFICATES

Congratulations to Jake, Roshini and Jasmine for being Room 17’s first Merit Certificate recipients. Keep up the tremendous effort!