Our latest school newsletter is out today:

ENGLISH: WRITER’S WORKSHOP

Today we were lucky to have Lisa back in our class. Lisa Burman is a Literacy Consultant, who is working with Holy Family this year to help us improve teaching and learning in the sphere of writing.

Lisa’s mini lesson continued on the theme of grabber leads… how to engage the reader’s attention at the start of a story. Lisa showed us lots of grabber leads that identified what characters loved to do … from a. principal who loved his school to a boy who loved to explore. She then showed us this one:

Well done to Max, who correctly identified that this author told us how the character was feeling and made us ask the question: I wonder why Mortimer is lonely? Many of us were intrigued with this text, so Lisa let us keep it in class until tomorrow, so we could take a closer peek.

 

HEALTH: RELATIONSHIPS

We discussed what the statement means and then created a general list of people who could be trusted, e.g., relatives, police officer, teacher, friends, doctor. We scribed these onto post-Its and then placed them in a series of concentric circles:

 

Students the moved on to complete individual circles independently.

3JH GOT MAIL FROM NSW!

3JH were excited to receive replies from their penpals in New South Wales … they were beautifully presented with colour and illustrations on the envelopes.

 

WORD KNOWLEDGE

We began with a game of beans to focus on action verbs. We enjoyed being french beans, chilli beans, black eyed beans, baked beans, runner beans, jumping beans, baby beans, string beans and many more besides.

Following this, we sorted and classified verbs into categories – verbs that were ways of saying, eating, walking and running. If we were unsure of the meaning of the verbs, we checked the meaning using a Kids Online Dictionary or a physical dictionary in class.

Next we will be looking at ways in which verbs change according to their tense when we put them into sentences.

DRAMA

We had a great vocal warm up with an echo song, repeating as the echo in a variety of different ways – fast, slow, jazzy, deep and high pitched. It was great that some of us were brave enough to lead the refrains after our teacher modelled them for us.

We then worked with a partner for some back-to-back and a face-to-face activities, involving mirroring and collaborating. Lots of laughter!

We then looked at the cover of our focus text leading into our next drama session … we identified the setting as a jungle. We discussed some of the sounds we might hear in a jungle and whether there would be loud/soft, high/low, constant/intermittent, etc. Each of us focused on a sound we wanted to make to create a class soundscape. With our eyes closed, when we were touched on the head by our teacher, we joined the soundscape. When we felt a second touch on the head, we ‘switched our sound off’. Together, we created an impressive jungle soundscape!

Following this we watched a visual animation of the story, which is a traditional folk tale from India. Next session we will be rehearsing and performing the story in small groups using a variety of dramatic techniques.