Dads Reading Morning

A big thank you to the many dads who came along and shared stories and books with the boys at our Dads Reading Morning in Week 7 this term. This event is a favourite for our community each year. The enjoyment we see in the boys as they so happily welcome their dads and meet up with the dads of their friends and classmates is something we all very much look forward to. We are fortunate to have a strong reading culture in the Junior School, and we are grateful to all the wonderful role models the boys have to learn from.

Speak Up Challenge

A huge congratulations to the 58 boys who participated in the Junior School Speak Up Challenge this year. Your dedication and commitment to the process was outstanding. You should each feel very proud of yourselves for your achievement. Our volunteer judges, Mr Brian Tonkin and Mr Michael Hanrahan enjoyed the experience very much and loved the variety of speeches and the speaking skills of the boys.

Thank you also to Matteo Conte and Matthew Vinci (Year 10) who came down to the Junior School and gave us some excellent advice and answered many questions we had.

Five students have or will be participating in various interschool competitions. Congratulations and all the very best to Christopher Chan (6W), Joey Lee (6R), Alexander Peca (6B), Mitchell Rae (6W), Nathan Veitch (6B), Ollie Baumwol (Y3), and Ashton Rae (Y3).

Chess Club and Tournament

Chess Club has begun in the Junior School Library on Mondays at lunchtime. If you are interested in signing up to take part in the Chess tournament next term, please register your interest with Mrs Bevan before Friday of Week One Term Three.

Read a brief overview of the past few weeks as written by the Heads of School.

Our 11-week term is almost at an end and with it comes the culmination of the Technology focus.

With iPad coding apps working overtime, the students have completed entire Codespark programs, reached higher scores in Scratch screen tapping games than ever before and designed more Bloxels gameboards than any year before. I am constantly amazed at how quickly and confidently boys adjust to new digital platforms and programs, and this term has been a testament to their ever-improving abilities. But whilst the lure of the iPad is tempting, it’s always music to my ears to hear students ask if they can build, either with recyclables or Lego, and to see what they create. Technology has provided us with not only super cool activities on the iPads, but with the theme for design projects, critical thinking about how camouflage is a natural form of technology, as well as the ability to create animated advertising campaigns for our very own Holy Ground Coffee van (stay tuned for these!).

As we start to move away from the electronic versions of technology, students will enter the Engineering term, and use structural and design elements as their technology to create Rube Goldberg machines, roller coasters, animal hybrids and engineered foods for Science Week. Have an amazing break over the holidays and we look forward to getting back into the Collaboratory next term.

Exploration has been a hallmark of Art in Term 2, practically and metaphorically!

Designing, preparing, and painting the ‘flats’ for the set of the Lion King production has involved all the Art Club student’s time, expertise and effort for the last 10 weeks.

Starting with exploring various ‘jungles’ in Africa - learning about the ‘Mountains of the Moon’ and other rainforests - each student made six drawings focussing on shape, scale and variety of vegetation. Transposing those drawings to the size necessary for the set required identifying the most suitable features and scaling up the individual parts into stencils. They were then arranged to encourage the viewer to experience the claustrophobic shallow depth of the deep jungle. Mixing various greens to mimic layers of vegetation and application to suitable shapes required the students to cooperate in order to select the foreground, middle-ground and background of each panel before painting.

The National Park ‘Hells Gate’ in Kenya was one of the locations of inspiration for the gorge and savannah scenes in the Lion King. Repeating the process for the jungle panels, the students explored typical savannah landscapes including Acacia trees - whose shape is so iconic of Africa; flat on top and thorny, resisting grazing Giraffes! Contrasting the claustrophobia of the jungles, the savannah is open and expansive, creating the opposite dilemma in representation. The scale of shape and depth of field were critical features that needed to be identified, explored and communicated. Reminiscent of the Australian landscape, depicting the sparseness of the African savannah requires a reacquaintance with the art truism, ‘less is often more’.

As the creation of the ‘flats’ progressed, it was very rewarding to see the students move from tentative exploration, hesitant painting, and questions seeking reassurance to confident decision making, bold confident painting and conversations between themselves to solve problems, seeking help only when necessary. Given the tools, they became self-directed and took personal responsibility, attributes reflecting growth, and essential for creative practice.

The introduction of our Junior School extended day program has been a roaring success and students have readily engaged in many club opportunities. Towards the end of each term, we give students the opportunity to nominate to try different clubs for the coming term. Here are some short wrap videos of some of the clubs in Term 2, 2021.

Last week we welcomed our JS Dad's onto campus for a reading morning. Here's how it went:

In Talk 4 Writing we learnt about the structure of report writing.

First, we demonstrated what we already knew about report writing by writing a report on the animal of our choice. We used our model text to look at the structure of an information report and how sub-headings help the reader to quickly find information. We came up with “hooks” for our introduction, using a question and an interesting fact to engage the reader. We also learnt about note-taking when researching a subject for a report.

We practised our notetaking skills when writing our reports about cities in Australia and animals all around the world. We have learnt about editing to improve our spelling, punctuation vocabulary and report writing structure. We also did some actions in Talk 4 Writing to help us memorise our model text about parents.

It was very fun doing it in real life and making up actions.

Read a brief overview of the past few weeks as written by the Heads of School.

Term 2 marked the start of everything Technology for STEM in the Junior School, we even 3D printed mask spacers during the Covid safety requirement weeks early in the term.

The Early years have been introduced to coding, bringing the Foos from Codespark to life and Pre-Primary have coded their way through the classic tale of The Gruffalo, organising steppingstone actions to get the mouse safely through the story. Year 4 students began their journey into Bloxels with some pixelation of popular characters. Some students took the time to look into their future from a technological perspective and designed self-portraits detailing the items that will potentially exist in their lifetime, as well as future civilisation on other Earth-like planets. And finally, after some convincing that a needle was officially a form of technology, we embarked on the 1000 hearts program, which aims to reach out to those who are lonely or feeling separated from loved ones during the pandemic. We cut out felt hearts ready to sew and send to the local aged care homes to make sure the residents know we are thinking about them. Phew – halfway through Term 2 and still so many things to come!