Week 4 update

Hello everyone! It's Mrs. Tindale here. The term is flying by and the students in Mini MAC have been busy little bees. 

We were lucky enough to have the lovely ladies from Kanyana Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre visit us and share their knowledge on the special fauna that was once abundant around the Wattle Grove area. They brought along some beautiful animals for us to observe and learn about, including a Tawny Frogmouth, Forest Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo, Carpet Python, Bobtail lizard and an Echidna. They also showed us taxidermied specimens of a quenda, cat and rat. They discussed the impact that human progress is having on our local flora and fauna. The students diligently took notes and have used this information to create Animal Fact Cards on Quendas. 

Along with this fantastic STEM project on bridging the gap between human progress and the environment, some of our students have been working on their own independent research projects. These 'Passion Projects' have been individually chosen by the students and some of the topics include researching natural disasters, such as tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanoes, synthetic blood, minerals and atoms, pyroclastic flow after volcanic eruptions and animal adaptations. What a great way to build our research skills by answering questions we've always wanted to know about!

Within our Literacy Block we've been consolidating our spelling rules, use of quotation marks and the comprehension strategy of summarising. Why not ask your children how they would summarise the books they've been reading. Talking about what we read really helps us develop our own summarising skills.

This term in Mathematics we're focusing on Money and the class has developed a weekly money system in which they rent their chairs, table space, book boxes and pencil pots from the pretend Bank of C&T23 (short for Bank of Court and Tindale, Room 23 - yes the students chose this name!). Students earn income by remembering to bring their homework folder every day and their library books/bag each Wednesday. They can also earn income by applying for and securing 'jobs' around the classroom, such as being the class photographer or recording the week's events to go on the school blog.  Keeping it real, students know that if they don't keep their cheque books up to date each week, or if they forget their homework/library bag, then, uh oh, they get a fine! Students also chose to sign a contract with our pretend bank and in doing so received a special offer of $10.00 up front! Students are learning responsibility and budgeting, while simulating real world money scenarios (and having fun doing it).

Keep an eye out in coming weeks for blog posts written by our lovely staff in Room 23!

All the best,

Mrs T. :)