Well, what a way to begin Semester 2. I don’t think we ever thought we would be remote learning for so long, but I must admit I am blown away by the amazing work students have produced on Google Classroom (GC) and the range of skills they have developed during this challenging time.
In English we have been focusing on:
- building our persuasive Writing skills in using the Seven Steps to Writing. This culminated in students writing a letter to their parent/s to persuade them they were capable of taking care of a pet tarantula. It was fantastic to see the different learned persuasive techniques used in their letters.
- writing different forms of poetry to engage a reader’s imagination and emotions. Students have produced some fantastic poems this term, from acrostic to rhyming couplets.
- our novel study of Nim’s Island by Wendy Orr. Students have listened to weekly chapter read-alouds and completed a range of engaging tasks related to this text
- working on our typing skills using Dance Mat Typing which has really helped with working on daily GC tasks
For our maths lessons, we have continued our learning path to build skills around a range of mathematical concepts, from using differentiated Google Sheets to show addition and subtraction with trading, to demonstrating displacement of volume using the kitchen sink. It has been wonderful to see the many photos and videos explaining different mathematical concepts.
A favourite part of remote learning tied in with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics at the start of Term 3. We were able to utilise the Olympics across a variety of subjects, from geography to visual arts and students loved dressing up in Zoom to represent their country of origin.
Students have also visited China, Madagascar and Brazil as part of our geography unit on Earth’s Environment and we are now venturing to the unknown planet of Zog in our ‘Space Invaders’ science unit where we focus our learning on living things.
Although we have connected via daily Zoom sessions, we are so excited to be returning to school this term where we can reconnect with our friends and class. However, we are also equally sad that this year is drawing to a close, so our aim is to make the most of our time together and have lots of fun learning.
