Farewell!

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Today was our last day of school for the 2013 year. We were sad to see Jess and Kerry from 1/2J leave and we wish them all the very best for 2014. What were the best memories for you this year? In our final circle time together, we talked about so many great things we have done. We loved the specialist classes each week. Caroline, Sam, Melanie and Belinda taught us many interesting things and helped us in many different ways. We wish Belinda all the best as she begins her family leave to have her first baby.

Highlights for 1/2M were:

Learning new things about frogs. Jack T

Learning how to write information reports using PowerPoint. Oscar

Having Melinda as my teacher. Sonny

Learning how to write persuasive pieces. Talia

Learning how to work in teams to fix our problems. Josh

Helping people to have ideas with writing. Felix

I like helping my friends with what to do when they were stuck. Miles

Learning new computer software programs and being the expert to help others. Sam

Sam helping me to improve my Personal Best in running in PE. Zach

I liked doing the multiplication and division maths tests. Max C

Yay I finished! Clare

I like Melinda teaching me how to stay focused. Jade

Melinda taught us how to make new friends. Alexia

Going on the excursions and doing writing were my favourites. Evie

Learning how to write in paragraphs was great. Eliza

I loved preparing everything for the Minibeast expo and having my family there. Ella

Learning new stuff like how to be a teacher. Chloe

I liked learning with funny Melinda. Marita

Have a safe and relaxing holiday and we will see you all in the New Year.

This is our final post.

Typhoon Fundraiser!

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Reminder that this Monday is a Free Dress day and to bring a gold coin donation.

This Christmas, our Junior School Council have decided to raise awareness and money to help the people affected by the typhoon in the Philippines. Over 600,000 people have been affected by this natural disaster. It is hard for us to imagine what it must be like to lose your home, school and even friends or family in this storm. Thank you for supporting the JSC for 2013.

Leafy sheds her skin!!

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It was just another ordinary Monday, we walked into our room, to get ready for another big day at school. When suddenly, from the corner of her eye, Cobie spotted something out of the ordinary, hanging from the roof of our leaf insects cage…. Either there was ANOTHER leaf insect inside the cage or…. Leafy had shed her skin! We found out that leaf insects skin cannot grow bigger so it must shed and they grow a whole new skin! What a morning!!

From 1/2C

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Minibeast Expo!

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The amazing Minibeast Expo is on this coming Monday!!

When: Monday, December 9.
Where: on the basketball court to start, then in our classrooms
Time: 2:40-315pm

We have been busy working on different things like information reports, power points, dioramas and much more so DON’T MISS OUT!

From 1/2C

Intra-School Transition begins

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Here at HWPS, we have new Foundation (Prep) students come to visit us a few times to see what ‘Big School’ is like. This helps them to settle into school life quickly once they meet the teachers, see the classrooms and playgrounds as well as meet new friends.

 For the rest of our HWPS students, each year in November we have Intra-School Transition sessions.

Starting this Wednesday, all students will experience 3 sessions in their 2014 year level. (These are not their 2014 grades.)

What questions will you ask your Transition Teacher? Leave us a comment telling your favourite thing about Intra-School Transition.

African Cultural Day for Doris!

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Friday is African Cultural Day at HWPS. Our Junior School Council has organised this Friday to be a fundraiser to raise money for our sponsor child Doris. Doris lives in Ghana, Africa and we learned she has to walk 10 minutes every morning just to get water for her family before school.

We would appreciate your support by donating a gold coin to help with Doris’ education.

The JSC gave us plenty of ideas on how to dress up at Assembly.

 

 

The African flag colours are RED, WHITE and GREEN.

You can dress up as someone famous from Africa. Africans love the cricket or rugby!

The wildlife of Africa is amazing, maybe we’ll see some lions, giraffes or monkeys at school on Friday! Thank you for your support.

A good mathematician can compare data!

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We have been asking survey questions, collecting data using tally marks, and putting this information into graphs. Today our job wasn’t just to collect and display the data but also to compare the data. We asked the same question to both 1/2C and 1/2D students. Our aim was to find out if 1/2D and C would have the same answers to our questions. We found out that for some questions, we had exactly the same results, but for others it was VERY different. For example, 1/2D’s favourite sweet was lolly pops, but this was actually 1/2C’s LEAST favourite!

Rudy found out that 1/2C’s favourite car was a Jaguar, but 1/2D’s favourite car was Ford

Lola found out that 1/2C’s favourite sweet was a freedom frog, but 1/2D’s favourite was ‘teeth’!

We learnt that it is important to survey the same number of people from each group. Comparing and analysing data is great fun! What is your favourite survey question? List them in the comments below!

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We love the iPads!

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For Fun Friday today we explored the many fabulous apps on our school ipads. Our favourites are Rocket Maths, Explain Everything and Squeebles. We use the ipads to make videos, show our thinking, practise multiplication facts, make storybooks and heaps more! What’s your favourite app and why?

From 1/2C

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AWESOME MINIBEAST EXPO

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Today as the minibeast incursion! We got to see some incredible animals. We learnt some amazing facts too! Did you know that in the minibeast world, yellows and greens mean ‘danger’ to other animals? This is why some millipedes let out a yellow fluid- to warn us- by pretending they are venomous. We saw a Rainforest Centipede- it was HUGE and had about 26 legs. These minibeasts IS venomous and generally quite aggressive!

After the incursion, we took a survey question ‘What was your favourite minibeast from the incursion?’
We used a table and tally marks to record our results and then put our information into a bar graph.

1/2c’s favourite mini-beast is TARANTULAS!

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Handwriting Fun

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Lots of families ask us how they can help to improve their child’s handwriting  at home. Sitting with your child ensuring they are starting the letter formation correctly is important. Asking your child to write a short sentence before dinner in a special book can help you to see your child write and provide instant feedback on how they are going. Coloured chalk or a bucket of water and a paintbrush drawing silly sentences outside on the concrete can be lots of fun too on a sunny day. Drawing letters on each others back can be another quick way to monitor correct starting positions.

An iPad app we use at school is one called School Writing.

Under Settings of the app, choose the Victoria/ NT/ WA Beginners font and the Guidelines Style is Dotted Thirds.

Why do we like this app? We like how each letter has a clear starting point and arrows pointing in the correct direction. You can chose learn to see how the letter is formed first. The app will then rate your effort and encourage you to do better if necessary. We also like how we can replay each letter to see how successful the child was.

Leave us a comment letting us know any more ideas on how you encourage your child to write neatly at home. Melinda 🙂