World Travellers 08

On Thursday (23 Aug) Stage 1 visited the art gallery of NSW and the Botanical gardens to get a sense of the world we live in.  They used their eyes to see, noses to smell, hands to feel and ears to hear  the things around them.  The art gallery had a huge variety of paintings and other artworks to look at while the gardens provided lots of experiences to test our senses.  We saw many different types of plants and the air was filled with many aromas.  We touched many different plants and even felt the rain as it poured down on us.  We also saw and heard the fruit bats in the trees above.  We thought that they were really cool.  Take a look at the photos of our “sense”sational day out.
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Visual Literacy is being able to make sense of what we see in pictures or visual texts and the ability to think critically about what is being presented. It also involves understanding how visual images relate to spoken and written texts associated with them. We are exposed daily to visual images through picture books, magazines, newspapers, signs, advertisements, television, films, packaging and all forms of information technology. Meaning in visual images can be conveyed through elements such as colour, shape, line, actions, eye paths and angles, to name a few.
This term Stage 1 students will undertake visual literacy activities working with picture books. We will look at elements such as colour, image position and size and the meanings created by these. The book we have chosen to use is called The Very Ordinary Caterpillar by Gary Flemming. Watch this space for more details of our class work. Coming soon.   

Below is a great website providing sample teaching programs and a recommended list of picture books/authors/illustrators for visual literacy activities.
http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/bookzone/vislit.html

Kindergarten have been learning about plants in their science unit. They recently planted some broad beans and are keeping a weekly journal, recording their observations of their plant’s growth. We are wondering if the beanstalks will grow all the way to the sky just like the one in the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. What do you think???

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A fun activity for ESL learners providing a practical, real world experience and an authentic writing task.

Today Shilrley Lucke and her guide dog Jodi came to visit us. Stage 1 have been learning about the 5 senses and Shirley came to speak to us about life without the sense of sight. Shirley has been visually impaired since she was a baby but her life is a very busy and active one, with the help of her dog Jodi. Jodi is a 2.5 year old labrador, trained by the nsw guide dogs association. Not only is she Shirley’s third guide dog but she is also the family pet. When Jodi is wearing a harness she is a working dog guiding Shirley wherever she goes. But, once the harness comes off she becomes a playful, lovable pet. Shirley was a wonderful lady who was a hit with all of us. If you’d like visitors like Shirley to visit your school or you just want to find out more about guide dogs you can visit the following website: http://www.guidedogs.com.au/

Below are some photos of our time with Shirley and Jodi. We had a fun day
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We have been learning about colours in our English class.
We love reading so we read lots of books with a colour theme. These included “How the Birds got their Colours”, “Winnie the Witch”, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” and “I Went Walking”. We also did lots of Visual arts activities. We made new houses for Winnie the witch, and painted birds just like the ones in the book “How the Birds got their Colours”.
Science is fun. We did some science experiment that involved mixing colours. We used food dyes and water to mix the primary colours of blue, yellow and red. We also mixed colours by putting drops of food colouring onto paper napkins.
We found out that many colours can be made by mixing these 3 colours. Did you know that blue and red makes purple and that blue and yellow makes green? We recorded our results and wrote about our experiments.

Take a look at our pictures below. We hope you like them.
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Welcome to our blog page. We come from different countries around the world. We are learning English and go to special English classes. We’d like to tell you about the work we’ve done. We also do lots of interesting things in our regular classes which we’ll also share with you. Stay tuned!