Having Fun With Symmetry

How great do these pictures look? JSS had some fun creating symmetrical pictures of ourselves and some of our friends. It was quite a challenge to get the opposite side of the face an exact copy but everyone had a try and produces some wonderful pictures. We hope you like these examples.

JSS have worked with wonderful interest and enjoyment this term and are ready for a relaxing holiday. I hope everyone enjoys their break and returns ready for another great term together.

See you then!

Forces in Our Playground

JSS have been exploring the forces at work in our playground. We found lots of examples of simple machines and were able to identify the type of force needed for them to work. I hope you are hearing about levers, inclinded planes, wheels & axles, gears, screws, pulleys and wedges at home. I am impressed with the number of children who have explored http://www.edheads.org/ and had a go at the simple machines activities. Fantastic work JSS!

Great Activities at CSIRO!

WOW! What a fantastic day we had at the CSIRO Education Centre. Each group of children was able to try two different sessions. One was about Froces, Movement & Simple Machines and the other was about Toy Science. The sessions were very hands on and everyone was able to investigate different machines and toys to learn about how they work and move. The long bus drive was certainly worth it.

Did you tell your parents about your favourite machine? Could you explain how it worked and what made it move?

The excursion had been a great launch for our next inquiry and we are looking forward to learning more about forces.

Lots of Visitors at JSS.

Thank you to all the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters who came to visit us. It was great to see so many people in our classroom and they all had great things to say about our projects. I was so proud of the confident way everyone presented their work to such a big audience. Well done JSS.

JSS learn Mandarin

We have been learning Mandarin in JSS! We were very lucky to have Declan's Dad visit us and teach the children a song so that they can say good morning to you in Mandarin. A big thank you to Vince for all his preparation and spending time with us. Declan kept the ball rolling and helped us practise later in the day. I hope you have heard the song as the children sounded great at school.

JSS as Busy as Ever

Hard at work again, we have been busy doing heaps of great things over the last couple of weeks.

In Mathematics the children have been doing lots of measurement of length, perimeter and area. On our Open Day our visitors were able to help us measure the perimeter of large objects in the classroom. We were so flat out that we forgot to take any pictures of our visitors helping!

We took some the next day when we used small units of measurement to check the perimeter of smaller objects like our foot. Kelsey's mum was our parent helper and we kept her very busy!

Where did we come from?

JSS have used the data from our surveys to create graphs showing where our parents, grandparents and great grandparents were born.

The process involved making a tally listing the name of each country and using tally marks for each person.

The next step was to use concrete materials to create a graph to represent this information. The children worked in small co-operative groups to create their graphs.

They discovered that the materials need to be the same size to make the graph accurate, a graph needs a title to explain to people what is is about and it needs labels to tell people each thing that was measured.

We then transfered the information into the Excel Program on the computer to create a different version of the graphs.

Well done JSS! I hope some of your grandparents can come in to look at the great display of our work on Grandparents Open Day.