Term 3, 2018
Book Week!
Find Your Treasure!
This year’s Book Week theme of Find Your Treasure was the perfect for a few fun activities and costumes! We had fun activities like making treasure chests and going on treasure hunts throughout the school, as well as the wonderful Book Week parade! This year we encouraged students to dress up as characters from books from the 1960s as this year is East Marden’s 50th Anniversary! You’ll see some great examples of costumes from books of the era in these photos.
What Book Week would be without a celebration too! After treasure hunting all week, our students enjoyed a wonderful Pirate Party! Classes from Miss Zadoyanchuk’s Year 6s, Miss Burt’s Year 5s and Miss Thompson’s Receptions all enjoyed the fun and laughter in the library being entertained by Pirate Party specialists and having a great lunch provided by the Library and Mark (IT) and Greg (our groundskeeper). Thanks everyone for a grrrrrreat Book Week! Yarr!
Inquiry
Year 2s – How has technology in the home affected daily life over time?
This term, the Year 2s were exploring the topic of technology – how we’ve created and improved it, and how it’s changed us too!
Students undertook some fun and engaging activities, like looking at ‘old’ technology and trying to guess what it is and how it works, writing about their thoughts about technology over time, doing a ‘technology audit’ at home and finding out what kinds of technology they have at home amongst others.
The project culminated in using the Engineering and Design process to come up with a problem and solve it with a ‘new invention’ for the world! Here’s some of the thinking behind their inventions and the results!
Year 6s – My Local Business
The Year 6 Inquiry this term was all about getting back to business – How do people create businesses? How do you work out what kind of business you should open? What different types of businesses are there? What are trade-offs? What’s opportunity cost?
These and many more questions were explored and students came up with their own businesses through business plans they ‘pitched’, Shark Tank style, to Mr Parsons and a Business Mentor from Business SA.
Here are some examples of students’ businesses and their pitches:
Our students ended up being a bit famous – getting on the Business SA South Australian Young Entrepreneur’s Scheme (SAYES)’s Facebook page!
Term 2, 2018
National Simultaneous Storytime
Amanda Graham Visit
This year we were lucky enough to have the famous Australian author/illustrator Amanda Graham visit our school. She is the author of books like ‘Picasso the Green Tree Frog’ and the ‘Arthur’ series.
Amanda ran a wonderful illustration masterclass for as many classes as we could fit in the gym and inspired the students to read, read, read! She had the students eating out of her hands as she illustrated a shark and had them following her very useful steps. Here are some of the results: (We’d have more, but all the kids wanted to take them home!)
Hickory Dickory Dash
Year 7 National Simultaneous Storytime Reader’s Theatre
In case having a famous author/illustrator wasn’t enough excitement for one week, students from our amazing Year 7 classes each presented a play to rousing applause in the gym for all classes on National Simultaneous Storytime Day, Wednesday 23rd May.
The idea is that around the country, every school reads the same book at the same time. This year’s book was ‘Hickory Dickory Dash’, written by Tony Wilson and illustrated by Laura Wood, which is an adaptation of the ‘Hickory, Dickory, Dock’ song of course. Our Year 7s truly shone as stars of the show.
Thank you so much Year 7s who worked extremely hard in preparation for the play, taking a lot of their play time to rehearse and being dedicated, enthusiastic and giving their all. Thanks also to Carey, our amazing face-painter extraordinaire who put the finishing touches on what were great costumes.
Thanks as well as Miss Chong-Tenn who came to almost every rehearsal and helped greatly with direction and enthusiasm. Our biggest thanks of course go to the wonderful Tsam who was the guiding light of the performance and everything in the library. Below is each performance in full – we hope you enjoy!
Room 27
The file for Room 27 is in a different format to Room 28 and can’t be displayed in the browser – just click on the link above to download the video of the performance
Room 28
Inquiry
Year 3 – Australia and our Neighbours
Year 3s this term are looking at the similarities and differences between Australia and its neighbouring countries.
Recently we did some Mystery Skypes with a class from Parnell District School in Auckland, New Zealand and Bandung Alliance International School in Java, Indonesia!
A Mystery Skype is a video call to another school where students ask questions they have developed to try and find out where another class is from. Students developed these questions based on concepts of geography from the Australian Curriculum with teachers before the day and then asked them taking turns with their international buddies.
We learned a lot about everyday life, the cultural practices of other countries and that no matter where you are, ‘Flossing’ (the dance craze of the decade) truly has gone viral.
Here’s a snippet of one of our Mystery Skype calls below:
Term 1, 2018
Inquiry
Receptions
The Reception team worked extremely hard this term learning about “What makes a successful learner?”
Students inquired into the many qualities of successful learners and the routines and expectations that were needed to be successful.
Then we looked at how success made us feel:
We investigated how emotions can affect how successful we are and who can help us to be successful at school.
And finally, we made a video summing up some of our learning from the term. Try not to giggle too much at their gorgeous responses!!
Library Lovers Day is an annual event supported by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) which is held on February 14. Library Lovers’ Day is an opportunity for everyone to reconnect with the library and share their love of books.
This year we celebrated Library Lovers day by having our fabulous Library Crew read and share their favourite stories in various areas around the school grounds. They were dressed as the official Library Town Criers and they had a great time reading to the students.
Our dedicated (and awesome) parent volunteers, Pip, Linda & Bec selected books from the library which were superbly wrapped for each class to come in on the day and select a ‘surprise book’. Each ‘surprise book’ had a blank note, envelope & stamp for the class to mail it back to the library through our special mailbox.
Come in and read their love letters to the library.
A huge thank you to our wonderful and amazing leadership team, teachers’, SSOs’ and students for supporting EMPS Library.
This year the library is introducing Scholastic Book Club to EAST MARDEN PRIMARY
SCHOOL. Up to twice a term, during the school year Library staff will send home a Club catalogue
with a different selection of books offered for all ages. You’ll find award-winning books and
bestsellers, as well as old and new favourites.
To place an order with the Book Club, you will need to use the LOOP platform which is set up for
parents/caregivers to pay by credit card. Your child’s order is sent directly to the school, safe and sound.
The books will be delivered to your child’s class by our Library staff. Your child’s order can be done via
scholastic.com.au/LOOP or using the LOOP app, which can be downloaded from the App Store or
Google Play. We advise that we will not be accepting cash as a payment, so please do not send orders
to school with money payments as they cannot be processed.
