Week 23

It is all getting rather exciting in 1BeM. The big day is fast approaching and our section of the Arts Festival is really starting to come together. The children are very much taking charge of the process and are involved in all the different aspects of the production.

This week, we concentrated on some of the backstage elements of our performance. On Monday, Bronwyn (Amelie's mum) treated us to a "behind the scenes" tour of the Black Box Theatre, which was all set up for the High School production of Cyrano de Bergerac. Each and every one of us got the chance to tread the boards as we explored the surprisingly simple but very effective set. We saw how lighting and visual effects can be used to enhance the mood...and we came away with LOADS of ideas!

We have now decided on the lighting and music we would like to support our performance and have been working with the Facilities team to help us. We have sourced a number of audio visual backdrops to help us evoke different moods at various points in our performance and we have all created our "costume" for the show...reimagining cardboard boxes in fantastically creative ways.

In Reading Workshop, we have enjoyed recording some of our scripts using Voice Recorder on the iPads and, then, listening back over them. It is quite strange listening to yourself speaking but it is extremely helpful when it comes to assessing your own fluency and expression. We are becoming more persuasive opinion writers all the time. Our letters and reviews are now more detailed and expansive as we include more reasons and examples in our pieces. At this time of year, we are encouraging each other to write “longer and stronger” without compromising on the quality of our work. As we mentioned last week, we are also paying more attention to the capital letters and full stops as these are all too easy to omit. 

In Mathematics, we have been using a variety of media to explore the defining and non-defining properties of 2D shapes. We have been focusing on composing and decomposing shapes, exploring how smaller shapes can be manipulated to create larger shapes and vice-versa. We have used clay, Geoboards, dot boards, iPads, Power Polygons and so on. 

Reminders and Requests

*Please bring in a set of all (mostly) black or all (mostly) white clothes for our upcoming Arts Festival

*Don’t forget, every Friday is “Fresh Fruit Friday”

*Grade One Arts Festival-Thursday 4th February-9.00am-10.00am 

Have a great week.