BY COURTNEY ORRIN
Wheely want some bread tags
Earlier this year, one of our team members, Jake Hansen began promoting ‘Bread Tags for Wheelchairs’. Jake and his Mum, Danni came across an advertisement for the charity and believed it would be something that they could help support. Jake shared this idea to his classroom teacher and they began brainstorming ideas as to how their team could embed this within the classroom. By the end of the term, students wanted to take this into the broader community and share the initiative across Port Noarlunga and Christies Beach.
Each student designed a poster that could be displayed across the community which would share information promoting the cause and then in week 10 of term two, Team Orrin walked almost 4kms distributing their posters.
“It is going to help our community because hopefully people will understand that bread tags can be recycled and not just thrown in the bin” –Jake
This experience was a highlight for our team as it gave us a rich learning opportunity to venture out into our community and share our commitments to recycling with the hope to create a more sustainable community.
Our excursion saw us celebrating our knowledge and building on core learning experiences. Our posters are now proudly displayed in over 30 businesses across our community and we are continuing to support this initiative within our classroom. We have a large jar that is being continuously filled with bread tags and a box, which is 66cms tall in the administration office, which is now over half full.
“I really liked how we were able to go into each shop and ask if we could put our signs up because I think it is really cool going into big, fancy shops and being able to talk to new people. I also felt really proud because I was brave enough to talk to shop owners and because by doing this, we are helping people in need.” –Cobie
Zoo Snoozers
This term, we were lucky enough to swap our classroom for a learning space of another kind; our team went for a Zoo Snooze at Adelaide Zoo and engaged in an array of tactile learning experiences. Our camp was a rich learning experience as it allowed us to connect with classroom learning to real life scenarios and context.
We continued to develop our skills in reading the time by following a two-day itinerary and searching for viewing sessions that were suitable for our class. We began to explore and interpret simple maps and investigated key features on the zoo map too but this did become a little tricky when a part of the zoo was closed and we needed to navigate a different route.
The camp has provided us tools to support our writing skills in narrative, recounts and informative texts.
It was really exciting to get to school. “There is the big bus!” I said. “Get on” said the bus driver and off we went. –Lolita
We saw the scaly, tired and hungry alligators. Next, we saw the furry and cute meerkats. Then, we saw the slimy seahorse. – Marty
Finally we went on our night walk, it felt magical. I heard the lion roaring when we were standing near the baby monkeys. – Pippa
But mostly, our team endeavored to connect their classroom learning with a hands-on session at the zoo. Our team observed and explored how living things grow, change and have similar offspring to themselves and saw us grouping living and non-living things by observable features. The team immersed themselves within the experience and were in awe as they were able to touch, smell and compare skins, furs and scales.
Our late night walk around the zoo had students asking rich questions, sharing deep thinking and of course creating memories that will guide and support our team to be creative and strong learners.
Something that we are becoming more aware of as a society is the importance of student learning and the connection to real life experiences. Through this we, as a team, have begun to understand and value the connections we can share within our community. Through a shared relationship with community we have learnt that we are creating a supportive, healthy network that allows us greater opportunities to learn and share our knowledge successfully.
Through this, I have seen team members build on their confidence, resilience or ability to have higher order thinking. In a multitude of ways, students have been brave, confronted their challenges or grown with a growth mindset and I believe that so much of this has come from developing a classroom community, which continues to learn and explore within our broader community.
