Session 2 Subi Primary School Year 4/5 - Anne Gee & Gemma Hayley

I showed the class my hand made name sticker with a list of pictures and words that told a story of things I loved. Using large A5 stickers and colour markers students wrote down their name and things they were passionate about. 

We then walked around the room to find others with similar likes or ones that fascinated us or we didn’t know about

5 Habits Stick Games

Sets of 5 Habits are written on coloured related popsticks. Each child takes one. 

-Walk around the room and find a matching pair - explain to each other what that word might mean.

-Walk around room to find some one with different stick - explain the word to partner - how are these words similar/different.

-Find a group of 5 different coloured sticks explain an example of each.

We shared the ideas and thoughts of the class referencing the poster.

Act out a Habit Students then formed groups of like colour sticks (eg 5 kids with purple/collaboration) - these groups then had 5 mins to go off with their group and prepare an act to describe/explain/exemplify their Habit.

Once we regrouped the class set about guessing which Habit matched which performance and why.

Part 1 - Tiny Things 

I showed all the little bits that are left over after I’ve done a paper cutting -lots of tiny unusual and mostly unrecognisable shapes. 

• sort these pieces in some way that makes sense so that others can ‘read your thinking’

• look/decode/read each groups thinking about how pieces were sorted

• fill a tiny 5cm x 5m black card square with an arrangement that the student found visually appealing

• Arrange these cards to create a group piece 

• The group then gathered around their masterpiece and we discussed how they were all unique arrangements but together they formed an impressive large scale installation. 

We discussed exploring and experimenting with no fear of getting it wrong, or thinking it was going to be assessed or graded made it easier to try different ideas. 

Super Powers and Kryptonite 

Standing either side of a long tape line stuck on the carpet - we went through a visual process of measuring our super power habits (ones we do well) and those which were our kryptonite (trickier Habits to master and maintain) kids stepped forward and back to indicate personal strengths and areas they found hard - I asked peers to reflect on people who might have under estimated themselves and this was a great discussion. 

Things we wonder about:

- how to invest in shares and how that works

- why there are 3 different theirs and why maths is hard

- how Ben Franklin made the light bulb

- why space is infinite and how loud the Big Bang was

- where the earth came from

- the future and aliens 

- why stars explode

- getting jobs and travelling

- is death an illusion and is everything everything?

- space and nature

- the world and galaxy

- how gravity makes us stick to earth

- the future and cricket

- the first people on earth

- next year and nature

- the future and science 

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Gemma and I met for 90 mins prior to the session and I met Heather the Principal and the coordinator, did a campus tour and physical resource trek. We have mapped out the first 3 weeks and are still keen to let the kids develop the larger planned event and the big burning question. We’ve adjusted a few dates to work around swimming lessons and clashes with public holidays but we have a few weeks back up so plenty of wriggle room. 

Great group of kids - delightful! 

The kids’ self assessment of their own strengths and weaknesses was pretty spot on and match that of Gemma’s (that we discussed earlier when we were on the professional learning day). Not so collaborative - don't like the loss of control over everything in shared projects, persistence when things get challenging is a focus too. 

We are doing a session about how we are connected and how our paths overlap and paths we travel so Gemma is sending me a class list of addresses so we have a vague idea of the broad spread of where kids live. We are also looking to get journals so we can document the Kids process and give them something as a take-home piece

I met with the specialists and the art teacher who came in to visit and also made a point of going in and having morning tea earlier in the staffroom to meet other staff members and explained a little bit about the program and my background