Back Drawing - A classic drawing guessing game! Students pair up and get one piece of paper each. The first student turns away from the second, while the second places the paper on the back of the first student. The second student must choose an object that both they and the first student can see, then draw it on the paper, ensuring that the first student can feel the pen/pencil as it draws. The first student must try to guess what the second student is drawing. Minimal clues are allowed, with the second student staying mostly silent for the entire process. Once the first student guesses, roles are reversed.

The students seemed to really enjoy this, with only a modicum of difficulty. We had to allow more and more clues for some students, while other students swapped multiple times during the time we had for this warmup.

Persuasive Poster Designing - with previous sessions being somewhat more structured, we wanted this main activity to be much more student led, with us giving them the general task required, and them being able to work away most of the rest of the session on their own. We gave them a quick intro (reminder, since they’ve already done persuasive posters before) to the elements of a persuasive poster, then handed out the drawings they made in a previous session. They had to use the drawing as their ‘political party figure’ who stood for their chosen policy, then draw it all in on their poster.

Apparently many of the students were working on these in the following mornings after this session - wonderful feedback!

We brought back the creative elections for this sessions reflection activity. I decided it had been long enough since their last vote, so we tried it again to see how the results differed. While the actual votes didn’t change too much since last time, the discussions around it, and the student response, was much more constructive - they understood more what they were voting for this time!

We found this more fluid approach to the main task to work really well. The more independent students were happy to work on their posters with minimal guidance, while this freed us up to help out the students who needed it.

The students are enjoying the personal angle we’re taking with our exploration of politics curriculum, using these policies that they came up with and allowing them to figure out all the benefits and challenges with campaigning for them, and implementing them.

We’re in Stage 1 of the three stage buildup towards our election, planned for session 8. Next week will be persuasive speeches. Students will choose a policy to write and record a persuasive speech supporting their policy. 

In line with keeping our resource requirements low, next week will only need basic paper for our creative cubby building reflection activity.

These posters will be displayed in the voting hall (a classroom at the school that we designate as the voting room) in session 8, so there will be plenty of opportunities for the school community (particularly those we have chosen to vote) to see the work in our class.

One Word at a Time - A classic drama warmup activity, where students must tell a story as a whole class, but each individual is allowed to say only one word at a time. We started by asking the students to provide a character, setting, and goal, then let them build the story from there.

They loved this and never wanted to stop, but it really got them thinking about slowing down and considering the story they were telling, and choosing their words carefully - all themes relevant to their main activity for this session.

Persuasive Speech Writing and Recording - students chose a partner to work with, then a policy to support. They had to write up a 1-3 minute speech to convince viewers that this policy is worth their vote. They had to consider who their audience might be, how this policy benefits them, who else the policy could benefit, and include persuasive language and a call to action for their speech. Lastly, they had to ensure all students in their group contributed to the audio of the final video, whether through sharing the speaking role or adding their voice to the recording in some other way (one example was some students used a call and response style; “when do we want it?! NOW!!”. We started this outside at the yarning circle (same location as the warmup activity) then let the students break off and film/record their speeches around the whole outdoor area.

This was an opportunity to call back to the VOX POP activity from a few weeks ago, but with a reversed purpose - now the students were filming themselves in their group, and had to plan out the content of their video more closely (it was still a pretty loose plan, considering the relatively short time they had to write and record for this activity).

Creative Cubby Building - this was a new idea that popped into my mind later during the week, so I didn’t plan it out as well as I had wanted, but the potential of it should be great. Students must choose four words to describe their recent creative schools session, or their day in general (including the creative habits) and write them onto a paper brick they construct. The process goes like this;

• 1 A4 paper is given to two students, and they fold it in half (top to bottom, portrait, ruling out two tall rectangles). They then measure out five rectangles (as even as possible) across the page, ensuring both tall rectangles have five smaller rectangles inside them (I’ll have a photo of these for next week). They then cut out the middle fold, and each student gets one of the tall rectangles.

• Write one word (or draw a picture to represent that word) inside four of the rectangles, leaving a top or bottom one blank (this will get glued to another face of the shape later on)

• Colour in the rectangles, or add illustrations, referencing the colour of the creative habit the student believed they used the most.

• With the illustrated/coloured faces on the outside, students must fold their tall rectangle paper strips inwards, then glue down a face to create a rectangular prism (two sides will be open, but this is intentional, to simplify the construction process and provide easy handles).

The overarching plan with this is that we will conduct this activity each week, and construct a big cubby out of all the bricks from each week!

Unfortunately for this week, my explanation of the activity was lacking (some of the construction instructions were made up on the fly too - thanks Kirsti!) There were various struggles with the activity, so I plan to film a short video of me making one for the students to use as reference.

The students had already done some work with persuasive speeches, so they weren’t too unfamiliar with what was required of them for this session. We plan to use the recordings they made during this session for the video making session the following week, which should help reduce workload for what can be quite a hefty task (filmmaking).

The students are still on board with the policy explorations, remaining motivated to come up with reasons why their school needs them. It will be interesting to see how the vote goes in a few weeks.

Mostly just making better instructions for the reflection activity, the Creative Cubby Building.

Nothing for next week, but the following week, the mock election, will need more planning in place.

The mock election will connect our class program with the neighbouring creative schools class, a group of younger students, and a selection of teachers/staff.

Variable Storytelling 

Remember how with algebra where letters stand in for numbers and you apply multiplication, division, subtraction, addition to both sides to find an unknown number?

In your rows, create a collaborative story where x and y represent characters or objects.

Each student adds to the story using "Yes, and..." while incorporating algebraic relationships (e.g., "x was twice as tall as y," "Yes, and when x grew by 3, y also grew by 1.5").

Max MSP demo - maths is behind the fun AV stuff!

1. Scale / fogger - make this pixel 2-100 x wider

2. Mix fader +-/*

3. Delayer: if Delay (D) = 63 then divide playback SPEED (S) is quarter of the speed. S = 900 / D
   
   

Station 1: Algebraic sonification

Task: Describe what you think the unknown letter in the formula below sounds like, if it were a sound instead of a letter.

Properties of sound might you use to describe them:

• Loud/quiet (volume)

• Fast/slow (rhythm)

• Happy/sad (specific notes)

• Grainy/smooth (texture)

Solve the problems in your textbook and describe what the unknown letter sounds like.

Station 2: Recording a statistic for our video

Choose one:

1. In Australia, about 1 in 6 adults experience food insecurity.

2. In Australia, 1.2 million children experience food insecurity.

3. Around 10% of Australians experience food insecurity.

4. Around 29% indigenous Australians experience food insecurity. 

5. Oz Harvest has helped feed one hundred and fifty thousand people.

6. Australian supermarkets throw away 3 million tonnes of food every year!

Final term reflection - look at jar of sand and reflect on the journey, discuss the goal/focus for next term. 

Today we used collaboration, imagination and persistence. And next term we want to focus on imagination, discipline, more collaboration and to be quiet! 

Today worked well with the students doing maths problems and describing the parts of the formula with sound. They also enjoyed recording the food stats for our video. 

Engaged in the idea of sound. Maths being the background of creative sound tools.

Students identified their weakness as listening and this beign part of collaboration. Attention signals: la la lava, chi chi chi chicken that Jasmine uses are great, certain students are disruptive. Andrea to think on how to support listening and attention through collaboration next term. 

One session in library for recording sound and to encourage chilled listening.

Andrea to think more on how to support listening and attention through collaboration next term. 

Andrea to build max tool if time, this is a lot of custom development work (3-5 days) so will do my best. Not sure how else to produce creative work quickly.

School facebook 

Compass (intranet) to raise awareness with families 

Andrea and Jasmine to share photos with each other via google drive 

• 🌱 Plant native grasses & groundcovers – lizards need places to hide!

• 🍓 Grow berries or nectar plants – they attract tasty bugs.

• 🍂 Leave leaf litter – it's perfect for insect snacks!

• 🌿 Use mulch – keeps the soil cool and hides lizard food.

• 🪵 Add rocks, logs & bark – great for sunbaking and shelter.

• 🐈 Keep cats indoors or use a safe outdoor cat run.

• 💧 Place a shallow water bowl in a quiet shady spot.

• 🐸 Build a pond – include sticks or rocks as ramps!

• ♻️ Compost scraps – attracts insects for lizards to eat.

• 👀 Check before mowing or reversing – blue tongues love lawns!

• ☠️ No chemicals or snail pellets – they can poison lizards.

• 🥣 Don’t feed pets outside – lizards can get hurt near food bowls.

• 🪨 Don’t take logs or rocks from nature – they’re someone else’s home!

• 🦎 Don’t collect wild lizards – let them come to you.

• 🍂 Don’t rake everything up – messy gardens = happy lizards!

• 🍽️ Don’t feed lizards – they’re good hunters and love the challenge!

• Bottlebrush (Callistemon)

• Grevilleas

• Wallaby Grass

• Kangaroo Grass

Partner Portraits 

We found partners, and in our journals everyone was given the task to draw a portrait of their partner without looking at the page. With the added challenge of not lifting the pen! 

Overalls for Ms Richardson.

In one of the first few weeks the students suggested that they make overalls for Ms Richardson as one of their activities. So, rather than creating whole new overalls, we decided we could give plain overalls, new life. Talking about how potentially we could look at our own wardrobes and think if maybe anything could be done to help us want to wear it more? 

After thinking of the design, the class decided to make Ms Richardson a book week costume! The Hungry Caterpillar overalls! 

The class split into groups, and in their groups they were given either some food, a caterpillar or a butterfly. Once design, and size was decided. Using fabric glue and some felt and fabric samples, the students designed their additions to the overalls. 

We did get very into the activity, and unfortunately ran out of time for the reflection. But have created a prompt for them for the next week being to create an invention that can transform fabric waste into a new material. What will that material be used for? What is the need? 

These overalls are going to look fantastic, they were all really beautifully working together and practicing their cutting. Was great to see them problem solving, sharing the scissors around and getting excited to design their addition to the overalls. 

They just love making things. 

That was our last session for the term, next term we are thinking of exploring the fabric doorstops, Jennie has messaged the subi markets, also we are gathering a bit of a collection of things that Sian (uniform shop) can’t resell, eg a bag with heaps of texta on it.. Thinking it could be amazing to give them new life and find a purpose for them within the school. 

Tennis racquets? If we do the weaving fish idea. But we will touch base before we start up again. 

Markets date potentially being set soon. 

Also the overalls will now always be a little reminder of CS in the school for book week. 

Between illness (both) and Tom’s PL we’ve missed a week and had to shift to a last-lesson Friday session so knew we’d need a quick physical warm-up to get the students involved. Warm up involved our pet rocks as they still a really enthusiastic about them - pop stick challenge with one hand, one pop stick for each partner to try to move one of the pet rocks the length of the classroom from desk to desk. Really pleased to see significant levels of persistence here! (Smaller class than usual helped, I think, and we had several conversations about how everyone has different kinds of abilities.) Good collaboration and discussions.

We had some video answers back from just one of our FIFO workers, but she mentioned that she worked at Yandi minesite near Newman, so we got the students to find out three fun facts about Yandi before we watched the video. Interesting to see Kaylee really work hard at this (usually only disruptive), found more info than anyone else, also took the initiative to look it up on Google Maps etc. Sonny also great with research and note-taking. By pure chance there were some great facts available - like the 2.5km ore train - we discussed local landmarks to try to picture this, eg walking to Grandis Primary School is only half the length of this train. The fact that Yandi is being closed down next year meant Tom found a video of them rehabilitating part of the site so that also provided some discussion and linked into the final phase of mining from the curriculum that we have discussed the least. It also tied into Kaylee finding some ‘forests’ of plantations on the site via Google Maps, obviously in areas they’ve already rehabilitated. 

We then showed them my spliced together video of some of their questions and Georgia’s answers. Students really interested in her answers and great to have someone young and relatable talking about her work (she is a truck driver there) - provoked great discussion when she explained they can’t be on their phone or have earphones in during their 12 hour driving shifts and are monitored by camera to make sure they don’t. So interesting for all of us!

Double-pronged reflection, we first got the students to write some thank you notes to photograph and send to Georgia and they willingly did this. We then discussed the Creative Habits and identified how much they’d collaborated on the pop stick task, took a bit more prompting to identify that the Yandi task demonstrated good inquisitiveness. 

Unfortunately Tom is off Monday and Wednesday next week so our final lesson for the term will be last lesson Friday (last moments before the school holidays!), so this is a challenge - although it might mean we have a smaller group again which can be a positive. We hopefully will have more videos from the FIFO workers and can discuss with the students how we’ll edit these together.

 Missing more than half the class today due to illness and a lightning carnival, but smaller group was actually great and much more engaged than usual, especially students who are usually quite disruptive. While they are not always on task they are clearly curious about our subject matter and showing them a “real live” FIFO worker really helped. Hopefully we can have some more to discuss and share next week.

As above, we’ll try to wind up the FIFO Life project with our final videos, and will need to plan this in more detail when we know closer to next session how many videos we have etc. 

Amanda to follow up FIFO workers and send thanks to Georgia.

Categories and Number Counting Game - due to the success of last week's story, one word at a time, I decided to run them through a similar activity this week, except with a few less rules. We started off with them in a circle, and then, in order going around the circle, they had to call out a thing from a category they chose. We did one round of this, then opened it up to ‘associated categories’. They could choose to say any word or thing that was associated with the previous thing, so we could shift between objects, colours, creatures, and all sorts.

We ended the activity with that number counting game, where the group has to count to a specific number, with only one person saying each sequential number at a time. If any says the same number as another person, then everyone starts back from 0. They struggled with this one for a little bit, with some students choosing to mess about and keep saying numbers to reset the game. Eventually, they figured out that they could use the same method used in the previous games, where they could count up, going around in their circle - this ended the game very quickly!

Persuasive Videos/Animations - using the speeches they developed last week, we got the students to use Scratch Jnr to develop short animations to be used during the mock election in a few weeks. There were a number of tech issues with this, especially when trying to get the audio from the correct ipad to the correct group’s Scratch Jnr (with the audio having been recorded last week, we did remind students to make a note of which number ipad they had, and made note ourselves, but even then it became a little messy).

All in all, the students enjoyed using Scratch Jnr to make the animations with their voices behind it, and the activity was a good introduction to filmmaking, something they’ll need lots of next term when they make their mini series’.

The main activity took up a lot of our time today, so we had to rush through the creative cubby building session. Unfortunately, my design for the bricks that the students are making is not very sturdy, and with the number of paper bricks we have the structure is falling apart, so we’ll be discussing ways to reinforce our creative cubby - it might become an outdoor scene, rather than just a cubby.

We knew that we wanted to do promotional/persuasive videos for this session, but finding simple technology that would let the students make something quickly was challenging. Going with simple animation software that lets the student incorporate their audio was a good start, and it let them experiment with fast-turnaround video making, even if the resulting videos may not be as persuasive as we hoped they would be.

Using the technology in this session certainly kept the students engaged. As always, there were a few tech issues here and there, but mostly the students were enjoying playing around with the software, and integrating their characters and their voices into the videos (hence why we went overtime, and barely had time for a reflection activity).

We had initially planned to run the mock election at the next session, but we’ve decided that the students need to have a session to bring all their materials together and create the election hall themselves. So we’ll be conducting a planning session with them next week. We’ll help provide some direction on what needs to be planned, but we want to let them do the layout of the hall, placement of posters, design of new flyers, collating of their videos, and whatever else needs to be done.

The classroom will need some pre-setup to ensure there’s space for the students to design their election hall. Some old projects will need to be taken down off walls, and their election materials will need to be accessible for them.

The videos will be displayed on the main screen in the classroom, and there will be plenty of other students, teachers, and school community coming through the classroom to take part in the mock election.