Inquiry Night

Dear families,


Inquiry night is this Wednesday. This is an opportunity for us to share with you the experiences that we create for the children and our documentation of our whole L.C. inquiry into movement. We would love to show you how we came up with the concept of movement and get you involved, as much as you are willing. Inquiry is a way of learning, not just a subject. It is a central part of our curriculum at BEPS and we invite you to see how we learn literacy, maths, science art and much more through this approach.  


The evening will start in 456 upstairs at 6.30. After an introduction from Nerida, we will return to our learning community to have a closer look at what we have been working on over the past few months.


We hope to see you there!

Aquarium Excursion part 2

On Friday 4th May 2012, the Bicicletta LC went to the Melbourne Aquarium...

(click on the images below to see them at full size)

The Penguins

"The penguins can slide."

"See? That one had a stream of bubbles coming off its back!"

"Look! Air bubbles up in the rock!"

“They come out of the penguin’s bottom!” (referring to the air bubbles)

“They get stuck in the dents of the rock!”

“See that one? He had air bubbles all over his back.”

“That one’s quite shiny.”

The Sea Stars and Sea Biscuits

“It felt slimy”

“It looks like a leaf”

“They feel spikey”

“They felt scaly”

“It felt like warm, soft in bed”

“It’s called a sea star because it can’t swim”

Reflection back at school: sharks, stingrays and eyes

“I saw the shark and was closed his eyes and he was sleeping walk, but shark is still sleeping because he have to swimming. And he do it slowly, slowly and swimming.”

“When sharks sleep they open their eyes and they still float on the water except they go really slow. Starfish’s eyes are on their backs.”

“I learned that sharks have eyes on their cheeks.”

“On Stingrays their eyes are on the bottom of their body and at the very end of their fins they’ve got poisonous, I don’t know what it is... stingers? And you can only touch them in certain places. And also their gills are on the bottom.”

“The stingrays’ eyes are on its head.”

“They’re both right because the stingray’s eyes are on the top and the bottom.”

“I know because I crouched down and I looked on the top and I saw nothing that looked like eyes.”

Drawing at the aquarium...

“I can’t describe how they move because they move so slowly,” referring to the small, long fish.

and adding water colour back at school.

“It’s blurry ‘cause it’s moving so fast,” referring to the blurry effect the water had on the colour in his drawing.

Aquarium Excursion

On Friday we had our first excursion as a whole learning community to visit the aquarium. As you can see, our students are made of stern stuff.

The aim of the excursion was to help spark and develop the children's interest in movement. After a quick snack on the lawn outside the aquarium, we set off to explore the "weird and wonderful room", which more than lived up to its name.

A "fish that looks like a stone"

Eels - "it's hiding"

Weedy Sea Dragon

Many students in our learning community have expressed an interest in creating a zoo, and have been working hard to create suitable enclosures for all the animals. To support this interest, we had some time to examine the features of various tanks after the weird and wonderful room. Our guides explained that some fish and aquatic creatures need special furniture to be happy and healthy, such as seaweed or rocks for hiding in, and baby toys to keep the octopus stimulated. 

We also had a chance to feel some sea stars and sea urchins in a special feeling pool.  

"It feels funny"

Patting the sea urchin "like a hairbrush"

We discovered that we'd been getting starfish mixed up for a long time.  Because have no fins, they are not actually fish at all, which is why the aquarium staff call them sea stars.  We observed the movement of all the fish in each room, and discussed their anatomical features, in particular their fins and gills.  The children were fascinated to discover that sea stars are unable to swim as they have no fins, and walk along the sea floor instead.  


In the tropical fish room, we paused to record our observations. This proved to be quite difficult as many of the fish swam quickly in laps around the tank. We also had the chance to observe a few new types of sea creatures, such as stingrays which moved different parts of their body in different directions as they swam.

We have had the chance since we returned to Bicicletta to finish some beautiful artwork based on the sea creatures we observed on our visit. We have also used our favourite sea creatures as inspiration for some writing and graphing work - have a look at our new maths board in our room when you have a chance. 

Greening the Terrace - thank you!

A big thank you, as has already been made, to all of the people who made our terrace the beautiful and inspiring place that it is. Whether you made a donation or helped out on the day, we are truly grateful. An thousand thank yous are owed to Kirsty and Libby in particular for initiating and organising it. We feel so lucky, in Bicicletta, to have such a generous and supportive community of families.

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Numeracy

Numeracy in Bicicletta is based around hands on activities that relate to children's daily lives, help them make sense of the world around them and build strong foundational concepts. 


We have several daily routines in Bicicletta that help us keep our learning community organised, make sense of the world around us and build important concepts.  


Some of the activities that we aim to do each day that incorporate numeracy are the calendar and counting the number of days that we have been at school.  

The passage of time is an important and potentially confusing concept for children.  Because it cannot be seen or physically felt it takes practice to learn to use and interpret the different ways that we represent time.  Each day we move the counter along the calendar to today's date, identify the month season and weather, and work out what day of the week it is today, tomorrow and yesterday.  

Tracing up the chart to find the name of today

We also count the number of days that we have been at school. We have two systems for counting this; our first system is a set of three boxes, labelled hundreds, tens and ones.  Some of the children queried why we need to divide them up into these three boxes, so we have added a second system, in which all the straws are added into one box.  Every day we add a new straw to each system and count how many we have all together.  We are going to decide which system is better as the year goes on.

We also have a counter which we move along a number chart each day. Once the new straws have been added to the boxes, we work out how many tens and how many ones we have before writing the numeral on our chart, and in the air with our magic pencils (the ones attached to our elbows, knees and tongues are currently the favourites). 

Marble run and domino experiment

Nerida: Why didn’t it work?

"Because there was too much all together and they were so close."

Nerida: So what are you going to do differently next time?

Nerida: Why did it work this time?

"Because they were a bit far of each other."

Friday Market

Congratulations on an amazing Friday Market!


We raised $675.40 in total, which is a very impressive effort by any account, and particularly given the short notice this time.

Thank you to everyone who donated food. Having sampled more than was sensible (in the spirit of supporting the stall of course) I can say that the food was excellent and we managed to sell every single item.


Thank you as well to everyone who helped out with setting up the stall, selling and packing away at the end of the day.  It is a wonderful way to support our learning community and we really appreciate all your hard work.

The money from each Friday Market stall is divided between the hosting learning community and the kitchen garden program. Half of the money raised each week goes to Margaret who runs our gardening sessions. The other half is for us to spend in our learning community on resources that we feel are important or that we can't find the money for in our school budget.  

This semester we would like to put the money towards greening up the terrace (the bag and main entry area). This is a great space but it's being underutilized at the moment and we would love to make it a really stimulating and welcoming environment for the students so we can make the most of our classroom space. We will be asking for donations of plants and pots for the terrace soon, and scheduling a working bee. I will post information about specific items we are looking for in the next couple of days.

Thankyou again for all your hard work. We are extremely lucky to have such a supportive and enthusiastic parent body in our learning community.