Classroom Art
Here is a quick snapshot of some of the art activities students have been involved in across our school. Enjoy 🙂
Mrs Booth
Jul
31
Jul
31
UNICEF School Design Project Week 3
Article 28: (Right to education): All children have the right to a primary education, which should be free. Wealthy countries should help poorer countries achieve this right. Discipline in schools should respect children’s dignity. For children to benefit from education, schools must be run in an orderly way – without the use of violence. Any form of school discipline should take into account the child’s human dignity. Therefore, governments must ensure that school administrators review their discipline policies and eliminate any discipline practices involving physical or mental violence, abuse or neglect. The Convention places a high value on education. Young people should be encouraged to reach the highest level of education of which they are capable. UNICEF CRC
This week students transferred their rough draft plans of their school in Afghanistan to scale on large graph paper. This was hard initially as the students needed to develop the correct scale measurements on paper with 5mm grids. They soon grasped the concept and were working brilliantly transforming their drafts using  technical drawing skills to final two-dimensional representations ready for building. They started to use architectural graphic symbols as they added to their drawings. Placement of paths and widths of  windows, doors, walkways, needed to be calculated, all classrooms were 8m x 11m, and it was decided that the school student population not exceed 60 students with 15 students per classroom. Another consideration was how big the soccer fields would be and how to draw them to scale. Again, using great problem solving skills the relevant students solved the problem and proceeded to add playing fields to their plans.
UNICEF Australia has contacted the group and we will be organising a Skyping session with one of their new UNICEF Young Ambassadors. This will be a wonderful experience for our students as they get to speak first hand with an ambassador about the fantastic work UNICEF does to advocate for the rights of the child.
Mrs Booth, Mrs Newton & Yarob 🙂
Jul
24
Afghanistan School Design Project
Quality education is education that works for every child and enables all children to achieve their full potential. UNICEF
Today architect, Â Joe Wiegerinck from Creative Innovation Architects, came to our school to work with an enrichment group of students who are designing a school for a community in Afghanistan based on the UNICEF Child Friendly Schools Design Manual criteria. Joe firstly helped the students to identify five key areas for consideration before beginning to design any building.
They are:
- Site – Is it a remote location? Is it a safe place? Does it slope? Does it have a view? What infrastructure is nearby?
- Who? – Who are we building for? What age group?
- Culture – What beliefs and cultural implications need to be considered?
- Materials – What local materials are available? Timber, stone or mud?
- Needs? – What do we want this structure to give the owners? What are their needs/purpose of the building? i.e. classrooms, kitchen, toilets…
Students were then taken through the rough planning stage as they decided on classrooms, administration buildings, gardens, prayer facilities and a soccer field for example. After this Joe showed the students how to create a scale plan that included doors, windows and furniture. Next week we will finish our rough plans and commence transforming those plans to scale on large sheets of graph paper. Afghan students from Coffs Harbour High School will be joining the group in week four to select a location for the individual school designs. The students will need to create justifications for their projects before they are able to begin building their models using virtual 3D technology or concrete materials.
This is a wonderfully rich and very rewarding project and I think Mrs Newton, Mrs Booth and Yarob are enjoying it as much as the children!  Many thanks again to Joe for taking the time to visit our school and teach our students about some of the design principles an architect uses 🙂
Mrs Booth, Mrs Newton and Yarob
Jul
17
Minecraft Library Club
Thanks to the super Nick, a year 10 student from a DEC high school on the south coast, we managed to get our multi-user Minecraft server up and running. Nick has packaged Minecraft with settings that work wonderfully with DEC graphics and computers. As a result virtual world library club was crazy! So many students wanted to be a part of the server but they firstly need to purchase their own Minecraft accounts from Mojang as the server only works with full accounts and not lite/free ones. Next Wednesday we will write a charter and create rules for in-world behaviour which is a critical component of digital citizenship. Mrs Booth used the MCJam DEC map that Nick sent her for our world and the students loved the spawn point and buildings that had already been created by Nick and other DEC teachers during professional learning days in the school holidays. Other students were able to play the Pocket Edition on our iPads.
Also, coping with all the noise, was the very patient Luke who was building a bathroom using Sim-on-a-Stick as part of his building design. His attention to detail using this technology is amazing and we will also be using his expertise for a UNICEF school design project  that Mrs Booth and Mrs Newton are currently undertaking with an enrichment group of students.
See you next Wednesday and happy mining 😉
Mrs Booth
Jul
17
4J Virtual Australian History Project
Hover over the image for information about our project.
Mrs Booth
Jul
11
Grand Opening of Kindy Blue’s Fruit and Vegetable Shop
Healthy Choices: Connection focus: making informed and positive health choices by learning about nutrition, preventative health strategies and how the sun’s energy can affect us.
All week our class has been working on designing and the set up of their own fruit and vegetable shop including what things they want to sell, preparing money and signs and setting up with a cash register etc.
Today was our Grand Opening and we were lucky to have visitors to our shop (following our class making Grand Opening Posters for advertising) Ms Hayes, Mrs Bullen, and Mrs Buehler were among our first customers.
Our shop was set up as part of our vocabulary strand on the best start continuum with a link to our HSIE unit on Healthy Habits.
Jul
9
Stage 3 Sydney Camp
Camp was another wonderful experience for our stage 3 students last week. The venue coordinators were extremely impressed with our student’s behaviour throughout the 4 days. Congratulations to you all. The children were able to see and do many interesting things, including an educational lesson and role play at Old Parliament House, an overnight camping experience at the zoo and the opportunity to watch the ‘Socceroos’ qualify for the World Cup. What a great excursion and our sincere thanks to Mrs Firkins, Mr Woodham, Miss Mulrooney and Miss Callinan for giving our stage 3 students such a memorable excursion.
Meerkat Mel: Hover over the pictures to watch some great videos on very cute Meerkats and their pups 🙂
Here is the slide show 🙂
Jul
2
NAIDOC 2013: Orara High School Aboriginal Boys Traditional Dance Group
Here is the video of the wonderful Aboriginal Boys Traditional Dance Group from Orara High School who performed at our recent NAIDOC 2013 assembly. A big thank you also to Uncle Ben for the accompanying didgeridoo.