Well there are lots of photos for Class 3 this week – we have so many exciting things to share! Students have been finishing their cubbies as part of their Shelter main lesson with Ashley (before moving onto making mudbricks), culminating in an excursion to see a home currently under construction at Weedon Hill.  Thanks so much to David Stockdale for making this possible, as well as all the parents who came along for their support.  On this excursion we also had the unique opportunity to visit some boorna gnamma (water trees) constructed and used by Noongar people near Poison Point.  One of the trees is still full of water even in November!

On Friday afternoons we have been using our reward time (for finishing our main lesson work) to not only work on our shelters, but also to get entrepreneurial!  Students have started setting up shops both inside and outside the class, selling playdough pizzas, tacos as well as offering chips, burgers and an assortment of refreshments!  This has been wonderful for applying our skills of using Australian currency, coming up as a Main Lesson later in the term.  We have also been using Maths games to build on our understanding of number into the thousands.

Main lesson work with Reneé has focused on the Four Roles of the Reader.  For example, in the role of ‘Text Participants’, we have been looking at how we co-construct meaning when reading, making connections between our own lived experience (text to self), with other texts we have read (text to text) as well as our understandings of the world we live in (text to world).  It has been incredibly exciting to see the student’s reading skills begin to grow in leaps and bounds this year.  By learning through the lens of the Four Roles of the Reader, students are able to not only learn the practical skills to decode the texts they read, but gain a critical awareness of the way texts shapes our thinking.

Renee and Ashley