Seniors @ KPS

Hi everyone and welcome to week 3!

Last week was an eye opener for me, especially in seeing how well the swimming carnival was run and in seeing the fabulous behaviour at the pool from all of our senior students. Here’s a sample of the fun and participation in the world famous noodle race.

Back in the classroom, maths groups continue to be established and Outside Maths is chugging away nicely. The students are now busy working on the appropriate tasks to help them continue to increase their expertise and move them up the continuum. Inside maths will be assessed this week.

The teachers renewed focus on the Kunyung Inquiry Cycle whilst looking through our well-being unit – Who We Are is leading to many different and unexpected twists and turns. Well-being is such a large and hard to understand concept, but student explorations in areas as diverse as religion, charities, animal shelters, the effect of exercise and diet and strategies to increase resilience are helping them discover more ways that they can be more self-aware of their mental, social, physical and spiritual sides

Finally, as a teaching group we are looking to shift the focus from us providing the content to a much more student led dynamic. I will be calling on interested contributors to submit their ideas through both a Google classroom that I will be setting up (the link to join will be emailed to your child’s @kunyung.vic.edu.au address this week) and through a lunchtime meeting in SB (day to be announced this week as well). This should hopefully lead to greater student content and a differentiation from the other communication you receive from KPS. Also, if as a parent, there is something that you want to communicate to the community through the blog, please let me know.

Happy week 3 and I look forward to keeping you updated next week.

Mr. Barrionuevo (on behalf of the senior team – Ms. Townsend, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Woodland, Mr. Walker and Mr. Poulter)

 

 

Hello and welcome to our 2017 senior grade parents and carers!

This year starts with so much promise and potential and the senior teaching team are determined to start the year with a bang and to do our level best to help each child fulfil their potential.

Our first step to making this a reality has been our focus on establishing the best learning culture that we can in each room. Our essential agreements are now in place, our expectations are clear and we are ready to commence this year’s learning journey.

The first unit of inquiry is “Who Are We”. We will be working in conjunction with your children to raise awareness of their own physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being – and to hopefully discover a range of strategies to assist with this awareness.

The development of the Kunyung learning culture in the classroom has also crucial in establishing our maths routines. Assessments are complete and the children are ready to begin their explorations. We will have a focus on Number in these first few weeks.

The hard work that the students have put into their literacy in previous years has facilitated a smooth beginning to book clubs and writing groups – where we will be focusing on narrative and reciprocal reading.

Homework will be checked each Friday. The compulsory part is simply 5 x 30-minute reading sessions each week – to be noted in each child’s diary. There are also opportunities available for each student to pursue personal interest projects, or to follow any inspiration they may take from a classroom activity.

This blog is but one of the channels of communication that are available to you to find out about what your child is achieving at school. Please make sure that you download the Compass app to keep abreast of the latest school developments. Also know that your teacher is available to speak to you about any concern you may have – please feel free to make an appointment.

Finally, I’m really thrilled to be a part of the Kunyung team and must say a big thank you to my colleagues for helping me have a smooth transition and to the community at large for making me and my family feel so welcome. I look forward to meeting you all and hope that 2017 becomes one of your child’s most memorable years.

Nick Barrionuevo (on behalf of the senior teaching team – Cindy Townsend, Mary Howard, Melanie Woodland, David Walker and Daniel Poulter)

 

We are looking for a small group of parents to lead the 2016 Graduation committee. Member responsibilities may include: 

• collecting baby photographs
• creating a powerpoint presentation with baby photos
• organising decorations for the evening 
• helping to set up/clean up before and afterwards
• organising a photo corner

If you are interested in helping out, please contact Mary Howard at school. We would appreciate your help.

Thank you in advance! 

The Senior Team 🙂

On behalf of the Senior Team, we would like to say a HUGE, BIG… THANK YOU to those people who took the time to fill out the Exhibition Parent Survey over the holidays. We know you probably have a thousand other things you’d rather be doing on your break 🙂 but the feedback we were given is very valuable to us. It will help us to affirm what we’re doing well as a Senior unit, and also put any changes into place for next year that can support the students and the school community. We hope you all had a wonderful break with your children! 🙂 

 Now that we’ve all had time to reflect on the Exhibition, we would really appreciate your feedback. 🙂 

Could you please take a few minutes to complete the short survey at the link below… Thank you! 

Exhibition Parent Survey

The Exhibition is over… OR IS IT!? 

The day of the Exhibition was a HUGE success! The students articulated their learning absolutely beautifully, and their ideas for future change have absolutely blown us away… some parents even suggesting that we patent ideas!

What does this mean for the students now? Is it time for “tools down”? Leaving this unit behind and starting up a new one? Moving onto the next big thing? Here’s what the students had to say…

How did I take ACTION throughout the Exhibition process?

“I was always thinking about what I could do to help the issue of homelessness”.

“Now every time a new medical miracle is made I feel more concerned about rising population rates. Overpopulation is becoming a big problem. I have also changed my mind about how high the priority should be to fix overpopulation. I spread a lot of awareness through the promotion of my design”.

“I now feel more empathetic towards people with a disability, as I understand more about their perspectives, especially after learning about how they don’t have equal rights”.

“Throughout the Exhibition I started to think differently about my issue. I definitely have a lot more respect for people with a disability”.

“I really changed my mind about the way I should be acting on social media. I worry about people online and what is being said. I was also inspired by a number of websites, and have been more respectful online”.

“I used the knowledge that I learned to create a new and innovative product”.

“I changed my thinking about the way that homeless people live”.

“I now have a lot more knowledge about bullying and about how people are trying to stop it. Because of this I now have more respect towards people that are getting bullied”.

“I have inquired, asked questions and taken research into my own hands”.

“I spread awareness by telling as many people as I could about my solution to my issue”.

“I now think differently about the issue of cyber bullying… it is much worse than I thought. I have changed as a person because I am more aware”.

“I now always think about how people must feel when they get bullied. It worries me and I want to do something to help”.

“I now have more knowledge about sharing the planet, innovation, creativity, access to equal opportunities and most of all, elderly driving”.

“I know understand that bullying doesn’t have to just impact one person, it can impact on many different people as well”.

“I now know it is not nice to judge someone based on the way they look. It’s about the inside”.  

How do I plan to take ACTION on my learning in the future?

“I plan to keep using the design process to develop my prototype even further and make it better”.

“I want to tell other people my opinion and talk to them about how I’m going to help as well as how they can help”.

“After reflecting on the skills I used I would definitely like to improve my self-management skills to use my time better in the future”.

“I designed an app and would really like to do a fundraiser so I can develop the app to help blind people and make their lives easier”.

“I plan to improve the website I developed and try to get it out on the web. I would like to help people that are being cyber bullied or feeling bad about being online”.

“I really want to get the word out there and share with the community what I have learned”.

“I plan to write a letter to Mrs Vitale about putting a Friendship Tree in the school yard”.

“I am going to ask questions about the pork that we buy in the supermarket”.

“I would like to make my own website to spread awareness, or just tell people everything that I have learned so that others can take action and try and make a difference”.

“I plan to make a full-scale model of my prototype… maybe my idea might actually become a thing!”

“In the future I will stand up for people and also comfort people. I will think more about people’s feelings and what I can do to help”.

“I plan to share all my new knowledge with people about what they can do to help share the planet”.

  

 

 

Exhibition InVITATION…
The time has come! 🙂 Everything is falling into place. We are all so excited to share our Exhibition learning journey with the whole school community.

Please click on the link below to access the Exhibition community invitation:

Exhibition Invitation 2016 

A copy of the invitation will also be sent home with the students.

A big THANK YOU to Sicili Mule and the Arts Team for the beautiful design that perfectly embodies our theme of ‘Sharing the Planet’.

We look forward to seeing you on the day! 🙂

 Synthesising
At this stage of the inquiry the students are asking themselves: 

What have I learned? 

What connections can I make?

How has my thinking/understanding changed?

They are combining different aspects of their ideas and research, and the ideas of others, in order to produce new and innovative ways to help solve their chosen issue. They are able to make connections between their previous knowledge and new knowledge, and reflect this in their design portfolios. 

Some of the design ideas so far have blown us away! We are so impressed with how well the students can articulate their learning journey through the Exhibition, and how much passion and enthusiasm has gone into their design ideas.

Finding and Using Information

The Exhibition has taken over! The kids are absolutely full to the brim with exciting questions and ideas… the only thing left to do now is to seek answers for them. As part of ‘focusing and preparing’ for the Exhibition, the students generated a range of questions that would guide their personal inquiries (see post below). Over the past couple of weeks, Reading sessions have been spent finding information relating to their questions and Writing sessions have been spent unpacking what it means and how it is relevant to their personal inquiry. During Maths, students are collecting, organising, sorting, classifying and interpreting data relevant to their questions for inquiry, that can further add to their thinking.

Exhibition Workshops…

This week, as part of finding information for their Exhibition inquiries, the students have voluntarily signed themselves up for Exhibition workshops held by school community members throughout the school. Some of the workshops include:

• Public speaking
• Time management skills
• Using innovation to solve a problem
• Research skills
• How to design a prototype
• The final presentation
• Types of action
• How to work with others and be open-minded

All of the Exhibition workshop ideas came as suggestions from the students themselves so that they are more authentic and able to target specific needs. The students have come back full of new ideas and enthusiasm.

The next steps for the students involve bringing all of their information together to make links between what they have learned, and to see how their thinking has changed and developed.  

Focusing and Preparing… 

Over the last couple of weeks the Senior students have been exploring a range of different ideas as part of ‘focusing and preparing’ for the Exhibition. The purpose of this stage of the Exhibition is for the students to nut out any ideas that are of interest to them, and generate questions that they would like to explore throughout the Exhibition. 

They have explored each of the four lines of inquiry (see posts below) and have selected at least one that is of particular interest to them. From here, they generated a list of questions based around their line/s of inquiry. Some student questions include:

“What issues are involved in this line of inquiry?”

“What has caused these issues?”

“Who do these issues affect?”

“How are these issues changing over time?”

“What are people doing at the moment to address these issues?” 

“What can I do to help solve these issues?”

“How can I design a prototype and what is involved?“

“What would my prototype look like?”

“How would my prototype work?”

These questions will drive the students’ research into their personal inquiry. Their research already reflects deep thought and a passion for what they’re learning. We can’t wait to see where it takes them next! 🙂