Borrowing a Pencil

Student: Can I borrow a pencil?

Teacher: I don’t know. Can you?

Student: Yes. I might add that colloquial irregularities occur frequently in any language. Since you and the rest of our present company understood perfectly my intended meaning, being particular about the distinctions between “can” and “may” is purely pedantic and arguably pretentious.

Teacher: True, colloquialism and the judicious interpretation of context help us communicate with nuance, range, and efficiency. And yet, as your teacher, my job is to teach you to think about language with care and rigour. Understanding the shades of difference between one word and another, and to think carefully about what you want to say, will give you greater power and versatility in your speech and writing.

Student: Point taken. May I have a pencil?

Teacher: No, you may not. We do not have pencils since the department cut funding for education again last year.

This Week in HASS, term 2 week 5

pipsie little birdNAPLAN’s over and it’s time to sink our teeth into the main body of curriculum work before mid-year reporting rolls around. Our younger students are using all their senses to study the environment and local area around them, whilst our older students are hard at work on their Explorer projects.

Foundation/Prep/Kindy to Year 3

Unit F.2 for stand-alone Foundation/Prep/Kindy classes has the students continuing to think about their Favourite Place. This week students are considering what they can hear in their Favourite Place and how they will depict that in their model of their Favourite Place. Students can also think about what their Favourite Sounds are and whether or not these would occur in their Favourite Place. Students in integrated Foundation/Prep/Kindy classes (Unit F.6) and Years 1 (Unit 1.2), 2 (Unit 2.2) and 3 (Unit 3.2) have this week set aside for an excursion to a local park or area of heritage significance. If an excursion outside school grounds is impractical teachers can achieve similar results from an excursion around the school and oval. Students are using their senses to interpret their environment, as well as thinking about living and non-living things, natural and managed landscapes and sources of heat and light.

Years 3 to 6

Students in Years 3 (Unit 3.6), 4 (Unit 4.2), 5 (Unit 5.2) and 6 (Unit 6.2) are continuing their project on an explorer. This week the focus for most students is on animals which may have been encountered by their explorer. Year 3 students are examining animals from different climate zones and how they are adapted to deal with climate extremes. Students in Years 4 and 5 look at extinct animals from Africa, South America or North America, assessing impact and sustainability issues. Students in Year 4 (and optionally as an extension for Year 3) consider the life cycle of their chosen animal. Students in years 4, 5 and 6 also start to examine the differences between Primary and Secondary sources and some of the OpenSTEM resources contain quotes or copies of primary material, so that students can refer to these in their project. Year 6 students are examining the changing Economies and Politics of Asia through time, in order to place the explorations within a broader context and to gain a greater understanding of the development of the global situation. Students have another 2 weeks to complete their presentation on their explorer (including environment and other aspects), before assessment of this project.

Assessments

Well, NAPLAN is behind us for another year and so we can all concentrate on curriculum work again! This year we have updated our assessment material to make it even easier to map the answers in the Student Workbooks with the curriculum codes. Remember, our units integrate across several curriculum areas. The model answers now contain colour coded curriculum codes that look like this:  These numbers refer to specific curriculum strands, which are now also listed in our Assessment Guides. In the back of each Assessment Guide is a colour coded table – Gold for History; Green for Geography; Light Green for HASS Skills; Orange for Civics and Citizenship; Purple for Economics and Business and Blue for Science. Each curriculum code is included in this table, along with the rubric for grades A to E, or AP to BA for the younger students.

These updates mean that teachers can now match each question to the specific curriculum area being assessed, thus simplifying the process for grading, and reporting on, each curriculum area. So, if you need to report separate grades for Science and HASS, or even History and Civics and Citizenship, you can tally the results across the questions which address those subject areas, to obtain an overall grade for each subject. Since this can be done on a question-by-question basis, you can even keep a running tally of how each student is doing in each subject area through the term, by assessing those questions they have answered, on a regular basis.

Please make sure that you have the latest updates of both the model answers and the assessment guides for each unit that you are teaching, with the codes as shown here. If you don’t have the latest updates, please download them from our site. Log in with your account, go to your downloads (click on “My Account” on the top right and then “Downloads” on the left). Find the Model Answers PDF for your unit(s) in the list of available downloads and click the button(s) to download each one again. Email us if there are any issues.

Maths Challenge (Basic Operations)

As we are working on expanding our resources in the Maths realm, we thought it would be fun to start a little game here.

Remember “Letters and Numbers” on SBS? (Countdown in UK, Cijfers en Letters in The Netherlands and Belgium, originally Des Chiffres et des Lettres in France).

The core rules for numbers game are: you get 6 numbers, to use with basic operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide) to get as close as possible to a three digit target number. You can only use each number once, but you don’t have to use all numbers. No intermediate result is allowed to be be negative or contain a fraction. Positive integers only, all the way.

Now try this for practice:

Your 6 numbers (4 small, 2 large):    1     9     6     9     25     75

Your target: 316

We’re not worrying about a time limit, as it’s about the problem solving.

If you want, comment on this post with your solution (full working)!

Get a 50% discount during NAPLAN week 2017

That’s right. Use the NAPLAN17 coupon code to receive a 50% discount on any base PDF resource, teacher unit bundle or subscription during this NAPLAN week, up to Sunday 14th May 2017. This offer is valid for anyone: existing and new customers, subscribers, and there are no other restrictions.

Why? Well, as you know we feel very strongly that good materials help awesome teachers deliver excellent outcomes. And while standardised assessment can assist a teacher with that, the way that NAPLAN results are now aggregated for comparing schools (including by the media) does little to improve either standards, the wellbeing and success of students, or the wellbeing of teachers.  Of course, NAPLAN “just is”, for now, but we’d like to support every teacher and school as they focus on the core teaching materials that help our students’ literacy, numeracy, general knowledge and skills. We’re here to help!

If you’re an existing customer, see if there are any units you’ve been wanting to get anyway. If you are a might-be-new-customer of OpenSTEM, we look forward to welcoming you!

This Week in HASS – term 2, week 4

It’s NAPLAN week and that means time is short! Fortunately, the Understanding Our World™ program is based on 9 week units, which means that if you run out of time in any particular week, it’s not a disaster. Furthermore, we have made sure that there is plenty of catch-up time within the lessons, so that there is no need to feel rushed. This week students are getting into the nitty gritty of their term projects. Our youngest students are studying their surroundings at school and in the local area. Older students are getting to the core of their research projects.

Foundation to Year 3

Students in our standalone Foundation/Kindy/Prep class (unit F.2) are starting to build a model of their Favourite Place. It is the teacher’s choice whether they build a diorama, make a poster or collage, or how this is done in class. This week students start by drawing or cutting out pictures to show aspects of their favourite place. Students in an integrated Foundation/Kindy/Prep (unit F.6) and Year 1 class are using their senses to investigate their class and school – what can we see, hear, smell, feel and taste? Some ideas can be found in resources such as My Favourite Sounds and the Teacher Handbook also contains lots of ideas for these investigations. Students in Years 1 (unit 1.2), 2 (unit 2.2) and 3 (unit 3.2) are also discussing how the school and local area has changed through time. The teacher can use old maps, photos or newspaper reports to guide students through these discussions. What information is available in the school? What do local families remember?

Years 3 to 6

Students in Year 3 (unit 3.6), 4 (unit 4.2), 5 (unit 5.2) and 6 (unit 6.2) are continuing to research their explorer. This week year 3 students are focusing on the climates encountered by their explorer. Resources such as Climate Zones of Australia and Climate Zones of the World can help the class to identify these climate areas. Year 4 students examine Environments in Africa and South America, in order to discuss the environments encountered by their explorer. Students in Year 5 can read up about the environment encountered by their explorer in North America, and Year 6 students examine the Environments of Asia. In each case, the student workbook guides the student through this investigation and helps them to isolate pertinent information to include in their presentation. This helps students to gain an understanding of how to research a topic and derive an understanding of what information they need to consider. Teachers can use the workbook to check in and see how students are travelling in their progress towards completing the project, as well as their understanding of the content covered.