On Thursday each week the Year 4 students come over to the STEM Lab (or more commonly known as the MPR) for a lego building session. So far the students have built a ferris wheel, conveyor belt and today we built a hand blender (maybe these could be used in the kitchen). By the end of the lesson we have lots of fantastic models and lots of new concepts have been learnt. Here we are in action recently …..
Over the last few weeks all students have been having fun in PE lessons. They have been developing their kicking skills, knowledge and game sense related to soccer. Each Monday we have been lucky enough to have Melbourne Victory development officers assist me in PE and with training our Senior Inter school Boys and Girls soccer teams at lunchtime. Overall, the students are having lots of fun as well learning lots of new skills.
On Wednesday the 24th of April the students in Years 3 to 6 participated in our school fun run. Everyone tried hard and it was a really successful event. The top ten girls and boys in each age group will be going on to the District Cross Country in a couple of weeks (Friday 24th of May). Overall Mackay team (blue) won the day for earning the most points and and MacKillop team (green) won the spirit shield. Thanks to Mrs. Harrison for her great organisation and to all the parents who came along to assist with the running of the event.
Last week the year 4’s went on camp to ADANAC (Canada spelt backwards) which was in Yarra Junction for 2 days and 1 night.
Camp went something like this …..
All the excited children left Holy Trinity at around 9am and it took about 45 minutes to reach our camp site. When we arrived we unpacked and explored our cabins. Makayla (our camp leader) showed us around the campsite. My favourite bit was the giant water slide that went all the way into the lake. Later on we had completed our rotational groups activities which were canoeing, zip line (flying fox), hut building and camp cooking. My favourite activity was the zip line which was 150 meters long During the afternoon we also had cake to celebrate Jasmine’s birthday.
During the evening we had dinner that was pizza and salad. Most of our favourites was a yummy dessert which included cake, chocolate fudge and topped with whip cream and chocolate sprinkles. Some children had gelato instead. At night time we went on a long night walk around the lake and stopped at the campfire to roast marshmallows. The only problem was that Mr. Harvie had never started a campfire before so it took about 20 minutes to get going. After we roasted the delicious marshmallows we walked back up to the gym and played 5 different games. Suddenly the lights went out and some of us squealed. After a fun day we went to bed for some rest even if some of us went to sleep later than others.
On day 2 of camp we woke up and we packed up our room before 8 am because the next school was arriving soon. For breakfast we had a choice of porridge, cereal toast, yogurt and fruit. Afterwards, we finished off our last activity rotation and had morning tea which was cake for Lara’s birthday. We got to play a game of bonbardment for 30 minutes. At lunch we had beef burgers and 25 minutes of free time. Finally, we drove back to Holy Trinity to find our “excited” parents waiting for us.
Overall year 4 camp was a 9 out of 10 and I can’t wait for our next camp in year five.
Lego sessions have begun for our Year 4 and 5 students in the MPR (renamed as the STEM Lab). Both year levels are learning about centrifugal and and centripetal forces in machines such as Carousels, Ferris Wheels and Flying Chairs. We have learnt how changing the size of the driving wheel can dramatically affect the speed that our lego models can work at.
Here are our Year 5 students in action this week building their flying chair models…..
Last Wednesday (13th of March) the students of Holy Trinity and St Mary’s participated in our annual Twilight Sports event. Our four houses Bunarong (Gold), Mackay (Blue), Mackillop (Green) and Dominic (Red) all did a great job for the event. These houses were well led by ….. : Thomas and Niamh (Bunarong), Archie and Chloe (Mackay), Lachlan and Bella (Mackillop) and Nik and Caitlin (Dominic).
The evening began with our field house events where teams competed together to try to gain points for their team. We then went onto the Sprint events which were completed by the students in Prep to Year 2. We then had some relays and finished off the evening with the Fran Rascas races.
The house who ended up winning the Spirit Shield for Good Sportsmanship was Mackay.
The overall winning team for Twilight Sports was Bunarong so congrats to all the Gold team!
Here are some pictures from last Wednesday ……
In Year 3 we have been busy building lots of different lego designs in the Multi Purpose Room. Some of these models require a motor such as the racing car, laundry drier and motorcycle. Others such as the catapult, spinning top and sailboat did not require a motor. We have been learning about some of the different forces that help to make these lego models work such as momentum, kinetic energy and centrifugal force. The students are amazing in their interest in our Lego unit as well as the knowledge they bring to our discussions.
Here are some of us in action during our Lego sessions …..
On Thursday the Grade 4’s had the opportunity to visit Mater Christi and St Joseph’s to experience life in high school. During this time they visited different areas of the school, met some of the teachers and played games.
During the St Joseph’s visit the boys played drum pads, created art pieces and played 360 degree ball. At Mater Christi, the girls were involved in science experiments, a scavenger hunt and played noodle tag!
They all had a fantastic time!
On Thursday the 7th of March, the grade 3, 4, 5 and 6’s went to Ringwood Athletics Centre to participate in the track and field events. We did a lot of rotation activities to score points for our house teams. Some of the events are running, long jump, high jump and discus.
Overall, it was a pretty fun day and everyone enjoyed completing the events at a real track.
Here are some photos from our Athletics Day:
Last Friday Holy Trinity competed against many other primary schools in the Knox area including St. Jude’s. St. Bernadette’s and Boronia K-12 at the District Swimming Carnival.
Each Tuesday the students in the swim team had to get up very early and go down to Knox Leisureworks pool for swimming practice. It was hard work but last Friday we enjoyed the successes of our hard work because HT came first in the competition. This means that we have won the district swimming competition nine years in a row (even before I began school at HT). There is a group of boys and girls who will be going away for the next level of competition in the next couple of weeks.
Here are some pictures from last Friday.
This week the Year 3 students participated in the first of our Lego Engineering lessons for this term. These lessons involve the students working together to build an everyday toy or structure using lego. This week the students built their own spinning top. The models were fantastic but the real magic occurred when we explored the forces behind why the spinner works. We learnt that the more momentum we give the spinner the longer it will spin provided it maintains its balance. We also learnt how gravity is a force working against the spinner staying up. Students experimented with different ways to increase the momentum of the spinning top such as by adding more weight, turning the launcher with more power and increasing the wingspan of the parts at the top of the spinner. Not all ideas worked straight away but sometimes we learn most from our failed experiments. We are looking forward to our next lego session next week.
Here are some of our groups in action …..
As we move towards the end of the year we are still working hard in Digitech building various Lego models. It has been a really enjoyable program that the students have learnt a lot of skills particularly in the area of STEM. Recently, we built a Ballista and a 90 degree Conveyor Belt. They have been tough design to build and required quite a bit of teamwork. We learnt about how belt transmission and elastic energy works.
Here are some of us in action ….
On Monday the 13th of August, the Grade 3/4’s were lucky enough to have a Scientist from Melbourne University come and do some amazing science experiments with us.
Ms Pike spoke with us about the forces of gravity and then demonstrated those forces using an egg, toilet roll, carton and a cup of water! (All things you could find at home!).
She then told us about an experiment called “elephant’s toothpaste” where some students got to volunteer to help her mix yeast and water, as well as food colouring, dishwashing liquid and hydrogen peroxide into a bottle. The result was fantastic. Here it is in action!
This week in our Lego Engineering lessons the 3/4 students learnt to build four chair carousels. They learnt about some of the different forces used to get the machines functioning such as centrifugal force, momentum and centripetal force. Once the groups had finished building their original design they were encouraged to experiment with adding extra speed, weight, length of arms and some even decided to add extra chairs to the model. Here are some of the groups in action…..
Hi everyone.
Last week the Year 3’s and 5’s completed the Naplan tests for writing,reading and maths. Naplan is a group of tests completed by all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 throughout Australia.
Some students found these tests hard because we needed to answer lots of questions but others really enjoyed doing them. In writing we wrote about our ‘Big Idea’ and we only had 40 minutes to finish it in. In the reading test we had to read some different passages and answer questions about what we read and this time we only had 5o minutes to do the test. In Maths we also did a 50 minutes test about lots of the topics we have been learning about in Maths this year and last.
We are all now happy because we don’t have to worry about Naplan tests until we are in Year 7. We get our results for these tests in August.
Last Friday we had the pleasure of visiting Mater Christi College. What a day we had! Our day was filled with fun and enjoyable activities. Some of these activities were sport, science experiments and a Monopoly race around the school, just to name a few. These beautiful little ladies participated so confidently and enthusiastically in all tasks. Thank you for a wonderful day!
Essential Assessment is online maths program where you can complete tests and work on your skills at answering different types of maths questions. It is really good because it is not too hard or too easy, it is perfect for your level once the teacher gets the results of your first test. After you have done some learning you get to sit the test again to see how you have improved with your Maths skills. It also has another feature called My Numeracy which is based on improving on things that you have got wrong in your pretest that you have completed. The 5/6’s use this program regularly in class. Here are a few questions set for me to complete ….
Hi Holy Trinity Jack and Will here.
We are going to begin a weekly blog post for gamers.
Please keep a “lookout’ on the blog for tips and game recommendations over the coming weeks.
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