A little word that means so much!”Sorry” was said in a very special place in Australia today …….

Sorry is a word not often heard in Parliament. Nevertheless, today Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized on behalf the present Government to the Indigenous people of Australia.

Many people believe the apology is long overdue, but are glad that it finally came.

Ramiz & Timothy

The “Stolen Generation” were remembered today by all of Australia.

Natalie & Lilly

The Government (in the 1900’s) had done the wrong thing to Indigenous people. They took the children away from their parents just because they didn’t have full Aboriginal background, never to see their parents again! That’s why they are called the “Stolen Generation”.

Momtahina & Nadine

The Government at the time thought they were doing the right thing ….. but Australia wants to say sorry……

Sharon & Kesaia

Today, on the 13th February, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said “Sorry” to the Stolen Generations. We thought it was fair, kind and brilliant; as well as this it was a relief to Indigenous Australians.

Justin & Winson

Reconciliation: a long word as its a long story ….. A long time ago , from the 1930’s the Government took the aboriginal children because they thought that it was the right thing to do. But nowdays we think that in most ways it was bad. Because of this our new Prime Minister said “Sorry”.

Dushan & Marshall

We made it!

After the frantic rush of end of the year we are finally on school holidays

Congratulations to everyone for your hard work, commitment to your learning, your sense of humour and for tolerating my (out of tune, but very enthusiastic) singing (and dancing) over the year!

For those AllStars who are moving on to High School at the end of January, thank you for the past two years. I know that you will all continue to grow and learn about yourself and your world, all of the rest of the AllStars will miss you sooooo much so please keep in contact and share your High School experiences with us back here on the AllStars blog.

Years 4 and 5, you will be moving up into Years 5 & 6 – some of you are school leaders already, we are all proud of the way you were ready to take up the challenging role of a school leader. Congratulations to everyone of you, we know that you will do a great job next year.

Here are some of my memories of the past year:

rubber gloves, crazy hair, funny hats, the Harbour Bridge birthday, ANZAC letters, dodgeball, chickens in the War, flags, garbage bags, PS2, buddies, Sandy, choose your own maths, Australia wiki, blogging, orange oranges, storyteller, jumping ropes, PWii, tennis, Samorost, Xcountry, eyes, science, vinegar on the ceiling, commenting, sculptures, junk, drawing, Ned Kelly, “Are We There Yet?” , debates, forensics, microscopes, experiments, cricket, visitors, games, BST, camp, water fights, Macbeth, history, MissionMaker, leadership, parties, pizza!, spiders, music, laughs, boogie, Gay Gordons, laptops, Voki, presentations, tunnel …..

Have I left anything out?

AllStars, enjoy the break, think about what/ how/ why you want to learn next year. Keep in contact through our blog – I’ll be posting over the holidays ( our videos of the Gay Gordons, Heel Toe Polka, Yr 6 Farewell etc) so keep looking in when you get the chance.

Have a great holiday,

Love MrsP

 8)

Here they are – our first taste of this year’s camp.

Looks like fun …………

 [rockyou 90944467]

Here is a Rockyou show of the dragons we made a couple of weeks ago:

[rockyou 90943413]

Over the last week or two we have been participating in a variety of Leadership sessions:

Year 3 have been learning about how to be a tolerant and considerate person.

Years 4 & 5 have been learning how to be a good leader.

Year 6 have been working through a transition to High School programme.

We have all been working with groups of people from different classes – this helps us to get to know other people here at school that we wouldn’y usually have the chance to work with.

In Leadership Training we cover topics like

• Public Speaking – “Speak Up”
• Responsibility – “Stepping Up!”
• Confidence – “You Grow When You Have a Go!”
• Organization – “Think Team”
• Team Skills – “Showing the Way”

After this training, the Year 5 students have the opportunity to apply for a student leadership position for next year. They have to fill in the application and attend an interview. If they are chosen as school leaders they will present a speech at Assembly and the school will vote for the 2008 School Captains.

Good Luck to everyone in Year 5 who applies 

Today we have been investigating dragons – it seems that many places and people right around the world share stories, myths and legends about dragons.

Do you know any stories about dragons? What are dragons like in the stories that you know?

Do you believe that they are/were real?

Do you think that dragons are related to these two “real” Australian dragons -

Lake Eyre Dragon

Sea Dragon

Please join our conversation about dragons

AllStars have done it again!

Last week we entertained a group of over 20 educators from the US.

Although we have told other groups what we do on our blog – this time we were able to show people. We moved into the Computer Lab and everyone sat at a computer so we could show the visitors our individual work.

First Timothy and Momtahina showed a presentation about the work we do on our blog and why we blog. Then the visitors walked around and spoke with us. Everyone was working on something different – such as “Samarost”, MissionMaker, Toondoo, Webbliworld, Voki, our individual blogs and Scratch. The visitors were very interested in our work, our explanations and the interactivity of what we were doing.

They asked about how long we spent in the computer room, they spoke about how they hadn’t seen a class using these applications to learn before – they were very friendly and kind – we loved their accents

Some of the AllStars helped to set up the morning tea for the visitors too. We got cups, bowls, folded serviettes, moved the chairs, got out the food and sorted the lollies, chips and drinks. Thank you people – the visitors had a wonderful morning tea. The visitors loved the ANZAC biscuits and cornflake cookies – yum, yum!

Ramiz and Yilmaz had the opportunity to guide the visitors around the school. They got to see what the other classes were doing – Mrs Jenkins’ class were using videos in their room – this was fun:)

We took lots of photos – thanks for visiting us – we all had a great time

Our visitors said that they would look up our blog when they returned home – let’s keep a look out for “red dots” from the US.

[bubbleshare250720]

As part of our “History Never Repeats?” question we have been reading some of Shakespeare’s plays, because Shakespeare was an important part of history as well as writing a number of historical plays.  

We have chosen to perform “Macbeth” for our class item in Assembly this week. After being inspired by Kindergarten’s performance of the story “A Dark, Dark Tale” we decided to re-write Macbeth in the same way.

To help us sort out the parts of the story we would perform, we all used Mind Maps to organise and identify the important parts of the story. You can see a composite of what we came up with on this Bubbleshare presentation ……..

[bubbleshare 232192.d42832b4179]

We had to add the “Dark, dark” tale bits to join the story together.

Now we have to work out who will be each character and practise on the stage.

We hope to video our performance and put it, and some still photos, on our blog after Friday, so stay tuned ……

What do you think Shakespeare would say about us changing his play?  

Last Friday some visitors from BECTA in the UK came to visit our school to see what schools would look like in the future. There were six visitors. They only stayed for about twenty minutes in our classroom but stayed in the school for the whole morning. 

We had a couple of groups and each group had a different subject, which we did in class. Everyone got to choose what we wanted to do. 

They were:  

• Mission Maker   
• Scratch 
• Voki
• Bubble Share (Macbeth)
• Wii

We each showed how we used the technology, why we used it and what it had to do with school. We all enjoyed sharing what we did, we could have talked all day about what we did at school, but the visitors only stayed for a short time! 

          Wii           The Visitors (Men in Suits) 

    Scratch           MissionMaker 

  By: Celia, Sharon and Natalie 

The AllStars have been studying history this year and are pondering the saying

“History never repeats”

Read this article about Stonehenge and then leave a comment about what you think!

What were you thinking about as you read this article?

What surprised you about this article? Why were you surprised?

What sorts of images or feelings did the article stimulate?

Why do you think scientists are so interested in finding out how people lived in times past?

Does the information that the scientists gather have any impact on our lives today? 

Do you think that a shared knowledge & understanding of times past can / does help us understand problems and issues of today?