Dear Franklin Families,

National Science Week.                                                                                                                           

National Science Week is Australia’s annual celebration of science and technology and thousands of individuals from students, to scientists to chefs and musicians get involved, taking part in more than 1000 science events across the nation. It provides an opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of Australian scientists to the world of knowledge. It also aims to encourage an interest in science pursuits among the general public, and to encourage younger people to become fascinated by the world we live in.  The 2021 school theme is Food: Different by Design. This is an important theme for teachers and students as it allows them to focus on sustainable food futures.

Science provides students with a practical way of answering interesting and important questions about their world. This term there has already been a lot of scientific thinking in classrooms with students exploring ideas about light, space and planets, insects, animals and plants.

Next week Young Tassie Scientists are visiting to talk to classes. The three scientists, a marine chemist, a medical researcher and a volcanologist will talk with classes about their area of research. Their visit will help to engage and motivate students about science and science careers and provide insights into working as a scientist.

On Thursday August 19 our Year 5/6 and 4/5 classes will visit the Huon Valley STEM Expo being held at Huonville Primary school. Students will participate in a range of workshops that include such topics as citizen science and climate change, solar cookers and bees wax wraps.

Huon & Channel Representative teams.

I would like to congratulate the following students who were successful in selection for the representative teams:

Magnus – Football.  Jai – Soccer.  Lily, Kobe, Cassie and R.C – Netball

Uniform

With the cold weather upon us it is important children are rugged up at school to enjoy their play time outside however non-school hoodies, jumpers and blue jeans are not part of Franklin Primary uniform. Please ensure your child wears a school uniform jumper or jacket. In line with the Department of Education Uniform Guidelines the everyday uniform must be worn to school.

Could parents please ensure that students wear appropriate footwear on the day that they have Physical Education with Mr Mitchell: every Tuesday. Runners, not gumboots or Blundstone boots, are the best option for students so that they can comfortably and safely participate in sport activities.

Have a great week

Linda Heerey

A reminder our book week parade will be on Wednesday 25th August, 9:15am on the basketball court....Weather permitting.

The Scholastic book fair will also be running Wednesday 18th & 25th, Thursday 19th & 26th, Friday 20th & 27th August.

We are running the fair for the two weeks to help with COVID restrictions and numbers allowed in the library area.

The book fair will be open on these days before and after school.... 8:00am - 8:45am, 3:00pm - 3:45pm. Open to students at Recess as well.

Please enter the fair through the main entry off the office area, check in at the office and scan your QR code before entering.

Maximum 20 people in library at any time.

Exit through yellow door in library.

Please come and support our fair,great gift ideas and we receive a percentage of the sales to purchase books for our school library.

Leanne

LiL has been busy as usual and the children had a great time exploring the bush Kinder on our excursion to the Mt Nelson Sustainability Centre. While back at school the children have enjoyed exploring the playdough, painting and playing "The Floor is Lava." The school nurse Grace also came and spoke to us about oral hygiene/teeth brushing.

Thank you 

Bryn 

Last week in Kindergarten we were researchers! Our collections inquiry has sent us on a wonderful journey into butterflies! We brainstormed all of the things we thought we knew about butterflies and then came up with a list of wonderings, before we embarked on our research.

We have read books, looked at pictures and watched clips to learned about these beautiful insects and to answer all of the questions we had.

Huw, wanted to know what they eat. We discovered that they eat sweet nectar. 

We discovered that their wings are actually covered in tiny scales! “Fish have scales” calls Conor.

The children showed me their first thinking around a butterfly’s life cycle. We then researched the stages as a group, to work out if some of our thinking was accurate or not. The children then drew and labelled their second thinking. I was so proud of how well they completed these tasks, soaking in all of the new information like little sponges.

Mason, suggested that we try and find “someone who knows lots about butterflies”, to help us. I have written to some museums, but if you know of anyone within our community who happens to be an expert in butterflies, please get them to get in touch.

This term we have been looking at the Inquiry question ‘What happens in the night sky?’

This has led to some exciting conversations and investigations into the planets, constellations, dreamtime stories and the relationship between the Moon and the Sun.  The students have had a great time designing and building their own rocket ship and identifying what shapes they would need for each part.  They’ve made scratch paper with crayons and black paint, to scratch out their own constellations and are working on writing their own star stories.

We were very lucky this week to have had a visit from our Buddy class, 4/5.  They helped us design our own planets and inhabitants.  We had planets made from all sorts of interesting matter including cheese, ice-cream, green paper, cars and chocolate.  We even had one planet where it rained tacos!

We are looking forward to deepening our knowledge about the night sky and seeing connections to the passing of time.  We are learning about telling time, seasons and calendars and hope to investigate other time strategies with the use of the sky.

Mrs Witts and Bridgette.

We relaunched from a different angle using the question “How can we communicate to others about how to make a Bee Hotel?”. Mrs Morgan recorded our first thinking and we saw that we used the words ‘steps’, ‘instructions’, ‘process ’in our responses. Before we could start our whole class construction of a Procedural Text showing how to make a Bee Hotel, we had to look at each photo and brainstorm present tense action words - verbs- which are important language features for this type of text. Once we had done that, we proceeded to work in small teams again to take turns in writing the steps for the photos that were assigned to each team. We were asked to research a real-life example of this type of text. As a group, we found a selection of recipes, science experiments, drawing procedures and building/making procedures and discussed them as a class. We are now having a go at writing our own procedural text independently on a topic of our own interest or using our imagination. One will be drawn out of a hat and the whole class will get to ‘make’ or ‘do’ it.

Our whole class inquiry has involved investigating features of places and what a place needs to be liveable. This has led us to research why people leave their homes as refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. 

In Math we have been learning about fractions and decimals by doing lots of hands-on activities. We have also been working on mapping and scale. This topic has been integrated into two projects: planning a road trip around Australia and building their ideal classroom.

After each child thought about a classroom where they would learn best, they drew a scaled floor plan of it and now have begun to construct it using cardboard boxes or Minecraft.

During the road trip task, students were surprised by the distances between locations and by the diverse range of landscapes and attractions we have in Australia. We also studied to First Nation’s Map, it’s significance and the traditional names of places.

We were lucky to be back at Port Huon with our badminton coach, Lasse Bundgaard. He is so impressed with their engagement and how quickly they have built their skills.

Our Inquiry focus on ‘Our World’ has been continuing to develop in the 5/6 class, with students taking the reins to teach the class about a particular country that they have an interest in or connection with. These mini-lessons have been outstanding so far, with very professional and informative presentations. In relation to our Inquiry, we have been investigating and graphing population statistics over time as well as creating our own flags of various countries around the world. We are also progressing well in maths with our fractions and decimals focus this term. We had a great time at Badminton last Friday. We are very lucky to have a genuine Olympic coach in Lasse Bundgaard, guiding us to improve our badminton skills. Thanks very much to Mr Mitchell for organising this for us.

In Art, we have been focussing on portraiture over the last couple of weeks. Students were encouraged to use a variety of media and techniques to depict themselves, their friends or family members. The results are very striking and some particularly creative responses have been entered in this year’s Young Archies competition.