From the Director of Early Learning
Dear Families,
We are indeed fortunate to be in a centre that actively promotes parent partnerships. Our 2018 Information Evening reflected this. We are reaching out to all of our families to find a way to connect with us so that we can share the journey together. I am continually amazed at the recounts I hear from families of children’s conversations at home. It is clearly evident that ELC life impacts their home life and vice versa, so that makes an excellent foundation for us to build upon. We hope you have received your 2018 ELC Handbook and are enjoying the information provided for you. A Chinese version will be available soon.
We had a wonderful end to our week last week and beginning to this week with so many volunteers coming in to share the Chinese New Year celebrations with the children and staff. This is extremely special for us to be able to share and understand the meaning behind the celebrations. Many rooms were involved in dumpling making which was a lot of fun and not as easy as it might seem. The dumplings were delicious!
The Garden of Saintly Delights
This Sunday is the big event for the Parents’ and Friends’ Association in our School grounds. I have been informed by the committee that there are many wonderful things for our young children to enjoy. These include:
1. Concerts on the big stage including The Fairies at 11am and Peter Combe and Theatre Bugs at 1pm. In addition there will be several other musical items.
2. Wrist bands can be purchased for $20 and this includes unlimited access to the waterslide, jumping castle, petting zoo and plaster fun zone. Specific activities for under
five year olds have been planned.
3. Friends of the ELC are doing the sausage sizzle and toy stall with our families volunteering to assist on rosters. Please come along and say hi!
We look forward to seeing as many families as possible at our community event this Sunday.
With kind regards,
Kate Mount
Director of Early Learning
Term 1 Dates to Remember
Have you picked up your magnetic calendar with our dates on it? These are available in your child’s room.
| Sunday 25 February | The Garden of Saintly Delights from 10am – 4pm |
| Friday 6 April | ELC Festival from 4.30pm |
Welcome Morning Tea
We were very fortunate to share a beautiful morning together on Chiverton Lawns to welcome our ELC community to the new year. Hosted by the Friends of the ELC, this event provided an opportunity to meet staff from the ELC and Senior Leadership Team as well as new families. Many connections were made and we were once again reminded of how important these events are. Thank you to our Friends of the ELC for hosting this special event.
A Letter from Ms Yu
尊敬的家长朋友们，
祝各位中国新年快乐！ 希望大家都欢渡了一个吉祥喜庆的佳节。许多家长来到我们ELC中心和我们一起分享传统中国文化并制作品尝了可口的饺子。在此，非常感谢各位家长对近期活动的积极参与！ 下周日，我们学校将举行名为圣洁花园活动。届时将会有许多小孩子喜爱的游园活动和音乐会！ 欢迎大家的到来。
圣洁花园活动时间为：2018年2月5日周日上午10时至下午4时
Ms Yu
Technology in the ELC
“At St Peter’s Girls’ School, we are committed to empowering girls to become proficient responsible citizens. Children already arrive to both informal and formal learning environments with a framework for engaging with Technology. Children have learnt to consume applications, and largely defer to technology for entertainment. We’ve all experienced a 2-year-old with the capacity to swipe right! It is imperative that we commence the re-framing of children’s engagement with technologies as early as possible within the ELC. Our challenge is now to immerse children in discovery, risk taking and creative learning experiences through learning technologies if we are to move from consuming technology to empowering children as creators of technology.” – Mel Bray, St Peter’s Girls’ eLearning Integrator
In the ELC, we believe that children have the right to be educated with current and cutting-edge technology. We view technology as one of the hundred languages of the child, the endless number of children’s potentials, their ability to wonder and inquire. We utilise a range of technological mediums to enrich our learning spaces and learning programs. We maximise learning opportunities and effectively utilise digital technologies as a social connector, moving away from a one-to-one device scenario to one where we use technology as an interactive tool to be used by numerous participants. In the ELC we have carefully selected digital technologies that will enhance the teaching and learning. These include ADA the NAO Humanoid Robot, Bee bots, iPads, various applications and the ActivTable.
The ELC has welcomed ADA the NAO Humanoid Robot into our community and she has been involved in numerous projects with the children and educators in the Hallett Room over the last year. These investigations have given the children the opportunity to engage in computational thinking and meaningful problem-solving. Through small group investigations children are introduced to coding and programming principles and have opportunities to extend their thinking to program the Humanoid Robot, and increased their interest in the Science, Engineering, Technology, Arts and Mathematics learning areas. We have observed that the children’s interactions with the NAO Humanoid Robot has further developed their empathy and compassion for others. The children have begun to break down the stereotype that is often portrayed in the media of the robot vs the human and rather embraced the robot as the way of the future and a friend. These sessions with the robot are challenging the thinking and understandings of the educators as the students begin to think outside the square and pose questions and provocations for further inquiry.
On a weekly basis, Kate Mount and I meet with Melissa Bray, who is employed as the School’s eLearning Integrator. In these sessions, we engage in dynamic dialogue that involves the participation of each professional, analysing the children’s interactions with the technologies, engaging with questions, sharing information and critically examining what is happening and reflecting on how we can further extend the children’s investigations.
Melissa continuously shares her enthusiasm towards the children’s explorations in the ELC and has been eager to share the learning with a wider audience. Last year, Melissa presented at The Global Conference on Teaching and Learning with Technology, which was held in Singapore. She is committed to this being an ELC to Year 12 scope for the children and she had the support from all ELC educators.
We look forward to sharing with you different ways that we are utilising digital technologies across the ELC and are currently experimenting with the different ways that we can share these with our families. Please continue to access the CANVAS homepage for your child’s room to keep up to date with the inquiry investigations that are occurring within the ELC.
Kirsty Porplycia
News from the Stonyfell Room
Our Emerging Inquiry – Ferguson Park, a whole new world
A small group in the park, many children for the first time. We are poised and waiting, camera pointed and pen and paper at the ready. As the educators we have a series of questions in our head with a focus we are looking for and we are open and ready for what our children share with us.
“How will our children receive the park?”
“What will they do in this space?”
Mavis leads the way for her peers, she picks up a large stick, and announces its “Row, row, row your boat.”
She uses the stick as a paddle and floats herself down a river, some of her friends share in this experience with Mavis and are keen to join her in this imaginary world.
Mavis has offered the educators a provocation, an inroad, a way to provoke the other children.
We take this idea and with another group of children and share the photo of Mavis and her boat. We ask what we could do in the park. Maia finds a smaller stick and places it between her knees, the stick is transformed and Maia can now ride it as if it was a horse.
As our weeks progress we are witnessing the transformative qualities of the park. The park for our children is evolving into a space for discovery, for creativity and their imagination to run wild. For some of our children in has been a space that they have used to begin to share their lives with us and to recreate experiences they have had with family. Roslyn constructed a small fire, she then was able to cook some sausages and shared them with her friend!
The park is offering us, as the educators, to become more attune with our children, we are able to use this space to deepen our connections and build on our relationships with them. We are gaining an insight into their lives. It’s allowing us to open up a world of possibilities and creativity.
The park is becoming a whole new world, and we are wondering what the coming weeks will bring.
Laura Reiters
News from the Bell Yett Room
To foster an intimate relationship with place,
we need to know the stories and histories that are linked to that place,
just as we do in our intimate relationships with people.
Thank you to all the families that attended our Information Evening last week. It was a wonderful opportunity to enhance our relationships with you and your children as we shared information about their learning. If you were unable to attend, please spend some time navigating around our Bell Yett Room Canvas page.
During the evening we invited families to enter a reciprocal relationship with the ELC. A relationship where families are welcomed to share their skills, interests and time with our learning community. We are thrilled that we have family members cooking with us over the next couple of weeks as we bring Chinese New Year celebrations into the Bell Yett Room.
We would also appreciate adult helpers as we visit Ferguson Park. If you have a spare half hour in your day we would love you to join us. Please talk to one of the educators or contact us by phone or email so we can plan a time that works for both of us.
Visiting Ferguson Park is an important part of our Inquiry learning as we explore our Central Idea: Knowing our land can connect people, places and values. Many of our children have already begun to know our park intimately. For others, their relationship is just beginning as they observe the park through the fence, sharing their observations and curiosities. Some of our children have had their first visit to the park last week.
As we explore the park, we begin to develop a new identity. An identity that weaves together the children and their natural world. We have brought the children’s relationship with the Pom Pom flowers that they connected to last year, to life in the Bell Yett Room. Through photographs we are revisiting these experiences and are using different languages of expression to share our memories. We are also sharing the stories of our Bell Yett old scholars, The Best Friend Tree and The Secret Life of Ants. As the children give voice to their ecological identities through manipulating play dough and clay and mark making with collage, paint, pencils and textas, we wait and listen for new stories to unfold.
We invite you to co-author these stories with us. Please share with us any conversations with your children or observations you may have that could be related to our inquiry. This feedback is vital as it supports us to know what is interesting to your children and what deserves deeper attention. We can’t wait to see what stories we write.
Leanne Williams and Nell Tierney
“. . . the stories of a place can inspire new possibilities,
can cast the children into an active role as people who care about
and take action on behalf of a place.”
– Ann Pelo 2009
News from the Ferguson Room
Last week our community came together at our ELC Information Night. This was a fantastic opportunity to share the way we plan for student learning; how our children are engaging with concepts that challenge their thinking, and are supported to learn in their preferred style at their own pace. Thank you to those of you who were able to attend; if you were unable to be there, here is a summary of our inquiry in Term 1.
We have begun by looking at what was significant for us as a group of learners last term, and using this to connect with our current unit of inquiry. Our ELC has been focused on developing our ecological identity and building a relationship with Ferguson Park, a block of glorious bushland next door to our school. Our almost daily visits to this bushland have transformed its status for us from a local park to an extension of our learning environment. In essence, it has come to be our very own outdoor classroom through which we can study nature, science, mathematics and the arts. It is also a great provocation for the discussion of big ideas such as how we interact with other living creatures and their habitat. Our Primary Years Programme area of study this term is:
> Who we are
> The Central Idea is ‘Knowing our land can connect people, places and values’.
> The dispositions we seek to develop are curiosity, appreciation, open-mindedness and principled.
> The skills that we are focusing on are Thinking and Communication skills.
As the children have become more settled, we have started going into Ferguson Park and giving them time to reconnect with it, to rediscover the features they got to know so well last year, including ‘the best friend tree’, the ants that run along it, the logs on which they can sit and climb and jump from, and the big path that has transformed from one with rocks and rubble to one of dirt and dust. Our new students are having their first introduction to this special location and are discovering how it can be a place to observe, to dance, to listen, to think, to draw, to play and to wonder. Ferguson Park is also a place we can tell stories about our Indigenous friends, the Kaurna people. We share an Acknowledgement to Country in our classroom each morning, and exploring and valuing Ferguson Park is an important way of connecting our young students with people, past and present, who have always cared so deeply for the land.
We wonder what will come of our initial adventures into the Park. What will it be that excites the children, and builds their connection and empathy to the land and its inhabitants? We will inform you of our inquiry journey through our avenues of communication: conversation and documentation in our classroom, photos on our Canvas page and these newsletter articles.
We invite you to participate in our learning by accompanying us to Ferguson Park. Please let us know if you are able to come at all this term, and we will find a time that suits you! Chat to us in class or send me an email: mangel@stpetersgirls.sa.edu.au
Mel Angel
News from the Hallett Room
“The land is in my memory” – Molly, 4 years old
As one of our clues for our inquiry, we have started to say our Acknowledgment, the Thank You, every time we are in Ferguson Park. On recent visits to the park, Mrs Reid held some dirt in her hand and highlighted the words, “The Land”. As the children said the thank you, some began to also pick up a handful of dirt. This small provocation led us to exploring the dirt path. We discovered some magic! The children explored what they could use this for. They began blowing the dust, digging holes, throwing the dust into the air and eventually realising they could write messages in the path. Linking our messages with the Aboriginal stories, we made these messages ‘secret’ as we hid them from each other. Absorbed in the moment, the children stated many interesting things.
“Who did the Kaurna people write messages to?”
“I can write a message for my mum…”
“…my brother…”
“…my sister…”
“The land is underneath [pointing to leaves on the ground]”
“The land is in our head…in our memory”
Returning to the Hallett Room, the children looked at their dusty clothes and their dusty shoes and stated,
“I have the land all over me!”
“It’s going home with me!”
As we mentioned at Information Night, our intention for the term is to use the children’s connection to their land whilst building their understandings of waste and sustainability. By simultaneously focusing on these two points, we aim for the children to want to initiate change and action.
Pam Reid
