Making and Responding to Art
The Junior School Art room has been a creative hub of activity, creating and making artworks. To make and respond to the arts, students explore meaning and interpretation, and social and cultural contexts of the arts. They evaluate the use of forms and elements in artworks they make and observe. The girls explore a diversity of ideas, concepts, and viewpoints as they make and respond to visual artworks as artists and audiences. All students have begun the year by exploring portraiture in an array of different media across all year levels. The skills they gain by developing their understanding of proportion, symmetry and form are invaluable.
The students always enjoy creating a gift and card for Mother’s Day. This year, the Preps created a mixed media portrait of their mother. The girls drew their mother in oil pastel with a painted background. A display of their portraits was set up for all the mothers to view and appreciate. Hearts are always a popular theme for Mother’s Day. The Year 1’s created a ceramic heart which they hand-painted. Clay is often a popular medium with the Year 2’s making a clay heart dish. Year 3’s created a hand painted and embellished box for their mother. Year 4’s created a mixed media key chain and the Year 5’s made a beautiful hand painted ceramic wall tile. The Year 6’s explored acrylic paint on canvas and enjoyed creating a painting based on their own original design for their mother to enjoy. All the girls across every year level have created their hand-made gifts with creativity and commitment.
Jenny Kerr | Girls’ Junior School Art Teacher
Year 3 Literature: The Magic Finger
What 8-year-old child wouldn’t want the ability to magically put someone in their place and teach them a lesson? That question is the driving force behind many classic works of fiction, including one studied by the Year 3 Girls this term, Roald Dahl’s The Magic Finger.
First published in 1966 and told from the perspective of an unnamed eight-year-old girl, this story has many of the features of quality literature. It has been studied by Tintern students for many years due to its magical elements, timeless themes, and the type of humour that kids just get. The book’s length and accessible language make it an ideal novel for Year 3. At around 50 pages it’s quite short but every paragraph counts as it’s crafted extremely well.
As a novel study, students read the text and completed various response tasks based on strategies they are taught in class. Students predict, summarise, sequence and figure out the causes and effects of different happenings through the story. They also read between the lines to figure out what the author’s message is, and they dramatise the story to entertain their peers.
Nick Adeney |Year 3 Girls Classroom Teacher
“The Magic Finger is not only a great book, it is also unique because the girl doesn’t have a name.” Anisha
“It made me think about to treat others the way you would like to be treated.” Ruby
“The book is showing integrity because the girl did the right thing even when nobody was looking.” Nina
“I think that the magic finger is a good book for children because it is interesting.” Stacy
“The book made me think about doing the right thing when no one is looking.” Corrine
“The Magic Finger is a fabulous book because it is a winding and magical tale, and it takes your imagination in a big squiggly road of creativity.” Kara
“It shows responsibility and confidence because she told the Gregg Family to stop hunting animals.” Olivia Z
“I think it’s a great book because it teaches an important lesson about treating others the way you want to be treated in a creative way.” Selina
“I really liked doing the activities about The Magic Finger. The part I liked most was when the girl taught the Gregg family a lesson. The book made me think of being kind when no one is looking.” Isabella
“I liked it because it is saying that you shouldn’t shoot animals and the child has a magic ability in her finger!” Violet
“Can we read another Roald Dahl?” Hannah
“It’s the best book because it teaches children.” Emma
Fire Fighters Visit the Preps!
The second exciting visit by the Ringwood Fire Fighters took place on Wednesday last week. The girls have been busy since visit 1 learning their important emergency information – the emergency phone number 000, their full name and address, a safe meeting place at their house in case of emergency and either mum’s or dad’s phone number. Most of the girls have learnt all these details and the rest are well on the way. Very importantly, smoke detectors at home have been counted (and hopefully checked!).
During this visit, fire fighter Steve and Prep student Charlotte demonstrated the STOP DROP COVER ROLL manoeuvre and we revised the safe, fire emergency escape practice – Crawl Down Low and GO GO GO.
Of course, most exciting of all was heading to the ELC carpark to view the fire truck and equipment and for each girl to have a turn at operating a real fire hose. Despite wanting to take advantage of the photo opportunity, Mrs Whitcher was careful to stand well clear! Next, the children were invited to climb through the main cabin of the truck and check out the interesting dashboard equipment on the way. Halfway through this, the four fire fighters received a call out and in well under two minutes were dressed in their heavy-duty gear, completely packed up and heading out of the car park with sirens blaring and lights flashing.
What a fitting end it was to our two Fire Education sessions, for the Preps to see their new fire fighter friends racing off to a real emergency. It was certainly a timely reminder to keep on practising the newly learnt emergency information. The chief fire fighter told the children that it is wonderful to know just how many times children have been able to successfully call for help in an emergency situation.
Mary Whitcher | Prep Teacher
