Welcome to Room 20’s Blog!

Today, five students from each Year 5 class had the chance to have their space questions answered by Dr. Lisa Germany in a Skype conference. Lisa is an astronomer from Swinburne University and she brought the Astro Tour to our school last year. In the Skype conference, we spoke into a microphone headset at our end, and we could hear Lisa through our computer speakers. We recorded the conference so that our classmates could also listen to Lisa’s answers. Lisa was also kind enough to send us some extra information about the questions we asked.

You can listen to all of our podcasts from our Skype interview at our Podcast page. But here are some sample questions, asked by students of 5KA…

• Are there any other solar systems apart from ours? - Jayde
• What does Kelvin mean? - Jas
• If Jupiter were 50 times bigger, would it become a star itself? - Isaak

Also, check out our podcasts from our voice conferences with astronomers in 2006 for more Space Q & A!

Today, five students from each Year 5 class brought along their unanswered questions about space to our Online Chat session with Dr. Glen Mackie. Glen is an astronomer at Swinburne University’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. A few weeks ago, Glen brought the Astro Tour to our school and it was great to have the chance to chat with him again. We used G-mail Chat, and we managed to get it working after a few technical difficulties. Unfortunately though, we ran out of time, so we had to re-schedule for another day. Click on the link below to see the transcript of our online chat, including some great links that Glen gave us…

Chat transcript

For a couple of weeks now, each table team in 5KA has been researching one of the eight planets in our solar system. We have used lots of different sources like books, encyclopedias and websites, to make a ‘Wiki Fact File’ about each planet.

 On Tuesday, we had lots of fun creating planet mobiles, using our interesting facts along with some polystyrene balls, glue, glitter and recycled CDs!

They look great hanging from the ceiling of our classroom!

Today, all the Year 5’s at WPS went on an Astro Tour with Dr. Glen Mackie, from Swinburne University’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing.

The Astro Tour was a virtual reality theatre, set up in our multi-purpose room. We put on 3-D glasses and learned lots of interesting things about space by watching some cool movies!

Everyone was amazed by the 3-D effects - we felt like we could reach out and touch the objects on the screen!

In class, we have been learning about a very important skill for life called ‘Resilience’. We have been doing activities from the ‘Bounce Back’ program to help us learn strategies for dealing with problems we might have. On ‘Bounce Back Day’, we participated in many different ‘bouncy’ activities, such as juggling balls, trampolining and bouncing around on the jumping castle!

On Friday May 4th, we had our annual Cross Country event at Willow Park. It was great to see so many 5KA students giving it a go and showing excellent persistence! Feel free to add in a comment and let everyone know how you went…

You can check out some photos of the Cross Country at our Events Page on the Year 5 Wiki.

Last week, 5KA screened the movie that we made about the Early Settlers, in front of all the Year 5 classes. We all had jobs, to contribute to the production of the movie, like actors, graphic designers, narrators, background designers, prop designers and equipment technicians. It was an excellent team effort and the final movie looked great! Watch it here…

In our table teams, students from 5KA created freeze-frame plays to tell a Dreamtime story to the rest of the class. The audience closed their eyes, and each time they opened them, there was a different scene before them. Our Dreamtime plays were lots of fun to prepare and to watch!

Here’s one about Wayamba the Turtle. Check out the rest of our plays here.

Some photos from our recent camp to Borambola Sport and Recreation Centre are now online! Check them out at our Year 5 Wiki.

The topic we are learning about at the moment is Australian History. Today, Rosey Schultz came to talk to us about Aboriginal culture. She showed us some amazing Aboriginal artifacts. I wonder if any 5KA students can remember some of the things we were shown, and what they are used for…?