Weekly Update: 19th - 23rd March

In our last unit of inquiry, students found it difficult to source print resources at a reading level they could easily understand and interpret. We decided to write for an authentic purpose and contribute our ideas to wikijunior! Wikijunior accepted our first draft and we are now published authors! The grade two information we wrote is found in the World Heritage books page on Angkor Wat. You can read what we wrote as a team here:

Wikijunior: World Heritage Sites - Angkor

We are very proud of our learning!

How We Express Ourselves Unit of Inquiry

We continued to respond to explore our creativity...starting the week by responding to music using paint. We listened to two contrasting pieces of music...and painted in response. We reflected on how the form of the music influenced the form of our artwork. We explained to each-other why we chose the colours and shapes we did...and what connections to nature we made when listening to the music.

We also looked at the 'form' of our artwork when we created a play doh scene. We described the textures, lines, colours, and shapes and enjoyed looking at each others work and collaborating. We shared our work with our families on seesaw.


Our art process journals are looking fabulous, and we have spent time giving each-other feedback and reflecting on our work.




We had two more inspiring guest speakers this week. On Tuesday, Mr Matt came and talked with the grade about his artworks. He works mainly in acrylic and oil paints and draws inspiration from nature. He loves looking at something ordinary and focussing on one tiny part...creating unique . paintings. The painting on his left is an example of this. He looked at a small section of a palm tree (where the trunk meets the leaf) and completed a detailed painting of what he saw. He also worked with students to create the elephant props used in the school show - the jungle book. He talked about the way cultural motifs were used in these and how elephants are all unique so they wanted to depict each elephant in a different way.

Matt's figurative painting of a leaf...he loves capturing the concept of 'change' in his artworks.

On Thursday, Ms Kellie came to talk with us about where she draws inspiration from to create art. We talked about ways artists curate information, and she shared pintrest boards and journals of her drawn, painted and collaged artworks.

  

We have started to curate our own 'inspiration boards' on padlet. We have all chosen an aspect of nature that excites us and are finding images, artists, and art forms that we feel could inspire us to create our own art work. Children from different grade two classes can collaborate and comment on each others ideas. We are learning to think about what goes into our collection, to ensure we put the best ideas in there and explain why they are important to us. We will use these ideas to create our own artworks - which could be in the any visual art media, or may be a dramatic performance, poem, dance or piece of music.

Here are the links to the Padlet boards where we are collecting and curating our inspiration from nature. 

Sky Fire Birds Water Space Land Animals Sea Animals  Mountains Plants Snow 

On Thursday...we also visited the school's beehives. We made observations, completed detailed sketches and wrote about our experience and how we could use what we saw to create art. We were fascinated by the perfect geometric shapes and tessellations in the hive.

MATH - GEOMETRY

We are looking at geometry in math. This week we focused on symmetry and looked for real life connections in the world around us. Here we are experimenting with seed pods  - their perfect symmetry makes them spin like helicopters when you drop them. 

We explored examples of symmetry in art and nature and created our own symmetrical rangoli designs.

THE GRANNY AWARDS!

It was an exciting end to the week as elementary students took to the stage to perform two brilliant performances of the Granny Awards. Seven of our class were in the show and their hard work paid off! It was also great to see many students enjoying the performance from the audience. Well done to all of the students involved....you were stars! Here are some pictures of you back stage and in action! I loved every minute of it!