We are the students from 4KJ and 4KM at Leopold Primary School in Victoria, Australia. Our teachers are Miss Kelly Jordan and Mrs Kathleen Morris. We use this space to share all the great things that are happening in our classroom. Please leave a comment!
Today is the first day of Term Three. This term is ten weeks long and it will be full of fun for the 4KJ students.
Some special events to look forward to include:
The Grade Four camp to Maldon
A bike ride around Leopold
An AFL footy clinic with some Geelong Cats players
A new inquiry topic, titled “Plants in Action”
“August is Family Blogging Month” Challenge.
Miss Jordan hopes everyone had a wonderful two week break. One of Miss Jordan’s holiday highlights was seeing the talented performer, P!nk, perform in concert at Rod Laver Arena.
Victorian schools are currently having their mid-year two week holiday break.
Australia is in the southern hemisphere, so it is winter here. Our blogging buddies in North America and England live in the northern hemisphere, so they are enjoying their long summer vacation.
The image below shows a world map. (Click on the image to see it more clearly). The red line is the equator. The equator is an imaginary line that is drawn around the earth, dividing the two hemispheres.
Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWorld_map_with_equator.jpgBy User:Cburnett (Image:World-map-2004-cia-factbook-large-2m.jpg) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
All countries above the equator are in the northern hemisphere, while countries below the equator are in the southern hemisphere. Areas that are close to the equator are warmer than other areas.
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We live in Victoria, a southern state of Victoria. The days and nights are pretty chilly here at the moment!
Here are some winter facts:
The winter months in Australia are June, July and August.
July is generally the coldest month in Melbourne (Victoria’s capital city). The average July temperature in Melbourne is 13.4 degrees.
On average, Victoria receives about 49mm of rain during each month of winter.
In Victoria, snow generally only falls in the mountains in the east of the state.
Victoria’s lowest ever recorded temperature was -11.7 degrees celsius at Omeo in 1965, and then again at Falls Creek in 1970.
We have some fabulous things planned for Term Two including Bike Ed, the return of our student teachers and the conclusion of the Our World, Our Numbers global project.
Of course there will also be more amazing things to learn in literacy, maths and inquiry.
We wish all of our blogging community a very happy holidays.
Today is the first day of the 2013 school year at Leopold Primary School in Victoria, Australia.
After nearly six weeks of summer holidays, Mrs Morris and Miss Jordan are excited to welcome the 54 new 4KM and 4KJ students. Some of these students were in 2KM or 2KJ in 2011!
We have a lot to look forward to this year including our new 1:1 netbook program, Bike Ed and of course our camp to Maldon.
Mrs Morris and Miss Jordan are certain all the students will learn a lot in 2013 and enjoy being part of our wonderful classroom community.
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We had a very warm summer in Leopold and we look forward to hearing how all the students spent their holidays.
Mrs Morris and her husband, Nate, enjoyed Christmas with Mrs Morris’s family. They also spent some time at Indented Head where Nate’s parents rented a holiday house. Mrs Morris and Nate enjoyed a holiday to the historic town of Beechworth and our nation’s capital, Canberra.
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Miss Jordan travelled back to her family’s home in Pomonal (near Halls Gap) for her Christmas celebrations. In January she painted her house and she also enjoyed seeing friends, exercising, going shopping, cooking and reading. Miss Jordan loved meeting her family’s chocolate Labrador puppy, Mocha.
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Mrs Morris and Miss Jordan also spent a lot of time in the holidays preparing for Technify Your Teaching in 2013. This was a professional development day held at Leopold Primary School on January 24th. We had 60 teachers attend from all over Victoria to learn about how to use technology in their classrooms.
Learning about poetry, procedural texts, healthy living, measurement and space (maths)
You can look at the calendar on the left hand sidebar of the blog to find out more about our special dates.
Mrs Morris’s Holiday
On the holidays Mrs Morris and her husband, Nate, spent a relaxing week at Byron Bay in northern New South Wales.
Image from Google Maps
On the way to Byron Bay they had to stop at Sydney. Here is a photo taken from inside the plane. Can you see the famous landmarks at the back of the photo? (tip:click on the image to view a larger version and zoom in)
The beaches at Byron Bay are beautiful. Every day, tourists and locals swam, surfed and walked along the golden sand. What do you like to do at the beach?
One day when Mrs Morris and Nate were going for a walk, they came across this very bold lizard. Do you know what bold means? What type of lizard do you think it is?
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the first half of my USA trip with Mrs Yollis.
After spending time at Mrs and Mr Yollis’ house and travelling to San Diego for our conference, Nate and I flew to the east coast of the USA. We spent some time in New York and Washington DC. Then we flew back to San Francisco on the west coast before flying home.
We had a fantastic time in the USA! Here are some highlights from the second half of the trip.
Visiting the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Rockefeller Centre, Central Park, Times Square, 9/11 Memorial, United Nations Headquarters and more in New York.
Celebrating 4th July by watching the Macy’s Fireworks with millions of people in New York!
I am having a fantastic time in the USA with my husband, Nate! I am staying with my blogging buddy, Mrs Yollis, and her husband, Mr Yollis.
2012 is the fourth year that my class and Mrs Yollis’ classes have been blogging together. We have worked on many projects and become friends over the internet but have never met face to face before last week!
It was truly amazing for me to meet Mrs Yollis. We laugh a lot and get along like old friends. I will miss her when I head to New York City tomorrow.
Last week, I attended a big teacher’s conference in San Diego with Nate and Mrs Yollis. We learnt so much about using technology in the classroom. Mrs Yollis and I also presented about blogging and global collaboration. The teachers really enjoyed it and we hope we have encouraged a lot more teachers to start blogging with their classes.
Here are some highlights from my trip so far:
Meeting lots of other blogging buddies at the teachers’ conference. They were all so nice!
Visiting Mrs Yollis’ classroom and meeting Beverly and Panda. We even played Bamboo in the playground!
Having lunch at Royce’s house and meeting a group of Mrs Yollis’ students.
After a busy eleven weeks in 4KM and 4KJ, everyone is looking forward to our two week holiday break!
We have had a terrific Term Two, full of learning and fun. The Tagxedo word cloud below is a snapshot of the last couple of months in 4KM and 4KJ.
Bike Ed has certainly been a highlight of our term. Everyone enjoyed learning about the road rules, practising their riding skills and demonstrating safe riding behaviours out on the road.
Next term will be exciting, as we have our Grade Four camp happening in week three! This will be the first school camp for all students and it will give us a chance to practise our riding skills in the town of Maldon. We are also looking forward to studying The Olympics and Natural Disasters. We can’t wait to share all of our Term Three adventures with you!
