Plane Designs

While Mr van Wyk was doing the hard yards and getting down and dirty with plane construction these past few weeks, I was taking the soft option and having the kids design their own wing decals using Publisher.

This was meant to be a review program, as they were using all the skills taught to them last year when they were making their For Sale Posters, but it was surprising, as well as more than a little frustrating, that for so many of our students it was almost like starting from scratch. I guess it's true what they say - "Use it or lose it."

Nevertheless we came through it with some stand out designs for our plane wings, and hopefully have reinforced those skills another degree or two! Here are just some of the designs the students created...
Room 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 & 10...

Paper Planes

Well, this week saw us wrap up our Paper Planes Learning Program. I think that it has been a great success, and I know that many people out there will agree with me, although perhaps not Mrs Racevskis, who more often than not ended up clearing the runways of all the planes that didn't make it!

To help us celebrate the end of the program, Dylan Parker (World Paper Plane Champion and inspiration for the Paper Planes movie) came down to Narrogin and took us through some of the finer points of construction. He also gave us a Science lesson about the principles of flight. Very handy indeed!

Here's a full colour shot of the page that's going into our fortnightly Newsletter this week...

Tech aware kiddies...

This week we continued getting the Pre-Primary's and Year 1's used to logging on and using the mouse more accurately. I have to say the PP's took to it like a duck to water, and the Year 1's have remembered more than I realistically expected them to do from last year!

Here are some pics of the kiddies having fun...oh yeah! And hopefully learning too...

Mouse Control Skills

This week we started Technology lessons nice and slowly by putting the junior grades on some Mouse Control games. There are, of course, a lot of games on the internet, and many will help kids develop those mousing skills, but this site is perfect for the juniors and builds skill in a well ordered sequence.

Why not let the kiddies give it a try at home? Go to http://minimouse.us/ and give it a try...

Welcome to STEM

STEM is an acronym for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics.

Although of course we have been pursuing learning in these areas for many years at ENPS, our STEM program will be designed to bring out the critical thinking behind these learning areas by introducing students to problem based projects in which they have to work together to overcome their difficulties.

Our STEM program is going to be designed from the ground up this year, and we anticipate that there will be a steep learning curve, but all the more fun for it! Stay tuned for more!