Assembly

Room 28 and Room 1 hosted last weeks whole school assembly. Here is an overview of our presentation and a short video for parents who were unable to attend.

A huge thank you to parents who were able to help us with sending in costumes, helping the children change, painting faces and taking photos.

Room 1 and Room 28 started meeting once a week in February to do buddy reading. The children would all sit out under the trees and read with each other and then either Mrs Cleary or myself would share one of our favourite books with the group.

One of the books I read was called Fire by Jackie French.

The book is about a devastating bush fire that sweeps through a small Australian community and about how the community has to band together to help each other with the loss. It is written like poetry and with clever use of language it conjures up vivid images of smoke, animals fleeing and people losing their homes.

The children were really interested in the story and especially about the unique nature of the Australian bush. Many native trees actually rely on fire to reproduce! Many have developed seedpods that need to be burnt to open. Eucalypts contain flammable oils in the leaves as a way to eliminate competition from less fire-tolerant species. Therefore - following the devastation of bushfire - the bush quickly grows again.

The children collaborated to produce a piece of work that was inspired by the book - we listened to sounds of the native bush and learned aboriginal dances about animals. We used oil pastels to create flame drawings and we did drama to explore the idea of growth of a fire that starts from just a  tiny spark and how to represent the regrowth of the bush.

As well as learning about the Australian bush, the children have been learning about theatre, and have enjoyed coming up with ideas for costumes and make-up. All of the ideas for the scenery was thought of and painted by the children.

This presentation shows you some of what they have developed from all the ideas we have explored. The children have come up with the ideas for their movements themselves except for movements describing Emus and Kangaroos which are authentic traditional Aboriginal dances.