Nature's Close - Ups - our favourite artworks in 2015!

Our inquiry asks, "How are we Called to Care for our Common Home?" As we look at the call of Laudato Si and its implications for sustainability and the stewardship of creation, we take time to look at and paint some of the wondrous things in our world!

Nature's Close-Ups - Kizoa Online Movie Maker

SOCKTOBER - Crazy Socks Day!

SOCKTOBER

Today, our school held a fundraiser for Sock-tober to help children in Madagascar, through Catholic Mission. We wore crazy socks to school and brought a gold coin donation to help support this great cause.


 The day was a success and everyone was happy!
-Stephanie and Jamie        
 (Social Justice leaders)

EXPERT GROUPS TEACHING MATHS

A wonderful aspect of fourth term is seeing a year of learning come to fruition. So it was when the senior classes recently

researched  aspects of geometry in expert groups. Over three to four days, the students presented their learning while their peers took notes and gave feedback. Here's the student feedback! Great to see the pros dominate!

Expert Groups for Maths

Pros	Cons
Show what we can do ourselves	Diverse learning levels
More fun to design own learning	Some explanations from presenters mightn’t be clear
Fun and learning at the same time	Not always equal contributions of the team
Learning at own rate
makes us more independent
Get to see how others work
Variety of topics
Enjoy doing own research and teaching others
Everyone gets a turn compared to normal class
Worked with different people

HOW ARE WE CALLED TO CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME?

What does Pope Francis mean by a "throwaway culture?"
Today we reflected on part of Chapter 1 in "Laudato Si," highlighting what spoke to us and annotating some responses.

 Ciaran: his message is clear-to respect what you have and don't just throw it out when "it's time!'
Ben: we used to repair a lot of things but now we just buy something new-we are not upcycling well.
Joe: we over-package, we don't upcycle and we always want "new" things!
Angus: these days we even make things to be thrown away!
Maria: we don't take care of things properly-we take things for granted and don't bother to repair things anymore.
Jamie: Pope Francis means that we always want new things even though the things we have work. If we upcycle, people can use things we don't want!

AMAZING NATURE - HOW BABOONS HAVE ADAPTED TO CHANGE.

CHLOE WRITES: In the grasslands of Kenya there has been an amazing discovery about the Olive Baboon. An anthropologist has been studying the baboons for 42 years and say that that is not enough time to thoroughly see the baboon's natural habits.  The baboons have been suffering due to the human population doubling and climate and environmental change. The baboons then had to readjust their lifestyle when they changed their habitat. They then also had to change their diet to the prickly pear.

While other animals eating the fruit suffered the consequences like mouth and gut ulcers and internal bleeding caused by the hairs on the fruit, the baboons knew how to cope. The baboons rub the prickly pear in the dirt to get the hairs off and in the dry season the males would squeeze the juice out of the fruit and eat the skin after.Since they changed their diet to the prickly pear they have become healthier.The Olive Baboon is such a smart animal! 

Angus explains: In Kenya there has been a long term study on Papio Anubis. You may know Papio Anubis as the Olive Baboon.Baboons have been in trouble from land hungry humans doubling in around a decade,but climate change is also playing a part in the decrease of Baboons. As parts of Kenya were degraded the Baboons were pushed to their limits and started to eat Prickly Pears.When other animals eat Prickly Pears  they get stomach ulcers and internal bleeding, killing them, but baboons have adapted a technique to roll the fatal hairs off the Prickly Pears in the dirt.

This is Marvelous story of evolution…

Ciaran notes: A unique species of primate has recently adapted to eating the harsh fruit in the boiling grasslands of Kenya…the Olive Baboons.

A patient anthropologist in Shirley Strum has been closely following these animals for a long 42 years. She has seen the dramatic changes to the outskirts of the towns and how degraded they now are. Against the odds, the baboons have demonstrated pure genius to overcome the dangers of such a powerful…fruit! The prickly pear is one of the toughest and roughest creatures around. If eaten, it viciously kills you. The intelligent baboons roll the dangerous fruit onto the dirt to scrape off the prickles. However, the baboons wouldn’t have had  to modify their diet if it wasn’t for us greedy, land hungry humans. The population in Kenya has significantly grown. In the last two decades Kenya’s human population has doubled. Our sometimes silly and disgraceful actions to purchase and take land we don’t need, nearly wiped out this beautiful species.  

LAUDATO SI...on Care for our Common Home...a new term begins!

A new term always brings great excitement and anticipation. So it was today when the students walked in to see the new inquiry question...How are we called to care for our common home? The language in our rich question is based on the words of the latest Papal encyclical letter on ecology and climate.


Today we participated in a Silent Word Wall where we reflected on the meaning of four words or phrases: "our common home," "creation,", Stewardship of creation" and "ecology."