Sorry Day

Today our school will commemorate Sorry Day.



Here is a video of students in Australia forming a giant human SORRY on their school oval with 'Sorry Song' by Kerry Fletcher as musical backing, in preparation for the Australian Government's National Apology to the 'Stolen Generations' on 13th February 2008.



A good explanation of what Sorry Day is can be found here. A more comprehensive Stolen Generations factsheet is also available.

Some moving personal stories can be found here.

Teachers can locate a list of suggested classroom activities here.

For Stage 2 readers a text called 'Stolen Girl' by Trina Saffioti would be interesting to share with the class.

An engaging narrative for more able readers to access is 'Who Am I? The Diary of Mary Talence, Sydney 1937' by Anita Heiss. This is the fictional diary of a 10-year-old Aboriginal girl taken from her family as part of the Stolen Generation.
This book is aimed at readers aged 10 or 11+.

Of course the excellent 'My Place' by Sally Morgan is an appropriate text for discussion, but is aimed more at late Stage 3 readers.

Visual Arts: Vivid Festival

Sydney's exciting VIVID festival is about to launch for another year. It's such an exciting event for everybody and most of all, it looks amazing!




We ran this presentation on our electronic whiteboard while the class created their artwork.



You can visit the VIVID website here. http://www.vividsydney.com/

Mapping Australia

This week we have commenced our COGS unit called 'Being Australian.' We have watched two excellent presentations from Australian Geographic.



Another time-lapse of the Australian landscape is here.