:: 4X's Classroom Blog ::

The last part of our inquiry into immigration will involve a digital photostory regarding an immigration story of the students’ choice.  Photostory is a Microsoft program that is freely available on their website to download.  Photostory allows students to import photographs, then layer them with text, voice recording and music in order to create a ‘movie like’ digital story with still images.  It is a powerful tool for visual communication and very easy to use.  We have been experimenting with it in class for the past 3 weeks and the students have confidently created practice stories.

In order to create a great digital story, the students need to collect images to match with their immigration story.  We have already sourced flags, maps and transport paths to Australia from various countries from the internet.  We also need more personal images from the immigration story.  For example a picture of the person at the time, or around the time, pictures of the former country, items that were transported to the new country, old suburbs of houses they used to live in, etc.  Any image that relates to the immigration story will be valuable.

If the image is a photograph we can take a digital photo of the original at school and return immediately, or you could scan or photograph it at home and bring to school on a memory stick or CD.

We are encouraging the students to gather close to or more than 10 images for their digital story.

Many of the students will choose to use the same immigration story as their interview and that is being encouraged.  However they might like to use another story and that is fine also.

Here are a couple of links to digital stories: (some of these have moving images that you can’t have in Photostory-just still images)

http://www.acmi.net.au/dst_story_immigrant_filmmaker.htm

http://www.acmi.net.au/dst_what_became_of_charlie.htm

http://www.acmi.net.au/dst_leaving_tropeoulhos.htm 

If there any questions please contact Mr Exton at school.

This week’s thinking question is about choice.  There are lots of choices in our lives.  For children, adults, for everyone. https://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/dlrcontent/5236303835/index.html

What is a choice?

When do you have to make a choice?

What is an example of a difficult choice?  What is an example of a good choice?

This week we have written information reports about an immigration story to Australia regarding a refugee named Hania who immigrated from Poland in 1946.

The following are the students work:

Juliette

Jason

CooperS

Claire

Spencer

Eileen

CD

Nicholas

Jemin

Today’s thinking question is about memories and the way we remember things.  Watch the video and respond to the following questions.

http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/dlrcontent/5236303834/index.html

What are memories?

When you older, an adult, what kinds of events or memories do you think will be significant to you?  Why?  Think of examples and explain.

In writing during term 3 we have looking at information reports.  We have been looking at immigration stories and writing reports after gathering information.  This week we looked at a woman named Hania Strosberg who arrived in Australia as an 11 year old in 1946 after being separated from her mother for three years during the war, her father’s death via the Nazis and her displacement from Poland after the war.  She faced difficulty finding suitable schooling in Australia.  Later she went to university and became a doctor. 

We broke down the information as a class and the students created their information reports from our notes.

All the grades 3 and 4’s visited the Immigration Museum last week as part our unit focusing on immigration.  It was a fantastic experience and the students were fascinated and enthralled with the stories and exhibits that we encountered.  We began the tour in the education room where we were introduced to two main characters of the museum.  One was the story of Nelly Greaves, a young girl who immigrated to Australia in the 1850’s with her family.  The story was told through a letter that she had written to her uncle in England in order to entice him to move to Australia.  The students volunteered to dress up and recreate periods of Nelly’s life. 

The second story was Cuc Lam’s.  She was a young woman who had to leave South Vietnam at the end of the war to escape persecution.  She escaped on a tiny fishing boat dangerously overloaded with escapees.  They were rescued by the Malaysian navy and she later moved to Australia as a refugee.  On her way to Australia she purchased a red vinyl suitcase as a symbol of beginning a new life even though she had nothing inside it.

Later we went into the museum and moved through a ship that recreated different eras of immigration.  We visited exhibits with interactive immigration interviews where the students could decide if people were allowed to stay in Australia.  There was a movie room displaying various movement of people around the world as result of disaster or war or political upheaval.  There were other exhibits displaying immigration artefacts and the different cultures represented in Australia.  This is the link to the Immigration Museum

museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/