Once a fortnight Osbornes Flat Primary School is visited by Lucy Turner and the MACC Van. Lucy is an experienced teacher and provides art lessons to each grade for 1.5 hours. The Mobile Art and Craft Centre vans (MACC) are a fleet of mobile art classrooms which provide specialist art education to rural and remote primary schools. These vans ensure that students in rural schools get the same opportunities as students in bigger schools, ensuring that they too can begin their High School years with a solid grounding in the area of Visual Arts. Each lesson is full of creativity, imagination and colour! Lucy chooses an artist of the week that is published in our school newsletter as well as a bulletin run down on what she has been teaching the students.
Specialist Subjects
Italian
F/2/3
In the Junior unit, students are encouraged to use Italian as much as possible for classroom routines, social interactions, structured learning tasks, and language experimentation and practice. The focus is on introducing self, stating likes and dislikes on different topics ,learning simple sentence structure and intercultural awareness. Activities and tasks are based on an Italian text and are differentiated according to the ability of students. Outdoor games are usually incorporated with instructions given in Italian.
Years 4-6
In the Senior unit, students increase their range of Italian language vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, textual knowledge and intercultural awareness. Depending on the topic, students work on projects or choose differentiated activities from a grid. Pronunciation and intonation are a big focus as well as composing grammatically correct sentences. Students learn skills in reading’ language for cultural and contextual meaning. Oral-presentation and performance skills are developed through researching and organising information, and selecting appropriate language to engage particular audiences.
Science
At Osbornes Flat Primary School, all students get to participate in 1 hour of Science per week. The Science program aims to excite and instil in students a love for the subject.
There are 4 main topics that are a covered over a year; Chemical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences and Earth and Space Sciences.
Lessons include many different experiments and investigations, the safe and proper use of equipment and they begin to develop a basic scientific vocabulary.
Students are encouraged to question and take responsibility for investigations. They are assisted in analysing results and how they can be related to the real world.
Science plays a vital part in our world and students at Osbornes Flat Primary School get the opportunity to explore this domain in a fun and engaging manner.
Art – MACC
Library – MARC
The Mobile Area Resource Centre (MARC van) is a small mobile library. Amy Musgrove and her MARC van visit Osbornes Flat Primary School every second Friday.
The MARC van is filled with picture story books, fictional novels, non-fiction books as well as teacher resources for students and teachers to borrow. Students are able choose books from the library van to read over a two week period.
MARC lessons allow students to share a book, discuss different literature, think critically and explore issues in greater detail with an activity that integrates into other key learning areas.
Music
Teachers regularly incorporate music lessons into their class program, utilising the large range of musical equipment that the school owns. During these music sessions students are able to create and respond to music individually, in small groups and as a whole class. The students are able to have fun whilst exploring and experimenting with all elements of music.
Each year the students participate in the Wodonga and District Arts Festival, where they are able to perform items in front of a large audience alongside other schools from the region. A commitment to a yearly end of year concert also gives the opportunity for students to apply their musical skills in a practical way.
Many students choose to participate in guitar, ukulele, violin or piano lessons with a private instructor during their school day. Their hard work culminates in an annual instrumental music recital where students are able to perform solo items in front of their friends and family.