Prep explore our local community
In Prep this term, our HASS (History and Social Sciences) focus has been on the local community and places that are special to us. Our Junior School campus is situated in South Hobart and we have enjoyed exploring the buildings along Macquarie Street, looking at their features, colours and shapes. Our students have also learned about the businesses and services of South Hobart, as well as it’s natural focal points and resources. At the beginning of the term, both Prep classes went on a ‘community walk’ along Macquarie Street. We saw a hospital, cafes, a dentist, a restaurant as well as a supermarket and a church. South Hobart is certainly a very busy place!
We noticed that there are four cafes in South Hobart. My favourite is Bear With Me!
Violet
There are parks and three churches in South Hobart.
Remy
There are lots of houses in a community and people like to live in houses.
Imogen
To explore the features of some of the different buildings in our local community, both classes worked to plan and construct models of the buildings they had seen on our walk. Students had to think carefully about the colours to use, as well as the shapes of the buildings’ windows, doors and rooves.
There are some very old buildings in South Hobart and some are very new!
Eve
During their Art classes with Mrs Burke, our students then looked at the work of Australian artist Howard Arkely. Howard Arkley was an Australian artist, born in Melbourne, known for his airbrushed paintings of houses, architecture and suburbia.
Mrs Burke worked across many lessons, discussing the shapes and architecture of the buildings in South Hobart with our students and encouraging lots of attention to detail with a focus on the bright colours used in Arkley’s works.
Every community needs to have a place to buy food and maybe a doctor or a hospital and a psychologist to help people.
Immi
Every week we go to a place that is special to us called the Hobart Rivulet. People exercise their pets along the path and the platypus lives in the rivulet. We need to keep it clean and not drop litter.
Willow
Another focus throughout this unit has been on mapping and a ‘bird’s eye view’ perspective. We thought about the important things that every community needs. We built Prep Town in our classroom and it was a lot of fun! When we looked at our town from above, like a bird’s eye view, it looked like a map. Our students thought about how the different parts of a town or community are joined together. We made roads, a zoo, a veterinary clinic and even a fun park! During follow-up lessons in English, our students have also used positional language to describe the location of different places in Prep Town as well as in South Hobart and our local community.
Our students have thoroughly enjoyed this unit of study and have learned a lot about how to care for the places that are special to them.
