50th Day of School

Today was the 50th day of school. We focused on the number fifty. This morning, we had a good look at the Australian $50 note and the 50 cent coin. We learned that the woman on the note is Edith Cowan, who was Australia's first female politician. She was from Western Australia, just like us! The man on the other side of the note is David Unaipon. He was an aboriginal writer and inventor. The fifty cent coin is a strange shape! It has twelve sides and we learned that shape is called a dodecagon. On one side of the coin is Queen Elizabeth II and on the other side is the Australian Coat of Arms.

This afternoon, Mrs D, a teacher at our school, spoke to our class about what school was like fifty years ago. It was really interesting and we had lots of questions to ask her! Some of the things we learned were:

• some of the games they played at lunchtime were hopscotch, marbles, elastics and knucklebones
• the desks were made of wood and had benches attached for sitting on
• there were no Smartboards, or whiteboards, just blackboards
• they dipped pens in little ink bottles for writing
• they were allowed to go home for lunch, or go to the shop to buy iceblocks at recess time
• the girls learned to sew and knit and the boys learned woodwork and metalwork.

A lot has changed in the last fifty years. Mrs G put us into groups and we had a brainstorm to think about what we think the world might be like in fifty years from now. Some of the ideas we came up with were:

• there will be 3D Smartboards
• voice activated televisions
• voive activated computers
• an Apple Mac touchscreen as big as a Smartboard
• World War 3
• longer pencils
• iPad 6
• $500 notes
• new colours
• electronic blinds
• hologram watches

Mrs G told us about a cartoon she used to watch when she was little. It was called "The Jetsons". It was made fifty years ago, but set in the future. It's like they were trying to predict what it would be like now. We found an episode on YouTube and thought it was great! We did notice that they guessed a few things correctly. We don't have cars that fly and fold up into suitcases yet, but we do have 3D television, video phone calls, robotic vacuum cleaners, travelators and electric toothbrushes!

Love from The Smarties and Mrs G