Getting to know our city better

By Ms Leanne McKenzie, Junior School Teacher

As part of our Where We Are in Place and Time unit of inquiry, Year 2 students have been thinking about significant places in our world and in our own city. To support our investigations, we decided to head out and explore Canberra and see some of our significant places first hand.

Our first destination was the beautiful BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a Hindu temple in Taylor which opened in March this year. The Mandir community made us feel warmly welcomed and were excited to share their culture and faith with us. We felt privileged to have had this experience, which both supported our learning about cultures and the world around us, and fostered curiosity and international mindedness.

Despite the blustery and chilly conditions, we walked along John Dunmore Lang Place (the grass land between Questacon and the Portrait Gallery) and spoke about the cultural institutions in the Parliamentary Triangle such as the National Library of Australia, the Museum of Australian Democracy, Parliament House, the National Portrait Gallery, the High Court and the National Gallery of Australia. We went to Mount Ainslie lookout to view the geography of man-made and natural landmarks and travelled past the Australian War Memorial.

Our last visit was to St John the Baptist Church in Reid, the oldest building in Canberra. Reverend Andrew spoke to us in the Church and let us know about how the Church began and about important people who were buried in the crypt. One such person was Rev. Lewis Bostock Radford after whom our school was named.

It was a busy day that laid the foundations for some dynamic learning conversations in class, which we will continue to build upon in the weeks to come.