What's happening in our classrooms?
Grade 6s
A sensational start to 2022!
Empowering our Global Citizens on Behind the News
Every Monday, grade 6s tune into Behind the News as a way of learning about global issues, but this term, a group of our grade 6s were featured on the ABC program in the weekly national ‘shout out’ segment. As if that wasn’t exciting enough… five students were asked to be part of another episode to express their opinions about Internet safety. We are extremely proud of our students for their contribution to BTN. If you would like to tune into these episodes, here are the links:
BTN Classroom Episode 1, 2022 - at 14min 44 sec.
Literacy
Our term one literacy focus is Response Text. Students learnt that the purpose of response text is to make judgements, express opinions or react to artistic work.
They used Stephen Graham’s recommended structure and applied appropriate language features and evaluative vocabulary to write convincing book and restaurant reviews. Students also developed their ability to analyse, interpret and compare texts.
Here are a few excellent Response Text examples written by our students:
Numeracy
Grade 6 students really enjoyed Numeracy during term one. Our key focus has been exploring our base 10 system with numbers up to and beyond millions. Students investigated prime, composite, triangular and square numbers, and explored where we encounter integers in real-life. They compared fractions and decimals, ordered and compared decimals using ‘decimats’ and explored various strategies for multiplication and division of decimals by powers of 10. Running alongside that, students investigated two-dimensional shapes where they defined, explored, labelled, and measured angles and polygons. Students have improved their knowledge and skills through warm-ups, games, small groups, and whole class work. Numeracy groups have ensured our learners are not only on task but can complete the learning independently, with their peers and can explain their learning and discuss how it can help them in real life. At the end of each session, learners reflect on what they have learnt, how they know they have learnt it and what they still need to work on, both independently and in groups.
Here are our wonderful Grade 6s on Harmony Day.
STEM
Grades 6A and 6B have been working together as a cohort to learn about digital technologies through Swift Playgrounds, where students have discovered coding. Our character is called ‘Byte’ and he loves to collect gems in the puzzle world. Each week, students learn another specific function, choose a name and give it a behaviour by adding commands inside the curly braces and run the commands. Students are learning how to find bugs in our commands, debug the system, rearrange the commands into correct order and solve complicated puzzles.
Interschool Sport
Grades 5/6’s have been practicing their selected sports; T-ball, Hot Shots, AFL Footy, Soccer and Netball. Teams have played matches against three other local schools and with each match, they have improved greatly. Students displayed great sports courage and resilience, and their manners were excellent. We have hosted schools and competed at other schools. As a community, we are proud to say that this group of outstanding people belong to Mackellar Primary School.
Future Focused Learning
Students are contributing meaningfully to our Inquiry unit, Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships. They are exploring the following topics with great enthusiasm: Stress Management, Help-seeking and Gender and Identity topics. From lesson zero, students expressed their perspectives and understanding about the unit which paved the way for deeper understanding and a high level of student engagement.
Grade 6 Positive Behaviour Display
