Classroom News - Year 6

English - Packing a Punch in Writing

In reading, we have been breaking down the work of author Gary Crew in the text 'The Watertower'. Crew creates suspense and encourages his audience to use inference through the techniques used. In reading rotations, we have incorporated texts covering content for our health unit to build students' background knowledge for lessons.

Writing has focused on editing and uplevelling writing to prepare it for publishing. The images above are of a great lesson by Mrs Walters that had students work together on a persuasive text before taking on the reigning champ with their fantastic persuasive techniques.

Maths - How to learn Fractions with Bingo

The students have continued practising their skills to learn the connections between fractions, decimals and percentages. Students engaged in the forgotten game of Bingo! They were required to match the called number with an equivalent fraction, decimal or percentage - and they were challenged! Fun was had by all!

NAIDOC - Art with Anthony

The students had a wonderful day with Anthony creating artworks to celebrate NAIDOC week. They learnt about the process he goes through when making art and had the privilege of watching and asking questions as he made an artwork of an echidna (the local totem).

Geography - Appreciating different Cultures

The students have recently completed a very successful study of Asia and its geographical features, lifestyle and cultures. In an impromptu culminating activity as a PE activity, 6G and 6W completed a 'Hakka' face-off. All students - each class, were given 5 minutes to practice the dance movements of the traditional New Zealand dance (acknowledging that it is not ASIAN however was covered in a lesson of exploring indigenous cultures around the world). We are happy to report that it was a tie however there were some stand out dancers amongst our class!

Warmer Weather

As the weather is becoming warmer, your children are starting the day with their jumper on and ending the day in their shirt. If your child is wearing a St Mary's uniform jumper (and not the jerseys) could you kindly label the clothing so it is easy to locate its owner.

In addition, as the weather becomes warmer, your child is more thirsty. Could you ensure that your child has their own drink bottle packed every day in their bag. We are noticing that more and more students do not have their own drink bottle and this is concerning, given bubblers are out of use because of COVID restrictions.

Social Media - A chat with your child

As a result of being Year 6 teachers for quite a few years now, we have come to see a general pattern of behaviour around Term 3 and 4 as your child - our Year 6 student starts to think about High School, and begins the mental transition from Primary to High School. In particular, and of concern at times, is the usage of various social media platforms. 

Most teens (and preteens) use some form of social media and have a profile on a social networking site. Many visit these sites every day. There are plenty of good things about social media — but also many risks and things kids and teens should avoid. They don't always make good choices when they post something to a site, and this can lead to problems. Whilst every effort is made by you as parents to keep 'home at home' and 'school at school', unfortunately, it is not always successful. 

We, as the teachers of your Year 6 child are preempting this transition phase for your child and are asking that you start to have some serious and robust conversations about appropriate and acceptable use of social media and the various platforms they access. As educating your child is a three-way partnership - family, school, child it is important that we are all talking with our children about how to use social media wisely. 

If you are looking for resources to support you in this process, a google search will bring up a plethora of reputable resources that can support you in your understanding, and assist you in the conversation. Here are two to get you started:

https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents

https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/view-all-content/sso/acscs-stay-smart-online-program

PDHPE

As explained in the note sent home last week, we are working on our unit that covers the the changes involved with puberty. So far, students have covered the topics of self-esteem and values. We have looked at how to 'fill the cup' of self esteem and where we get our values.

In PE we have been working on the skills used at the school athletics carnival.