Learning & Teaching

 Year 5/6 News

Debates

This term the Year Fives and Sixes have been working on formal debates. We have been split into teams of three or four and given a relevant, age appropriate topic to research. Our research was based on whether we were for (affirmative) or against (negative) the topic. 

At times, our own personal opinions did not align with the topics we were debating on, so we had to use facts instead of opinions to support our arguments. We prepared cue cards with our speeches, including rebuttal cue cards, which we filled out during the debate. 

After the debates, our teachers gave us feedback about how we performed to help us with future debates at school or even high school. Everyone got to debate twice on two different topics and experienced debating from both the affirmative and negative sides. 

Some people were able to be the chairperson for the debates. The chairperson introduces the debate, as well as each individual speaker. The timekeeper was in charge of keeping track of each speaker’s time and ringing a bell to indicate how much time had lapsed.

Everyone in Year Five and Six had an amazing time developing our debating and public speaking skills. We thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience!

Superspeak

This term the Year Fives and Sixes participated in a number of SuperSpeak workshops. The point of these workshops was to learn how to be more confident when public speaking and presenting to an audience. Our facilitator was called Roisin and she came to help us build on our skills. 

In session one, we got into different groups and had to present different poems using lots of expression to an audience. This was really fun because we got to work as a team and present funny poems. 

In session two, we worked on storytelling. We had 1 minute to tell a story about a time we were embarrassed or a time we hurt ourselves. We also had to include the when, where, who, what and why. 

In session three, we learnt about the PREP technique. The PREP technique is when you state your point of view, your reasons, an example and then restate your point of view. It is useful when you are trying to persuade the audience to argee with you. Some topics we used for this technique were ‘cats are better than dogs’ and ‘the city is better than the country.’ 

In session four, we learnt another technique to help us persuade the audience. This technique is called the 3-point technique, where we introduced the topic, stated our three main points and added a conclusion. 

In session five, we presented our 3-point speeches to a partner and they evaluated our speech and gave us feedback.

Session six was our parent session. Parents and carers were invited to come in so that we could present our speeches to them. This was a great opportunity to use the new skills we had been taught.

Overall, the SuperSpeak program taught us a lot and we all learnt new expressive skills to help us persuade others when we are presenting or public speaking. 

Year 2 Experience

On Friday the 11th of August all of Year 2, Mrs Chirio, Miss Olney and Mrs Story had the Year 2 Adventure Day. Sophia (2EO)

We went Clip and Climbing at Activate, played on the playground equipment at Balwyn Park and then finished off with a private cinema watching Tangled! Kiera (2HC)

My favourite part of Activate was caving because we split up and found each other again. I challenged myself by doing the vertical drop and rock climbing. I enjoyed the movies because it was so much fun. Allegra (2HC)

My favourite part of the day was going in the caves at Activate. We got to wear helmets and lights on our heads. I challenged myself by climbing up the dry ice wall. I am normally really scared of heights, but I jumped off the leap of faith which is around six metres tall.  I enjoyed watching Rapunzel at the movies and I almost fell asleep while enjoying the apple juice and popcorn. Ari (2HC)

My favourite part of the day was the leap of faith, vertical drop and the caving because on the vertical drop you went so high, and on the leap of faith it feels like you had just jumped out of an aeroplane, and in the caving you go through really tight spaces. Billy (2EO)

Year 3 Incursion

As part of their Inquiry Unit, 'Living and Non-Living Things', the Year 3 students participated in an incursion focusing on food webs, human impacts, living and non-living things and species interactions. They have been learning how to identify the features that define whether an object is living or non-living.