Senior school learning

Mission Market Day - Thank you!

Last term, the 5’s and 6’s had been planning for our mini market day. The reason why we had our Market Day was to donate to Caritas Australia,  a Catholic organisation which helps countries who are less fortunate. We had to plan what our stall would look like, what it would sell and how we would source and allocate the funds we were using. There were many different kinds of stalls including: sport, bakeries and puzzle stalls. There were different prizes to be won and items to be bought at the different stalls. We raised just over $2070 which was an incredible achievement! All of this money will be going to CARITAS Australia who support community development programs and provide Emergency Aid, which is wonderful. It was lots of fun and I think we all think it was worth it. The younger levels hope they can do it in the coming years too.  By Linh and Abbi

Literacy

Last term, in Literacy, we explored the different features of biographies and information reports. Firstly, students were exposed to texts on different people and were asked to identify their common features. Some of the common features they identified were: use of past tense verbs, chronologically ordered life events and varying sentence lengths and structures. Our students gained important research and note taking skills to gather information to create their own biographies. Year 6 students are in the process of writing a biography on an ‘ordinary saint’ which will form part of their faith journey, while the Year 5’s are writing about a key figure in Australian Catholic history. The Year 5 biographies complement the Year 5 Religion unit on ‘People of God’; a precursor to their learning in Year 6.

This term, we are delving into classic Australian limericks, ballads and poems and have kicked off our unit by exploring Andrew ‘Banjo’ Paterson and how his poems have reflected aspects of our Australian identity. We look forward to exploring the many incredible Indigenous Australian writers and texts as part of our History and Literacy learning.

Mathematics

The senior students, or shall we call them ‘data analysts’, have been exploring what data is and how we use it in our world. It has been wonderful to hear our students talk about how their family members use data in their jobs and businesses and we are seeing them apply this knowledge within the classroom setting. At the end of last term, students were given a topic and asked to develop a key research question. Students went through the process of exploring the kinds of data their question would trigger (discrete, continuous or categorical) and then refine their question to ensure they get the richest data they could from it. Students were exposed to a variety of data collection tools (eg. survey, Google form, tally chart)  and were able to select the tool which was most appropriate for their data. Students were then immersed in different data displays (eg. bar graphs, pictograms etc) selecting 3 that would represent their data in the most effective way and to justify their reasoning.