5/6 C

Here we are... week 4 already and I feel as though the year has rushed by in so many ways. I must say thanks to Miss Lindsey for stepping in and looking after our class while I was on Long Service Leave early this term. 

For those of you interested, here's what I got up to while I was away.

I was fortunate to have spent some time in Hawai'i to compete in the Ironman World Championship. For anyone unfamiliar with the event, it consists of a 3.8km swim, a 180km bicycle ride, and followed by a 42.2km run. It is often described as the world's toughest one-day event. This year (following Covid cancellations in 2020 and 2021) the event was held over 2 days (the first for the Professional and Age Group Women and some of the Age Group Men, and the second day for the Professional Men and the remaining Age Group Men) and was attended by 5200 athletes. In order to be eligible to compete you must qualify, usually by winning (or finishing in the first few places in some age groups) at an Ironman race. My qualification came when I finished 3rd at Ironman New Zealand in 2020 - so I've been waiting almost two and a half years for the opportunity. 

Simply finishing in such a challenging environment (it is hot and humid in Hawai'i which adds to the difficulty of the event) was my main goal, especially given I have had trouble in hot races previously and so I was pleased to make it to the finish line in just over 12 hours.

Literacy

While we continue to focus on improving reading comprehension, particularly paying attention to identifying the author's purpose and making connections, we have been working towards using this knowledge to apply it to our own writing. By being purposeful with writing, and choosing to entertain, persuade or inform, the students are able to approach the editing process with more focus. We have begun to identify ways to improve our writing by selecting sentences that can be made better with the use of 'Show, Don't Tell' and using more precise language to convey our message.

Maths

The focus these last few weeks has been on measurement, in particular looking at mass, and volume. Students began by coming to grips with how much things actually weigh and recognising various things that weigh from 20 grams all the way up to items that weigh 1kg. We then moved to understanding the difference between volume and capacity and investigated how much water is used around the house and when and where we can make savings. We used data about flow rates to determine the size of containers to hold our saved water.

Prep Buddies

This week the Grade 6 students spent time again with their Prep buddies, sharing reading in the Library and escorting them around Beauty Park as part of our walk for Epilepsy.