Grade 6 News

This week's newsletter is brought to you by the Grade 6 Public Relations leader, Charlie.

Important Reminders

• Government high school acceptance forms are now overdue. Please return them as soon as possible.
• Thank you for getting the sports uniforms washed and returned. The process will continue across multiple events in Term 4.

Upcoming Dates

October 22nd - Volleyball Division Finals

October 23rd - Graduation Grade 6 Photo (9:15am)

October 31st -  Hooptime Allstars Region Finals

November 5th - Melbourne Cup (Public Holiday)

November 7th - Grade 6 Boys Netball Day

November 11th - Curriculum Day

December 9th - Senior School Bike Rid

December 13th - Senior School Trivia Day

December 17th - Pool & Movies Excursion

December 18th - Grade 6 Graduation

Learning in Action

Literacy

Reading: Grade 6 students commenced an Author’s Study unit to commence Term 4. The Australian author being studied is Shaun Tan. Each grade will explore a Shaun Tan text across a week, exploring character traits, real-world issues and the concept of symbolism. During the first week in 6M and 6N, students read the text entitled ‘The Rabbits’. The rabbits in the text symbolise British settlers and the way they spread across the country. In 6H, students read ‘Cicada’ and the key symbol in this text surrounds rebirth and transformation.

Writing: In Writing, students are not only learning more about grammar at the sentence level, such as embedded clauses, but also transferring their learning of symbolism into writing short stories. We have looked at the literary symbols of peace, unity and identity.

Preview for Learning: The Author’s Study of Shaun Tan will continue across the first half of the term, but the writing will evolve. We are also looking at Valedictorian Speeches, which are to be completed for Speech Club as part of homework.

Maths

The last term is jam-packed with new learning that hasn't really been explored yet for the Grade 6 students. We started work on percentages and shapes. Thankfully, we are learning how to calculate percentage discounts or subtract a percentage of money from a whole number. I know that sounds really fancy and hard to do, but it really isn't, once you learn the proper order to do it and how every percentage is connected. We've also been exploring shapes, more specifically 3D shapes, and what and how many vertices, edges and faces a shape might have. We've also been finishing up on our decimal goals and starting our new personal goals of percentages in the coming weeks.

~ Charlie 6H

Preview for Learning: Across the next fortnight, students will continue to learn about percentages and financial maths. They will also commence a transformation investigation, building on their learning of geometric shapes.

Inquiry

Term 4 Inquiry in Grade 6 has a brand new look! We are working through a new unit based on why people work and how they evolve into a career. Each class has explored what types of employment conditions there are (i.e. full-time, part-time, volunteer, casual, etc.), whilst also investigating different work environments. Following that, students have been comparing and contrasting the way people work now, in the past and predicting the future. Soon enough, students will explore career pathways and investigate something they are interested in learning more about.

We were also very fortunate to have a member of the Federal Police visit us to talk about his career and pathway. Not only did he speak about his current role (which was limited due to his level of security), but he also spoke about his journey, the types of people he chose to have in his circle of influence and how his job is enjoyable because it is a reflection of him and his desire to help others. We look forward to more visitors joining us over the next few weeks.

Wellbeing

In Term 3, we commenced a unit using the Rock & Water framework, whilst also complementing this work with a unit in the Resilience, Rights & Respectful Relationship program. As we barely scratched the surface, we have decided to continue the learning in Term 4.

Rock & Water is helping students to understand how it is important to sometimes be passive, and in other circumstances, we need to be more assertive. The fundamentals in this program are great for having conversations at home as well. Students can find it really difficult to navigate through social situations. Becoming more familiar with moments to be “water” in order to be passive or be more “rock” by standing your ground is a skill that needs to be learnt and practised.

Boys Division Basketball Report:By Kade & Lachie

It was a heated morning as everyone was so eager to play some basketball.  We won all our games in a breeze to make the final. Then came the big challenge against The Basin. Every time we play this team it's always a close game. The game started, and we went down the floor back and forth scoring. Then they started getting a run on us then we were down by 12 with 5 minutes left to go. Then all of a sudden, we started to come back! Before you knew it, we were only down by 2 points. Lachie had the ball then he passed the ball to Luke only with 10 seconds left! It was a cliffhanger; Luke drove to the basket and got a goal and a foul. Everyone was nervous because if he made this free throw shot, we would win the final! It looked like it was going to miss but it just went in, hooray! We got through! Mr Thomas said he was still shaking for five minutes.

Girls Division Basketball Report: By Zarlie and Ayda

On the 11th of October, the girls' basketball team went to the state basketball centre to represent our school and when we got there, they gave us a rundown of the day after that our coaches Dwayne & Beau told us our first game was going to be against Holy Trinity. We won our first game which was going to be our hardest game of the day. As the day went on the games got easier till the grand final where we played against Saint Bernadette. We ended up winning the grand final by 20 points. We combined for a great team effort. We are now off to Region Round Robin, how exciting! A big thank you to Dwayne & Beau for coaching us and Mr Thomas for organising the day.

Icy Poles

We have recommenced selling icy poles from the Senior School building each Monday and Tuesday. Send along some gold coins as it will help with raising funds for Graduation.

Graduation Scrapbooks

We are not far away from commencing the scrapbooking process to reflect on the primary school years. This is just a quick note to say that information will be coming out in the near future about Scrapbooking, so hold off purchasing too much just yet!