Grade 6 News
Upcoming Dates
Friday 22nd May: Winter Round Robin Day 1
Wednesday 27th May: Division Cross Country
Friday 29th May: Winter Round Robin Day 2
Monday 8th June: King's Birthday Public Holiday
Reminders
- We continue to sell icypoles on Monday and Tuesday in front of the Senior School building at the commencement of the lunch break.
- Transition forms need to be returned to the office as soon as possible.
Learning in Action
The start of Term 2 has certainly been full of action, headlined by the 5-day trip to our nation's capital, Canberra. With the lead up to Grade 6 camp being fuelled by learning that centred around Australia's history, democracy and war, students experienced firsthand the significance of each learning focus and the impact it has on us all. Thank you to all of the families who supported the students to embrace the experience - it will be a memory that lasts a long time!
Reading
by Lyndon
The Grade 6 students have started a new novel called 'Can You See Me?' Tally, an 11 year old girl with autism, is just about to start high school at Kingswood Academy. Due to her autism, Tally is finding it really hard to cope. Throughout her life, Tally uncovers the truth of living with autism and what it feels like. Through her diary entries, Tally explains the different ways of how she sees the world. As she goes through high school, she learns how to deal with the different challenges life throws at her.
Writing
The recent writing focus has been at a word and sentence level. Expanding on prior learning, students have been connecting their understanding of the conjunctions because, but, and so, highlighting the way the words impact the way the sentence is completed (e.g. but shows a change in direction). Students have revisited ways to enhance the quality of various sentence types (i.e. complex, compound, simple) by exploring cohesive devices. These devices include word associations, synonyms, antonyms and repetition. Add to that some learning about literary devices (similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, etc), and the foundations have been established for students to extend their knowledge and hopefully indepndently apply to future writing pieces.
Vocabulary
Excruciating: Very painful or causing great suffering.
Perpetual: Lasting forever.
Stupefy: If something stupefies you, it amazes or astounds you greatly.
Contemplate: If you contemplate something, you look at it or think about it carefully for a long time.
Preview
The foundation has been set for us to start our 'Whole Text Writing,' which will have a persuasive letter focus. In addition, our Word Work focus of Duce/Duct, the Latin morpheme meaning 'lead', will conclude and we will transition into learning more about homophones. The words we will focus on include: father/farther, metal/medal/meddle, alter/altar, isle/aisle, rein/reign/rain, and compliment/complement.
Maths
Grade 6 students have commenced their unit on fractions. Building on previous learning, they have explored equivalent fractions, comparing fractions (with related and non-related denominators), and simplifying fractions. This has been completed using shapes, number lines and a fraction wall.
Preview
The unit on fractions will continue across the next fortnight. Students will utilise the concept of benchmarking to support their comparison of more complex and unrelated fractions.
Knowledge Rich
Immigration and International Interaction
The key learning in Knowledge Rich this week centred around 'The First Australians and European Colonisation in Australia.' Students explored Australia's first inhabitants by learning about archeological evidence that indicated the existence of humans on the land over 50,000 years ago, potentially up to 60,000 years ago. Mungo Man is the discovery mentioned, aptly named due to the location of the discovery at Lake Mungo. This learning transitioned into the far more recent events of European settlement and colonisation. Students have discussed the impact of European settlement and gained understanding of the extensive time that has surpassed on the land by using timelines to capture key events and changes.
Preview
The learning will progress to migration, particularly around the Gold Rush era, as well as revisiting the learning already undertaken on the White Australia policy that was implemented following Federation in 1901.
Wellbeing
As part of our learning attached to 'Can You See Me?', the Grade 6 students have been learning more about autism. Next week the Grade 6 students will participate in an information session with Mr Butler and Kim, followed by questions from the students. The aim is for our conversations to reflect a deeper understanding of autism, including what it is and what it is not.
Moving forward this term, students will continue the Resilience, Rights & Respectful Relationships (RRRR) program.
CANBERRA CAMP
April 26 - May 1, 2026
In Week 2, the Grade 6 students got up early at 6:00am and got on the bus to Canberra. It took ten hours on the bus ride including stops at Euroa, Holbrook and Gundagai. We got to our accommodation at about 6:00pm, went straight to dinner then settled into our cabins. Over the next few days in Canberra, we went to Mount Ainslie lookout, Parliament House, Old Parliament House, The Mint, National Gallery of Australia, Education Electoral Commission, Australian Institute of Sport, Questacon, and more.
~by Seb~
At camp, everyone had so much fun! Every minute there was an activity on, filled with so much fun, no one even wanted it to end. One of my favourite parts was going to Questacon where we went into all these different rooms. Each room had a different theme. One room had a drop slide/zero gravity slide called Free Fall, which pretty much everyone enjoyed. I think altogether, everyone loved camp.
~by Zoey~
Camp was good. At the AIS, there were a bunch of different sport and arcade games. We got to see swimming, volleyball and gymnastics, as well as the main arena which was being set up for the ice hockey season. The eggs we ate didn’t taste very nice.
~by Mitch & Archer~
Kind regards,
The Grade 6 Team
Melissa Adams, Caillin Ibbotson, Craig McKenzie, Lisa Dealy & Chloe McElroy