News from the 5/6 Classrooms 

This week, students in Years 5 and 6 went on an excursion to Melbourne Zoo. 

Despite the drizzly start to the day, students were in bright spirits and had a wonderful time visiting various animals.

Highlights included wandering the Lion Gorge and observing lions, tigers, snow leopards and dingoes. Other popular sightings were the elephants, orangutans, reptiles, frogs, and of course, the Butterfly House. 

Classes were also treated to a lesson by zoo staff and learned about different animals' behavioural and structural adaptations.

Throughout the day, students noted down interesting animal facts, including information about habitat, diet and behaviours. These notes will be useful when we write our Information Reports based on animals encountered on our excursion later this term.

Ju-Han and Jane from 6JK spoke with some 5/6 students about what they through:

"I thought it was really cool getting to see all the animals in action and getting to see what they eat, where they live and where they come from." Rory, 6CF

"I learned how animals behave around humans and how they act around in their family. I loved learning about the skulls and finding out what they ate." Austin, 6CF

"It was fun to see the butterflies enclosure and learning about the lions from the zookeeper." Sophie, 5CE

"I enjoyed going into the butterfly enclosure and also learning about the different types of animal skulls. I learned that different animals have different features to help themselves survive in the wild." James, 5CE

"I liked looking at the seal enclosure and the aquarium. I also liked learning about the different types of skulls. Overall it was pretty good and fun." Lucas, 5NK

"My highlight from the zoo excursion was the butterfly enclosure ... I liked the giraffes and the snow leopards. A funny memory from the snow leopard enclosure was that one of my friends got scared and started screaming." Ramona, 5NK 

"My highlight was when I saw the big turtles and the treats in the orangutan house." Sean, 6JK

5/6 Bystander Incursion 

                                                       Written by Jane and Ju-Han, 6JK

Recently, the Year 5/6 students participated in an incursion about being a bystander. 

A bystander is a person who sees a situation, for example, a person being bullied or hurt, and doesn't take action.

From the incursion, we learned how to take action when you see someone in trouble.

The different ways a person can take action are:

• Direct 
• Indirect 
• Distract
• Protocol

We worked in small groups in our class. We were presented with a  problem and then discussed how we could react to it using one of the four actions. Then we shared our responses with the whole year level.

Here is what some students thought about the incursion:

"I learnt that if you see someone being bullied don’t just stand there. Instead you should help them and support them. One of the strategies is to distract the bully and try not to get too involved because that should be a teacher's job, and you don't want the bully to bully you too. I think that the incursion was really fun and I really liked learning to stand up for people and myself." Lucia, 6CF

"We learned about taking more action and standing up for people who are getting bullied. We learned if we don’t want to get involved we can tell a teacher or someone you trust. I think it was really good because we got to learn about our rights and responsibilities." Alyssa, 6LK

"I learnt how to be a better person and how to distract and take the person away from the problem. It was good." Ryan, 6JK