Year 5/6 Mainstrea
Celebrating Learning
UNIT FOCUS - Government and Democracy
By Wanda, Kishwar, Juneaux and Marley.
What we have been learning:
This is an introduction to what we have done in the first term of 2025 in the subject Unit Focus. Our main focus this term was the government and how it works. The 5\6 cohort’s very first topic was ‘What is a Democracy?” We then learned about the constitution and its importance in keeping things right in this country. The next big step was our very first mock election, where we used preferential voting to decide on a mock president. After that, the cohort learned about the House of Representatives, the Senate, and how a bill has to pass through both of these to officially become a law. We directly used our new knowledge in a mock bill being debated in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The bill being discussed was ‘The Voting Age Should Be Lowered to Sixteen’. We then moved onto our next part of the unit.
Our Project:
After learning all about government and democracy, we found out what our project was. Over the course of four weeks, we had to come up with a bill that we wanted to pass through the senate to improve the school. First, we individually brainstormed ideas, next, we got together in groups of eight (our political parties) and voted on a party leader and other essential roles. We worked together to decide on one of our ideas and turn it into a bill. After that we formed survey questions to ask the whole school to see if people would support our bill. Once we had the data, our graph makers worked on forming that into graphs. Then using the graphs and ideas from everyone in the group, we created a presentation to pitch to the rest of the grade 5/6s and teachers and we wrote speeches to deliver alongside our presentations. Finally, when we were all ready. We presented in front of everyone else in hope that they would agree with our bill and then listened to their proposal in turn.
Preferential Voting:
The way that we decided which bill we would try to pass through the senate was through a preferential vote.
Firstly, we had to line up, and once the person got to the front of the line they gave their full name to Kim who crossed it off a piece of paper (like the electoral roll). Once we were approved, and voting in the correct electorate, we were handed our blank ballot paper and went into the pretend polling booth. The ballot paper listed all 9 political party names and we had to number them from 1 - 9 in order of our preference
(9 being the lowest rank and 1 being the highest).
Once you ranked the groups we folded the ballot paper and put it in the ballot box before leaving the voting room. It took a while but all of the votes were counted and the grade 5 / 6’s got to watch the groups with the lowest votes get crossed off and the votes redistributed. This would keep going on until we had an absolute majority.
The Winning Pitch:
When we got the absolute majority the winner was the Cold Water Coalition. Their bill was to change the bubblers so they produce cold water and to fix them because less than fifty percent work. After the vote our parties decided if we were ‘for’ or ‘against’ and we wrote our paragraph for the parliament. Later, we recreated the senate. Party Leaders had a chance to speak about the bill before the president ordered a vote. Everyone in the Senate had to stand up and move to the side of the room that was ‘for’ or ‘against’. The party Whips counted the votes on each side of the room and told the president. The final votes were in! There were 49 people ‘for’ and 16 ‘against’. The bill had successfully passed and everyone cheered!
Our special guest Senator, David, who had joined us for the parliament, told us that he was impressed with our re-creation of parliament, our well written arguments ‘for’ and ‘against’, and our ideas for fixing the school. He even said he would try and fix the bubblers!
Overall reflections on the unit:
Manny says, “this unit was very fun and my favourite bit was when we recreated a polling booth and did a preferential vote for which bill we wanted to go to the senate!”
Sammy says, “my favourite part was when we gave the presentations because it was cool to see what ideas the different groups came up with.”
Scarlett says, “I really enjoyed this whole unit, my favourite part was getting to read our bill out at the parliament recreation.”
Anouk says, “my favourite part was getting to play the president in the first parliament role play!”
Hector says, “This unit was really fun and a great experience for team work. My favourite part was when we had finished all of our hard work and put our presentations together because we were getting excited to share our proposals with everyone.”